Author: Joe Gresh

Guilt Trip

The ExhaustNotes website consumes a lot of content. Berk writes most of it and he’s always up to something interesting. I feel bad that he has to carry the load, but I just don’t have that much to write about. Here in the wilds of New Mexico we spend a lot of time and energy just surviving. Take water, for instance.

Our place has a combination of well water and rainwater. The well supplies the tiny shack we live in and the cistern for rainwater catches ½ of the shed roof runoff. It all worked ok until the well ran dry. Our well is only 85 feet deep and since our land sits at 6000 feet elevation you’ve got to figure the water in the well comes from a trapped source. Maybe there’s a layer of impervious stone or clay at 90 feet. The well was already dug when we bought the place, but the pump was dead.

Colleen and I installed a new pump using the existing piping and we had a reliable supply of water. The well inspector said it was good for 1.5 gallons a minute, which isn’t a lot unless you count the minutes in a day. We have a 40-gallon pressure tank with a pressure switch to turn the pump on and off.

The system worked fine until a month ago when the water stopped flowing. The well was flat out of water. The well guy told me this happens all the time. Maybe someone below me used a lot of water, maybe the well is silted up or maybe wells just go dry after 27 years. To get back in the swim I ran two, 150-foot-long garden hoses to a bib outside of the shack and fed the house from the shed water supply.

We let the well rest for about a week and then tried it. We had water again. Everything was fine until a few days ago when the water ran out again. Obviously, we are going to need a better water supply.

We decided to go with a hybrid, part well water, part rainwater, part purchased water set up. We’re getting a 3000-gallon storage tank that will sit next to the well house. Of course, the new tank will require a concrete slab. During monsoon season I can dump excess water from the shed tank into the lower, 3000-gallon tank. Probably 4 or 5 months of the year we can get by on rain water unless there is a drought.

We’re hoping this will take much of the load off the well and give it a chance to recharge from wherever its water comes from. If we need to we can purchase water. Many homes around here buy water and store it in tanks; they have no well because well drilling is expensive and you pay for the work whether the driller hits water or not. A typical well a few hundred feet deep will run around $30,000. If they hit water the first time.

The new system will require a bit of re-plumbing. Instead of directly feeding the shack the well output will dump into the 3000-gallon storage tank and from there the water will go to a jet type pump to provide pressure to the house. I’m hoping the tank will be a sort of battery to store the well water as I can adjust the well output to a trickle to not outrun the well’s capacity per minute. If we are lucky the slower draw will buy a few more years from our well, if not we may drill another, deeper well.

Using rainwater is way nicer than the mineral-rich stuff we get from the well. Soap makes better suds, sinks and faucets stay cleaner and you don’t get those stalactites of gypsum hanging off the aerators. Bought water comes from a city supply and so has all manner of junk floating around.

Future water infrastructure plans include a second, 2500-gallon tank up at the shed. I lost thousands of gallons this monsoon season due to the single tank being full. It drives me crazy seeing that water spilling onto the ground. Installing another rainwater tank to handle runoff from the Carriage House roof should be good for 3 or 4 thousand gallons during monsoon. One day I will get around to guttering the other half of the shed roof and that should double production from the upper level. If we get enough storage I think we can operate the ranch using just rainwater, giving the old well a much-deserved rest. My job will be to move water from all the different tanks to the main 3000-gallon unit.

And this is why I don’t have much fun stuff to write about lately. Things are falling apart faster than I can fix them. Men were given dominion over the Earth but it’s not an easy task to rule nature. I’m starting to think this ranch living is no country for old men. Maybe one day when we get really old we’ll get a suburban house. I’ll have my own garage door opener or a breakfast nook.

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ExNotes Mentors: Slow Is Not The Same As Stupid

When I was in high school back in the early 1970s a new idea in educational teaching methods came about. This new method was called LAPS, for Learning Activity Package or maybe Learn At your own Pace. Whatever it stood for, LAPS was an attempt to uncouple individual students from a strict, class-wide learning schedule.

In the old style of everyone learns at once system if you were a smart kid you were held back by the slowest learners in your class. By the same token if you were a stupid kid you always felt pressured to learn as fast as the rest of the class. LAPS was a system designed to make learning either less boring or less stressful for the student, depending on which end of the intelligence spectrum you found yourself.

LAPS consisted of 20-page LAP printouts. A light blue cover sheet would be titled Algebra LAP-1 and inside were smelly, mimeographed pages of the 1st algebra lesson. This naming convention continued until Algebra LAP-20. After a student felt that they had mastered a particular LAP there was a final test. If you passed the final you went on to the next LAP. This process continued until you had successfully completed the Algebra course.

There was no set time to complete a LAPS course. A student didn’t have to complete all 20 LAPS to pass the course. They just had to do the best they could. Everyone received LAP-1 on the first day of school but from then on students progressed at their own pace. The teacher didn’t address or teach the class as a group. How it worked was you read LAP-1 and as you came to things you didn’t understand you went to the teacher’s desk and she would give you the personal, one-on-one help you needed to grasp the mathematical concept at hand. The program rapidly became known as “Laps for saps.” Failing a LAPS course was pretty hard to do because you were always right on the pace you needed to be.

For me school was misery. I hated sitting in class and watching the minute hand slowly rotate until the bell rang and you changed classes only to start the clock watching all over again. When school was over I could not sprint out of the damn place fast enough.

Another thing I hated was to ask for help. I still don’t like to ask for help. (See concrete.)  A scrum of students was always at the teacher’s desk bugging her for information on how to do this or calculate that. No way was I going to wait around at her desk like a paparazzi hoping for a compromising shot.

I stared at the LAP-1 lessons and none of it made sense to me. It was like looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics: Look, there’s a scarab beetle. Over here is a bird with a human body with the number 7 hovering over its beak. I never approached the teacher for assistance because I was sure algebra was total BS and anyway I couldn’t fail the class. I will say this about the LAPS learning program: At least no one bothered me. I’m sure by now loyal ExhaustNotes readers can take a guess at how well the LAPS program worked.

The autumn months dragged by, the daydreaming days grew shorter and when Christmas season rolled around I was still on LAP-1, the only kid in class still on LAP-1. Apparently my most comfortable learning pace was a dead stop. Most kids were up around LAP-8 or LAP-10. Those kids were the jerks sucking up to the teacher.

Somehow the school notified my mom that I was an exceptional student in that I might be the only student to ever fail a LAPS class. I guess you had to do one LAP minimum to pass. Mom went ballistic. She was astounded that I had accomplished absolutely nothing in 4 months of schooling. Mom told my older sister Marlin to help me out (that’s not a typo, I’ve spelled my sister Marilyn’s name that same way since I could spell and I see no need to change it now).

So began my crash course in algebra. Marlin would sit with me at the dinner table for a couple hours a night and explain what the scarab beetles and the birdmen meant. It was pretty easy, even fun, when she showed me the ropes. We spent more time laughing than learning. I passed Lap 1 the very first week.

The pace quickened. Marlin had places to go and people to see so she rammed that algebra into my brain as fast as it would accept it. We were doing one, sometimes two LAPS a week. The teacher grew suspicious and thought I might be cheating so she actually sat with me to watch me take a couple of the LAP final tests.

By March I had caught and passed some of the smart kids and by mid-April my sister and I had completed all 20 LAPS of algebra. My brain was so jacked up it glowed in the dark. I had to wear a towel over my head to get any sleep at night. Unfortunately, I have since forgotten much of what I learned but I still use the concept of information that is missing to help figure things out.

Then came something the LAPS system didn’t plan for: What to do with kids that finished early? They couldn’t let us roam the halls so they put me with two brainiacs in a classroom and called it current events. In other words, we sat and watched TV. The TV club slowly grew as other students finished their LAPS. I watched TV or slept in that class for 2 months and learned nothing except that I didn’t like any of the kids I was with. It was a bizarre end to a bizarre way of teaching.

The following school year the LAPS program was discontinued, for me anyway. I went back to learning the old fashioned way without very impressive results. I muddled along, skipping school to ride motorcycles and flunking out my senior year from too many days playing hooky. Who knew there were a minimum number of days you had to attend to graduate? I finally managed to get a high school diploma but there was no pomp and ceremony to the thing. I simply went to the administration building after completing summer school and picked up the diploma from some clerk in an office I had never seen or been in before. It was like a janitor’s closet or a mechanical equipment room.

Those few months of intense learning with my sister were so much fun. I loved blowing past the smart kids with my secret weapon, Marlin. It was like having the fastest motorcycle on the block. What an advantage I had! Marlin taught me that learning stuff wasn’t such a bad thing and she taught me more than algebra: She taught me that while I may be slow, I’m not stupid.

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Grind Me A Pound Of Reverse: Part 3

The Husqvarna is still in a million pieces but those pieces are improving. I received the new-used transmission from eBay and it looks to be in good condition. The seller included a few extra bits like a brace for the starter gears and a well-worn countershaft sprocket. The odd thing is, I bought the gears from a British eBay seller but the transmission was shipped from Latvia. Have I stumbled upon an international motorcycle theft ring that keeps a United Kingdom address for customer assurance but chops the stolen bikes in Latvia? Is it a way to get around the dreaded Value Added Tax?

The transmission fits into the crankcase well and looks exactly the same as the old gear cluster. I used the countershaft shim that came from Latvia but I don’t like the gear spacing so I might try the shim from the old countershaft shim. I’m using the Latvian shift forks and shift drum (the old ones don’t look bad but I suspect may be bent as the bike kept jumping from neutral into gear just pushing it around).

The flywheel puller I ordered that was supposed to fit my year Husqvarna missed it by a few millimeters. I was sent a 26mm but I measure the threaded puller boss at 28mm. Of course the puller would not thread on. I need to get the flywheel off to wash out the crank bearings and case. I have ordered a 28mm puller; hopefully it will fit.

My Harbor Freight parts washer hasn’t been cleaned since 1999 and had a ½-inch layer of greasy muck in the bottom. The goal is to not make the parts less polluted, not more. I scraped the gunk out and cleaned the parts washer. It was time, really. The solvent pump was not working and the plastic pump’s hose bard had broken just from sitting. I have looked online for a replacement pump but can’t find an exact fit. I don’t feel like modifying a different pump right now so I decided to wash the bits the old fashioned way: a stiff brush and bucket of mineral spirits.

As I clean the parts I stack them in order inside a nice, lidded, plastic box to keep dust and cat hair off of them until ready to reinstall. I use blue masking tape to keep the bolts for each component together. This saves you from having to figure out which bolt went where later on. Lots of junk came off the parts and I had to refresh the mineral spirit bucket frequently.

My buddy Deet thinks the world of Yamabond sealant so I ordered a small tube of Number 4 to seal the crankcase halves. I would have used Huskybond 3 but couldn’t find any for sale. My plan is to dry fit the crankcase halves together and test the shifting of the transmission, You need both sides to test the transmission properly otherwise the gears bind and push the shift fork shafts around. After I’m sure the thing shifts ok I’ll pull it apart and apply the sealer for final assembly.

I received the top end gasket set from eBay. It only took two days! I haven’t checked to see if they are the right ones but they look ok in the package, what could go wrong? The gasket set was pricy at $45 but is very complete with all the o-rings and rubber parts along with valve stem seals and the gaskets.

I’m not making rapid progress on the Husqvarna. I spend a lot of my time wondering at a blade of grass or being amazed by the sky revolving around above my head. Still, I’m more confident than ever that the Husky will tear up the trails once again. Now I just need that 28mm puller.

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Grind Me A Pound Of Reverse: Part 2

In the first episode of Grind Me A Pound Of Reverse I contemplated buying a Suzuki DR650 and leaning the broken down Husqvarna SMR510 on the side of the shed to bleach in the harsh New Mexico sunlight. Suzuki DR650s are as stone axe simple as you can make a motorcycle today. They are air-cooled, carbureted, have zero electronic widgets (except for ignition) and cost around $6000 for a 2022 model. I’d have to sell a few of my clunkers to fund the DR but it’s the sensible thing to do.

The thing is, the Husky is such a fun bike to ride I thought I’d take a poke at fixing its transmission woes. The Husqvarna crankcase is a vertically split unit which is easier to manufacture but means the entire engine must be dismantled to access the gearbox. In my case this is not a big deal because when a gearbox explodes you have to clean out all the microscopic and not so microscopic bits of metal.

The SMR510 frame is wrapped tightly around its engine and a lot of stuff has to be dismantled to get the lump out into the open. With long-travel suspension causing wide variations in chain tension its best to keep the swing arm pivot as close to the countershaft sprocket as possible. On the SMR the pivot bolt goes through the back of the engine and that means the swing arm has to come off. In addition, the radiators, fuel injection body, EMS and other body parts must be removed also. It took me about 4 hours to finally free the Husky’s engine but I don’t work fast.

I have no shop manual for this bike so with the engine on the bench the first thing I did was rotate the engine to top dead center-compression stroke in order to find the cam timing marks. The Husky has a cam chain that spins an idler gear; the idler gear then spins the two overhead cams. Each cam has a small dot that lines up with the outside gasket surface of the head. The idler gear has three markings, the center mark is two dots and these dots line up with a mark on the cylinder head.

I also put an additional punch mark on the crankcase and alternator rotor to make finding top dead center less subjective. The Husky’s timing looks pretty easy to do so I’m sure I’ve got it all wrong and the valves will bend the first time I try to start the engine.

Next I removed the cam caps. The cam caps were secured by these allen-head bolts and they were so tight the heads rounded out on three of them. I had to use a flat chisel to knock the bolts loose so I’ll need to get replacements from the hardware store. The head bolts are 10mm allen-type and deeply recessed so once the cams were out of the way I had to cut a 10mm allen wrench to make a long reach socket. The head bolts didn’t round out.

One of the reasons the Husqvarna 510 engine doesn’t last long is the slipper piston. This type of piston is pretty much a racing piston and has so much cut away there is only a narrow skirt to take side loading and a limited surface area for an oil film. The valve train is state of the coil-spring art: long, skinny valves at a narrow angle to give an almost flat-top combustion chamber.

The Husky incorporates small finger-rocker followers to remove valve-stem side loading. The cam lobes swipe across the followers, not directly on the valves. This set up adds a bit of weight to the valve train but the Husky revs to 10,000 rpm without valve float so I’m not going to worry about weight. A nifty feature is the spring-metal separator clip that can be removed from the rocker arm shafts, which will allow the finger rocker to slide over giving access to the valve shims. This means you don’t have to remove the cams to adjust valve clearance.

Splitting the cases was a fairly straightforward operation except for the shift drum. I managed to get the thing apart but still haven’t figured out how the shift drum is held into the right crankcase half. I got pretty frustrated and gave it a few whacks but it didn’t budge. I’ll study the situation after I calm down.

This is what was causing the racket. A couple gears are missing teeth and who knows what other unseen damage to the cluster was done as the bits of hard metal flew around inside? The shift forks may be bent because the bike wouldn’t stay in neutral and kept going into gear when i pushed it around the shop. I decided to get a used gearbox and replace the entire transmission.

The 2008 Husky SMR510 is one of the last Husqvarna’s with a tangible connection to the original Swedish manufacturer. Employees from old Husqvarna operated the company that built my bike. They purchased the name and relocated manufacturing to Italy. Cold, icy Sweden or warm, sunny Italy, who wouldn’t move? Shortly after my bike was built Husqvarna was sold to BMW and the bikes became re-badged BMWs. This only lasted a few years until KTM bought Husqvarna from BMW and the bikes became re-badged KTMs.

So parts are sort of hard to find. I located this complete TE510 (the enduro version of my bike) transmission in England for $285. Shipping was expensive but it’s a long way to Old Blighty and probably one gear would cost $100 if I bought it new. Hopefully it will fit.

EBay also had a top end gasket set for fairly cheap so I have that kit on the way. The case halves are sealed with goop, no gasket needed. The side cover gasket and alternator gasket came away without tearing so being ever thrifty I can reuse those gaskets.

I’ll have to do a thorough job of cleaning out the transmission debris inside the engine and whenever this stuff arrives I’ll try to reassemble the mess. ExhaustNotes will have up to date information as this project moves forward. Even if the Husky manages to run again I still might buy that DR650.

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Grind Me A Pound Of Reverse

September is one of the finer months for motorcycle riding in New Mexico. The daily monsoon rains begin to ease off in September. The trails remain slightly damp so dust isn’t bad and the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers and I can run a tight formation on New Mexico’s many dirt roads. The hot summer temperatures have faded away with the peek-a-boo, pre-fall weather allowing for cool morning rides and warm daytime riding.

These perfect days and these perfect times call for a long dirt loop from White Oaks to Claunch then south to Highway380. My morning Husqvarna ride to Carrizozo was glorious, just cool enough to create a little chill in my mesh jacket but not cool enough to cause discomfort. You know that feeling when everything is all right?

After a short gab session with the Mud Chuckers we gassed up at the Allsups station and headed north towards White Oaks. We traveled a half-mile when something started making a racket in the rear wheel of the Husqvarna. It sounded like I had run over a length of barbed wire and the wire was wrapped around the wheel. This happens more often than you would think in New Mexico. I pulled over but couldn’t see anything in the wheel so I started out again.

The noise was worse, like maybe the chain was jumping teeth on the sprocket. I turned into a convenient historical marker parking area and gave the chain a good look. Nothing seemed out of order. The Mud Chuckers had turned around and pulled into the historical marker lay-by. Mike asked me, “What’s the problem?” I told them I didn’t know but it sounds bad.

We tipped the bike onto its side stand and started the engine. Running through the gears made a hell of a racket, at times the engine would bind up and almost stall. Eddie said that at least it made it further than last time (referring to a past event when the Husky blew out a rubber plug and pumped most all the hot engine oil onto my right pant leg).

When I bought the Husqvarna 14 years ago I remember reading in the Husky Café forums about how the 510 engine was only good for 20,000 miles. I figured those were racing miles and I would not be pounding on the bike like most motocross or Supermoto racers. Turns out those Husky Café estimates were not far off.

It was still a perfect day. I called CT and asked her to come get me in the pickup. She asked if this was the same bike that broke down last time. “Yes,” I said, “except a little past where you picked me up before.” The Mud Chuckers chatted with me for a while and I sent them on their way. No sense in everyone missing out on a perfect riding day.

When we got the bike home I removed the oil drain plug and large chunks of gear teeth were attached to the drain plug magnet. This was not good news. I asked CT to cancel the Husky’s insurance because it will be a while before I get around to fixing the thing.

The Husky, having a vertically split crankcase, will require a complete teardown to clean out the debris and replace the broken transmission gear/gears. That’s if I can even find the parts. My Husky is from Italy, two generations removed from KTM, the new owner of Husqvarna. The closest thing to my bike is a SWM 500. SWM bought all the tooling and production rights from the remains of the Italian crew and that bike uses the same engine as my Husky; hopefully, the gearbox is the same.

My other bikes are a mess. Sometimes I want to sell all this junk and buy a brand new Suzuki DR650. I’ve got to get the Z1 carbs put back on the bike. They are mostly together; I just need two new fuel tees. The ZRX1100 needs just about everything as it has been sitting for 8 years now. The KLR250 runs crappy and its carb needs cleaning, but I’m not going to take it apart until I get the Z1 carbs back together.

The funny part about all this is that the only bikes I have left running are two 50-year-old Yamaha two-strokes. “It’s a Better Machine” indeed. And you know what? That’s just fine by me because nothing can spoil these perfect days.

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ExhaustNotes’ Inaugural Santa Fe Vintage Motorcycle Hang Out

Long ago I wrote a story about traveling across the USA on an old, 1971 360cc Yamaha Enduro motorcycle. It was called Toxic Tour with the subtitle, The First Annual Blue Haze Across America Tour. I had grand plans of organizing a two-stroke only cross country motorcycle ride like the Three Flags Tour put on by the Southern California Motorcycle Association. Editor Brian Catterson’s warning to never call anything “the first annual” until a second one happened proved prescient. The Second Annual Blue Haze Across America Tour never happened.

The main reason it never happened is because I have no idea how to organize and plan such a massive undertaking. I guess I thought the event would just magically take place because I uttered the words out loud. Motorcycle events require many selfless people working behind the scenes to make the idle talk happen. I still like the idea of an all two-stroke pan-USA motorcycle tour but someone else will have to make it a reality. Robert Pandya comes to mind as someone who could pull it off.

Which brings us to the (hopefully temporary) defunct Motorado Motorcycle show. The Motorado was a great, classic motorcycle show held each year in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Motorado died out around Covid time and try as I might, I can’t find any information online about a 2022 show. Motorado’s Facebook page responded to my query with “ Unfortunately no show this year, lack of interest.” Adding these bits of information together I suspect there won’t be a Motorado show in 2022.

The thing is, I really enjoyed riding whatever moto-clunker I had that would run the 200 miles to Santa Fe. It was always sunny and warm in September; a great group of riders and motorcycle fixers gathered to chat bikes. You could buy an ice-cold beer from the restaurant located at the venue and sit on a bench looking at a Husky 400 or a Triumph T160. All those pleasurable feelings are gone now.

I admit I’m part of the problem, as I never volunteered to work the show or even joined the Motorado club. I cherry picked all the fun and left others to clean up the mess. I miss the Motorado and want something like that to happen again in Santa Fe. So I’m going to make it happen again, even if it’s only on the tiniest scale.

Working within my expansive limitations, the inaugural ExhaustNotes Santa Fe Vintage Motorcycle Hang Out will take place on Saturday September 24, 2022. The event will be held at the same mini-mall location as the previous Motorado shows were held. The address is 7 Caliente Road near the intersection of Highway 285 and Avenida Vista Grande.

The mall is about a block west of 285 and a block south of Avenida Vista Grande. You can see the mini-mall from the intersection. Since it will take me a few hours to ride up there the start time will be noon. Feel free to get there earlier if you like; don’t wait on me as my old RD350 may break down on the way north. The show will end whenever we want to leave. I plan to hang out until 3pm-ish then head south towards home. I don’t like to ride in the dark.

The Inaugural Hang Out is free to attend and there are no rules or classes as the show is not organized or judged in any way. It is literally a hang out. No trophies will be awarded. Try to ride an old motorcycle if you can so we have something interesting to look at. If you have vintage dirt bikes or a non-running street bike trailer them in.

There is a nice restaurant in the mini-mall called Santa Fe Brewing Company. The Brewing Company has good beer and air conditioning so I might hang out there for lunch. For the vegans there is an excellent bagel/coffee shop next to the hardware store. At least it was there last time I visited.

Since this is a non-organized, non-sponsored event I have made no arrangements with the mini-mall management. There is no special parking but the east side of the mall has a large dirt lot that no one parks in. We could line up the bikes there and be out of the way of normal commerce. Swag, like T-shirts or ball caps will not be available so dress accordingly. I will bring some ExhaustNotes stickers along but I find it hard to believe anyone would want them when they have no idea what or who ExhaustNotes is. Ask me and I’ll give you one.

Look, I harbor no illusions about the success of this event; I fully expect that I will be the only one that shows up. I’m prepared to sit alone for a few hours and talk to myself about the purple RD350 that I’ll ride to 7 Caliente Road. Wes Baca from Albuquerque might make the show on his H2 Kawasaki or his CT70 Honda so that will make two of us.

What I really want is the old Motorado show back, but until that happens we can go through the motions and enjoy a fine day in Santa Fe, New Mexico chatting about and looking at old motorcycles. And that’s a pretty good way to spend a Saturday.

Even if you can’t attend please share this blog on your social media. You never know who might be interested and live close enough to burble their vintage bike over to Santa Fe. When you get there, look for the little old man drinking a beer and sitting lonely next to a purple RD350 Yamaha. That will be me.

The comments section of this blog will be the central clearing house for Santa Fe Hang Out information. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments section; if you are planning to attend let us know in the same comments section.

I hope to see you there on the 24th!

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Let Them Eat Cake

Here in La Luz, New Mexico we have a really nice dump. It’s open 6 days a week and free to use for residents of La Luz. The perimeter wall of the dump is made from compressed tires held together with steel bands to form a square block about 4-feet across. Once stacked into place the tires were covered with steel mesh wire and shot with a gunite-type, sprayed concrete. Brown concrete color was mixed in with the gunite and it gives the impression that the dump is surrounded by one, unbroken dog turd.

Inside the dump there are bins for plastics, aluminum and paper recycling. Large, black, roto-cast drums for used motor oil sit under a corrugated steel awning. In the back part of the dump, near the great open pit for inorganic material like broken concrete or unwanted fill, there are a couple of piles for old steel and garden waste. I pick through the steel pile often, you can find some good material in there if you don’t mind losing a finger retrieving the metal.

Recently the dump has added a weigh station for commercial users and a large, two-story building that allows users to back into the building and toss their trash directly into 40-yard dumpsters located on the floor below. The whole place is clean and tidy. The dump crew runs a tight ship and since we don’t have garbage collection out in the sticks I make frequent visits. I’m such a regular that they know me by name and have my tag number memorized.

Last Saturday I told my wife, CT that I was making a dump run and since I was halfway to town I might as well go to the grocery store to pick up a few items and did she want any thing from the store? “Pick up an interesting loaf of fresh baked bread from the bakery.” I had an uneasy feeling. “And get them to slice it into thick pieces,” she finished. I told her that there was no way they were going to slice the bread for me but she said to try anyway.

You know how some people have a command presence, like CT has command presence? People fall all over themselves helping CT. She can get her bread sliced anyway she wants. I have what is called Servile Presence. When I walk up to a counter the clerk gives me a look that says, “Who do you think you are, buddy?”

I never can get my bread sliced or my prescription filled. I can’t return items for store credit without a Spanish Inquisition. CT can return an item bought at a hardware store to a flower shop and the clerk is glad to be of assistance. Anything to do with banking or the department of motor vehicles CT has to do because I’ve never succeeded in getting satisfaction from either place. The lowest of the beaten down, minimum wage workers need someone to kick and I am that guy.

I’ve found that asserting myself or getting mad and yelling only results in the manager escorting me out of the store. I probably bring a lot of it on myself. I’m usually dressed in dirty clothes and need a shave but that’s only because whatever I am doing I get dirty doing it and who likes to shave? Let’s face it: I look pretty suspicious and a bit homeless and meth-heady when out shopping.  At least the crew at the dump treats me well.

There were five loaves of sturdy looking bread inside the bakery’s counter case. These were not foo-foo bread; they had a sprinkling of finely chopped grain baked into the crown. My mouth watered thinking of those thick slices of toast sopping up the dregs of a big bowl of onion soup.

The lady working behind the bakery counter was either a young-looking 110 years old or 85 years old. She had blond hair done in an up-do and a too big apron around her dress. We were 3-feet apart. “Excuse me, I’d like a loaf of this bread cut into 3/4-inch slices.” I waved my finger in the direction of the grain-topped bread.

“It’ll be a few minutes,” she said, “I’m busy.”

Then she picked up one of the loaves, put it inside a plastic bag and tied a yellow bag-tie around the open end. She put the wrapped loaf on a grey metal rolling cart behind her. There was no one else working at the bakery section and no other customers. I made like I was looking at the other offering with interest. She picked up another loaf of the grain bread and put it inside a plastic bag and tied it closed with a yellow bag-tie. I looked at some bagels with cheddar cheese melted over the top. They looked good but I’d have better chances winning the lottery.

I walked back to where she was tying the third loaf into a bag and took up a position directly in front of her.  We were not more than two feet apart now. I leaned onto the counter, crowding in on her as I’ve seem CT use that tactic before. The bakery biddy glared at me and said nothing, picking up another loaf of bread to package. As much as it was possible to do so, she slid the loaf into the plastic bag defiantly, never taking her eyes off mine.

The long minutes dragged by with the two of us in a mortal battle. I wanted that bread and she was not going to give it to me. The rest of the store noises faded away and a kind of tunnel vision came over me as she put the final loaf of bread into a plastic bag. It happened in slow motion. Our eyes were locked and in my peripheral vision below I saw her gnarled hands tying the yellow bag tie around the end of the plastic bag. She put the last bagged loaf onto a cart with the other five loaves then turned and smiled the phoniest ever smile at me.

The bakery display case had a gaping hole where the grain bread had been. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of telling me there was no more. I gave one last look into those eyes that had seen so much in such a long life. She seemed genuinely happy in a “Now then, how can I help you?” sort of way. I turned to my shopping cart and pushed it away towards the pre-packaged factory-baked bread isle. I’m hoping neither of us truly got what they wanted out of the 15-minute mini drama but I strongly suspect that since I never got the loaf of bread that I was the biggest loser.

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RD350 Yamaha Update

The 1974 RD350 has been faultlessly buzzing around south-central New Mexico these last few months without any attention. The old girl was dribbling oil and banging around on her front suspension and the tires that came on the bike were old and cracked. In addition, the rear 4.00×18 tire was too large and rubbed the fender over bumps. The bike kind of bobbed in turns and I didn’t want to take a long ride on those rotten tires. I needed to give the old bike some love.

What held me back was the Harbor Freight tire changer. I was in the middle of modifying the tire machine and I just lost interest. The monsoon rains have precluded any concrete work so I decided to finish the tire machine.

One of the issues with the HF tire machine is that the center shaft is too big for older motorcycles. The center shaft is a pivot point for your duck bar or tire levers. Most new bikes come with big axles and the stock part will work fine on those. I cut a piece of ½” rod 12-inches long and turned out a spacer to go between the factory center bar and the new ½-inch piece. My welding is atrocious but you have to cut me some slack as I can’t see the puddle and weld by sound. Now I can center-post smaller diameter axles without anyone crying about it.

The HF tire machine has three rim-grabber things. Two of the grabbers are pinned into place and one is screw driven. When it works right it really locks the wheel in place, essentially giving you a second set of hands. The grabbers were a sloppy fit on their square-tube arms and it’s hard enough getting all the fingers lined up at one time without stuff moving around. Shimming the grabbers with thin aluminum tightened up the machine and made fitting the rim to the grabbers easier.

While not required for the skinny RD350 tires, I made a duck-bar to assist with bead removal. The duck is a plastic piece that fits over the rim. You use a lever to pull the bead up over the duck’s head and then slide the duck along the rim with the duck bar. The plastic helps prevent scarring your nice chrome or aluminum rims. Needless to say, use lots of tire lube as the first ¼-way around the rim is a hard pull. The duck is actually a part from commercial tire changing machines and it works great on wider rims like you’d find on a sport bike or cars.

I made a steel piece to fit the bolt holes of the duck and welded a 4-foot long, 1” square tube to the duck mount. It’s also an ugly weld but thanks to the miracle of grinders and thick paint it doesn’t look so bad. I messed up by welding the bar to the duck foot square, or at 90 degrees to the bolt axis if that makes any sense to you. This meant that it didn’t sit flush to the curve of the rim when using the center pivot. The pivot point was right where the bar wanted to be.

A quick bending session tweaked the duck-bar enough to be functional. I’ll get it right next time. The duck-bar worked well on the back wheel of the RD350 but the front rim was too skinny. There wasn’t enough room for the duck so I did it the old fashioned way with tire levers.

I bought two Shinko SR712P tires for the RD350, a 3.00×18 for the front and a 3.50×18 for the rear. These are the stock sizes and they don’t rub the fender. The rear looks pretty skinny, I’d like to get a 3.75×18 but I can’t find one. I’ll need new brake shoes for the rear drum but that will have to wait for another maintenance session.

The fork seal replacement was pretty straightforward and so I managed to screw it up. The RD350 has a chrome cover over the brake hose manifold. This cover makes loosening the lower triple clamp pinch bolts impossible unless you remove the top triple clamp and the headlight fork ears. Then the chrome cover can slide up allowing access to the pinch bolts. That was way too much work for me so I decided to pull the sliders off and leave the rest of the fork on the motorcycle.

The RD350 fork slider has a very thin seal retaining area and when I gave the seal a gentle exploratory pry a tiny piece of the damn fork tube cracked by the snap ring groove. I was so upset I didn’t take a photo. Anyway, I worked the cracked piece off and filed the area smooth to make it look like it was made that way. I was temped to do the other side to make them match.

I ended up clamping a big, galvanized carriage bolt into the vice; the head fit behind the seal nicely. Then I cut a piece of PVC pipe that fit over the thin area and contacted the solid part of the fork tube where the dust cover stops. After that a rubber hammer knocked the seal out. It was clear sailing from then on; I reassembled the fork sliders onto the tubes and dumped 5 ounces of 10/30 synthetic motor oil into each fork leg.

For the little amount of work I did the difference was amazing. The RD350 falls into turns with the greatest of ease and holds the line like a supermarket customer getting cash back from a personal check. It feels like power steering. The bounciness is gone and the bike feels much calmer. Now that I can push the bike a little harder those cheap, aftermarket rear shocks are showing a lack of damping. I didn’t notice it before because the front was bouncing so much. The tires are skinny but feel like they grip well. I don’t road race on the street but if I did I could hustle the purple RD350 through the mountains pretty fast.

There’s more to do on the RD350 but I like riding the bike so much I don’t want to disable the thing. I have to fix a leaking oil tank sight glass, re-grease the steering head bearings, replace the rear brake shoes, clean the carbs, and on and on. All that can wait because the sun is out (in the morning before the monsoon rains) and I’ve got to ride this bike.

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ExNotes Product Review: The VJMC Magazine

The 1970s were the golden years of motorcycling. New and exciting motorcycles poured out of Japan at dizzying speed, so many new models that it was all the moto-magazines of the era could do to review them all. The surge of new motorcycles changed the focus and content of motorcycle magazines for decades to come. It was all motorcycle reviews all the time. Multi-bike shootouts became necessary as there weren’t enough pages or time to give each new bike a thorough review.

Expanding on the motorcycle-review theme, the magazine industry began to review more and more motorcycle accessories and motorcycle related products. You’d get a new moto-mag issue in the mailbox and the entire thing seemed like one big sales pitch: You must buy this! The hard sell made sense for an advertising-based income stream. Besides, who didn’t like reading about the latest and greatest motorcycles? I sure liked it.

We review a lot of junk here on ExhaustNotes; it’s an easy way to fill empty space with empty words that don’t require much creativity. The Internet has taken over written and video reviews for all topics, motorcycle or not. Those old style, review-heavy magazines failed and became unreadable Internet product shilling sites. It’s telling that two of the largest remaining paper motorcycle magazines, RoadRunner and Rider, focus more of their content mix on the experience of riding and owning a motorcycle.

Testing and reviewing motorcycle stuff is still a worthwhile occupation but as Revzilla-type, retail/editorial web sites become the new normal you have to wonder how unbiased a review can be when the publisher makes the lion’s share of their income from selling you the item they are reviewing. In a lesser way, ExhaustNotes makes a few pennies when you buy a reviewed product from that Amazon link we include in a story. Now, a few pennies won’t make us biased but what if it was thousands of dollars?

Which brings us to the VJMC magazine. The VJMC is a really well done club magazine that harkens back to moto-mags from the 1940s. Editorially, the VJMC mag sells nothing. The content mix is vintage event reports, how-to articles and nostalgic look-backs into those heady, Japanese motorcycle invasion years. In other words exactly the stuff I like.

The VJMC magazine uses premium glossy paper that is thick enough for gasket making. How-to stories are extremely detailed and if you’re not into that sort of stuff you may find them tedious and boring. I’m into that sort of stuff. Event stories have plenty of photos and lists of winners (typical club magazine stuff).

A big surprise for me was how many vintage Japanese motorcycle parts and service providers advertise in the magazine. Most of them were news to me and I spend a lot of time looking for parts. I’ll have to try out some of these guys that I’ve never heard of before.

Let’s face it, you don’t buy motorcycle magazines looking to read Hemingway and you’re not going to get Hemingway in the VJMC mag. You will get workmanlike prose that conveys the intention of the author. I’m guessing VJMC mag doesn’t pay their authors much, if anything. It’s more a labor of love. Still, the magazine works.

It’s been years since I’ve had a motorcycle magazine show up in my mailbox. It was quite a thrill when I opened the box and saw the VJMC mag inside. Kind of like the old days when Motorcyclist or Cycle Guide would show up. The paper motorcycle magazine is all a part of the vintage motorcycle experience and really sets the tone for a quick spin on the RD350 or RT1-B. To get the VJMC magazine you have to join the VJMC motorcycle (club? gGroup?) and you’ll get 6 issues a year for your $35 entry fee. It’s worth it to me, so you must buy it!

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Dream Bike: Honda MT250 Elsinore

The first motorcycle that I couldn’t hold the throttle wide open through the gears was a CR250 Honda Elsinore. I was around 16 years old and had ridden other 250s: Suzukis, Yamahas, 4-stroke Hondas. They were enduro bikes with heavy flywheels and mild porting. The Elsinore was a full-on motocross bike and I had never experienced a real, racing motorcycle.

When I left the line Wide-eFfin’-Open like I normally did the front wheel was climbing into the sky and at the same time the rear tire was shooting rocks and dirt 50 feet behind. The only thing that kept it from flipping over was lack of traction. Each time I shifted gears the front wheel came off the ground and a fresh torrent of debris issued forth from the squirming back tire. It was a breathtakingly fast motorcycle.

It was so light, so powerful, the engine ran clean throughout the rev range, and the suspension was the best I had ever ridden. The steering was telepathic and the bike could fly through the air like Superman. By the time I was topped out in 4th gear the bike was starting a slow, gentle weave and the two-track dirt trail I was on had grown very narrow. I had to lift. I never even made it to top gear. What a motorcycle!

The MT250 was not like that. It was a mild-mannered bike and Honda’s first modern two-stroke street bike. In the mid 1970s street legal, 250 two-stroke enduro bikes were wildly popular. Honda made a decent but heavy 4-stroke enduro.  To compete with the other guys Honda had to lose the valve train and build one of those confounded “Thinking Man’s” engines. Honda building a two stroke street bike was earthshaking news in the 1970’s motorcycle world.  It stirred up passionate opinions, like when Bob Dylan went electric.

The MT250 looked a lot like a real Elsinore except it had gauges, lights and blinkers. The gas tank was steel instead of artificially aged aluminum. The frame was regular steel not chrome-moly like the race bike. It even mixed the oil and gasoline automatically like Yamaha’s Autolube. All these changes added weight but you could get a plate for the thing and ride it to high school.

If my memory has not failed completely I remember the motorcycle magazines of that era being slightly disappointed with the new two-stroke Honda. How could such a milquetoast motorcycle come from the fire-breathing CR250 Elsinore? I guess they were expecting a motocross bike with lights. Eventually one of the magazines did just that. Here again, I may be imagining this but I seem to remember one of the magazines putting a CR250 top end on a MT250. And that was all it took. The heavy flywheel with the CR porting made for a fast, powerful 250 that wasn’t so abrupt that it would spit you off.

I loved the style of the first CR250s and there hasn’t been a better-looking dirt bike built. I’ll go even further: the early CR250 is one of the all-time best-looking motorcycles of any category since forever. The MT inherited a lot of the CR’s style and it flat looks great. The engine was a strange-but-cool, dark brown color and the exhaust pipe swooped banana-like along the right side of the bike.

“If you like the CR250 so much why don’t you just get one?” you may ask. Here’s the reason: the CR250 is a race bike, it’s an old race bike, but it’s still a race bike and fast as hell. I don’t need that kind of pressure at this stage of my life. The MT250 has all the style with none of the fear. I can ride the MT on the street to get to the trails; no need to load it into a truck. Hell, you could ride the MT across country if you wanted to.

Honda’s MT250 never really took off and their low-ish used prices reflect that milquetoast reputation. You can pick up a perfect one for $2500 and a decent daily rider for under $1500. Not counting the very first bikes they built, Honda didn’t make many two-stroke street bikes. There was the MT125 and the NSR 400cc three-cylinder pocket rocket; no others come to mind. Were there any others?

My dream garage would not be complete without an MT250. It’s a bike I could ride around back country trails without fear of breaking down or flipping over backwards. The thing is as reliable as a Honda. While I’m dreaming I’ll think of the CR250’s incredible acceleration and just green-screen that vivid memory onto the background as I putt-putt down to the ice cream store for a fudge sundae.

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