I stopped by CSC Motorcycles last week to visit with my friend Steve and see the new TT250, San Gabriel, and RX3 colors. I and my camera will try to do justice to the new CSC paint themes, and hey, while we here, we’ll share a few videos.
The TT250 line has an entirely new set of colors, and I like the new look.
There’s a cool decal on the TT250 side panel, too, which i like a lot. It reminds me a bit of what new Triumphs had in the 1960s, when every one of their bikes had a “world’s fastest motorcycle” decal on the tank.
As you know, I have a TT250, and mine is from the very first shipment that came into CSC a few years ago. Mine is black with bold TT lettering on the tank and side panels. I like that bike, I’ve ridden it in Baja (the video below is taking it through the Rumarosa Grade in northern Baja), and I’m going to fire it up and ride it around a bit today.
Next up is a photo of the San Gabriels. The new colors on the SG250 work well, too.
You know, I did one of the very first San Gabriel videos when those bikes first came to America. It, too, was a hoot.
And here are a few photos of the CSC RX3, a bike that has generated lots of smiles and lots of miles since its introduction to the United States in 2015. The new colors are much more interesting and maybe a little more subtle than what we’ve seen on RX3 motorcycles in the past. There’s a gray and turquoise theme, and a silver and red alternative. They both look good.
I like the new RX3 paint themes, and I like the original ones, too. I ride an RX3. Mine’s a 2015 model and, like my TT250, it’s one from the very first shipment to the US. My RX3 is orange (the fastest color, as good buddy Orlando knows), and it’s one of the early ones that faded to a kind of subdued yellow (that’s before Zongshen started adding color stabilizers to the paint). I like that look and I’ve had a lot of great rides on RX3 motorcycles, starting with our initial CSC Baja run. That ride was a hoot and a half. Imagine that: A brand new shipment of RX3 motorcycles (the first in the US), and yours truly and 15 other intrepid CSC riders did 1700 miles in Baja on these bikes. Take a look:
Our next big RX3 ride was the Western America Adventure Ride…5000 miles across the Western US, from So Cal to Sturgis to Portland and then down the Pacific coast to home. I didn’t do a video on that ride, but good buddy Joe Gresh sure did!
We did several more CSC Baja rides, a bunch of rides in the US, and our absolutely amazing 6000-mile ride across the ancient kingdom on RX3 motorcycles:
Not enough? Hey, how about a ride through magical Colombia on RS3 motorcycles? The RS3 is the carbureted version of the RX3, and it, too, was an amazing adventure:
If you enjoy watching YouTube videos, we have quite a few more on our YouTubby page. Grab a cup of coffee, click on the YouTubby link, and have fun. I sure did.
It’s time to get out and do stuff. Yeah, this CV19 thing is a disaster, but it looks like what the wizards recommended is starting to produce results, and that gave me an excuse to get to the range again. Not that anyone ever needed an excuse to get to the range, but I felt like it was time, and that beautiful Henry Single Shot I’ve been writing about (but had not yet fired) was calling my name.
Exhibition-grade walnut, blue steel, polished brass, and a box of .45 70 ammo. Life is good!
I had my Nikon with me, too, so I was finally able to get some good D810 photos of this beauty from Henry’s Rice Lake, Wisconsin manufacturing operation.
A view from the right.And the view from the left.
I wanted a couple of photos showing the entire rifle, and then I wanted to get a couple more showing the highly-figured walnut stock. The folks at Henry sure did a great job.
Sweet, huh? The polished brass buttplate works, too. This is a stunning bit of American firearm artistry. Like Mr. Imperato says, made in America, or not made at all.What’s nice is the stock is highly-figured on both sides. It’s hard to find wood like this on a production rifle these days. Always has been. I believe it’s getting tougher, too.
The .45 70 cartridge is a big one, and I’ve written about it in earlier blogs. There’s a list of links to our earlier blogs on the Henry single shot at the end of today’s post, along with a few other cool links. Take a stroll through them to get a feel for how I came to acquire this magnificent rifle (after you’re read this blog and shared it on all your social media platforms, of course).
If you have one of these and someone says “bring enough gun,” you’ll have all the bases covered with the Henry Single Shot.
It was fun shooting the Henry, both literally (more on that in a second), and figuratively (with the Nikon). The brass receiver on these guns photographs well, I think.
The rear sight is a standard folding leaf. You can flip it to the other side so that you don’t have the white diamond, and you can invert it to get a square notch instead of the U-notch. I’ve left mine as it was delivered from the factory.
On to the good stuff, and that’s an answer to the most basic question for any firearm: How does it shoot? In a word or two, superbly well. I had a big plan to test all kinds of different loads, but I don’t want to bore you with the details of what didn’t work well and get right to what did.
First, a word on my marksmanship. It had been about 9 weeks since I’d been to the range, and the ability required to shoot a rifle well is not something you just pull out of drawer and pick up where you left off. Nope, rifle marksmanship is an art, and I needed to put a few rounds downrange before the Henry started performing. Well, actually, that’s not quite accurate: I had to send a few rounds downrange before I started performing. There’s a skill set involved in shooting a rifle well. You can read our treatise on rifle marksmanship later (I’ll include a link for that at the end of this article, too).
I started with four targets this morning at 50 yards and the results were not what I wanted, but I knew it was me and not the rifle. So I put another four targets out, and I started to settle down. It was a beautiful morning out at the West End Gun Club. Bright skies, mild temperatures, no wind, and I had the range to myself. It wasn’t too long before I was in the groove. The first target (the top left) was a bit shaky (good enough for deer or hog, and especially good enough for buffalo), but not what I knew I should be able to do with this rifle. The second target (top right) was a lot better, as I was kind of figuring out how to get the right sight picture. Shooting with iron sights is much more challenging than simply laying a scope’s crosshairs on the bullseye. Iron sights demand skill and practice. With 9 weeks away from the firing line, I was coming up short on both, but I was getting my groove back. I could feel it. The third target (bottom left) was another good deal, and then the fourth target sealed the deal. That one was a 0.740-inch group, with all the holes touching. With open sights on a lightweight .45 70 at 50 yards, I’ll take three-quarter-inch groups all day long.
50 yards, with a 6:00 hold on each target. Top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right. Not bad, if I do say so myself.
Here’s another photo of my last target of the day, showing that beautiful 0.740-inch group. Bring on the buffalo. I’m ready. So is my Henry.
I think I’ll leave the Henry’s adjustable rear sight right where it is.
The secret sauce? It goes like this: A 300-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point bullet crimped in the cannelure, 16.2 grains of Trail Boss powder, a CCI 200 primer, and Federal brass. I don’t think the brass makes much of a difference when shooting .45 70, as long as the brass is trimmed to a uniform length. I used Federal brass because it’s what I had, and I’ve had it a long time. My .45 70 brass is over 40 years old. It’s been loaded a lot of times, but when you load at Springfield levels, brass lasts a long time.
So what’s it like to shoot the Henry .45 70 Single Shot? It’s fun. The Henry is more of carbine than a full-sized rifle, although the length of pull is the same as my other rifles and the barrel is a full 22 inches. It’s that single shot design that allows the overall package to be shorter. It’s a compact, hard-hitting package with recoil that is one thin red hair on the good side of tolerable. The rifle’s brass buttplate adds substantially to the rifle’s overall rich appearance, but let me tell you, you feel it when the hammer drops. I was glad the 300-grain bullets worked well; the 405-grain loads I had were just a hair over a tolerable recoil level for me. My shooting was all in shirt sleeves shooting off the bench, though. With a winter jacket or on a hunt, making friends with 405-grain bullets would be a lot easier.
It’s stunning just how elegant the Henry .45 70 Single Shot is, and what’s equally stunning is the amount of “cool” you get for the price. The MSRP on this rifle is $628, and Henry tells you on their website that you should expect a discount from that price. To me, the benchmark single shot rifle is Ruger’s No. 1, and that rifle is something like $1500 these days. I believe the Henry’s fit and finish are actually superior to what you get on a Ruger No. 1. The walnut on my Henry is exceptional. I think Henry is undercharging for these rifles. They’re that good.
So where am I on all of this? The Henry likes 300-grain bullets better than the heavier 405-grain stuff, and that’s where I’ll focus future load development. Several suppliers offer 300-grain .458 bullets, and there are other powders to try. One more thing I want to make sure you know: I love this rifle. Life is good. I’m having a lot of fun with my Henry.
Check out our earlier Henry Single Shot stories here:
Bill Murar, at speed, on a CSC 150 somewhere near Lake Erie.
That’s good buddy Bill Murar in the photo above, riding a CSC 150 Mustang replica a few years ago in the Lake Erie Loop (a one-day, 600-mile endurance event around the periphery of Lake Erie). That’s impressive…600 miles in a single day on a 150cc motorcycle! Bill and I have stayed in touch ever since, and a couple of weeks ago I received this note from him:
Joe, thought you might enjoy this photo of my grandmother (Estelle Dadney) standing next to my grandfather’s (William Dabney’s) early H-D motorcycle. I had his photo superimposed above the bike. He was a pilot in WWI and WWII. Somewhere, there is another photo with (I believe) the same motorcycle with a sidecar with both of them.
Enjoy!
Bill
That’s a great photo, Bill. Thanks for sharing it with us. Ride safe and stay in touch.
I recently heard from good buddy Steve Seidner over at alma mater CSC Motorcycles that the new 2020 RX3 colors have arrived, and the colors are sharp! Take a look:
Steve told me that the new 2020 RX3 includes substantial refinements and that the bike has steadily improved since its 2015 introduction. I thought the 2015 version (the one I ride) was impressive; to hear that it has improved makes the RX3 even more desirable. The 2020 RX3 motorcycles are in stock now, and the price has dropped to $3995. That’s a hell of a deal.
The RX3 story makes for an interesting read and if you’d like to know more about these motorcycles, pick up a copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM.
This Saturday at 10:00 a.m. EDT Janus Motorcycles is hosting a Virtual Discovery Day that you can sign up for here. Hey, if you’re under house arrest (as most of us are these days) this is a much better alternative than watching Netflix or TV reruns. The Janus bikes are beyond cool, and in the Virtual Discovery Day you’ll get to meet Devin Biek and Richard Worsham, the two guys who founded Janus. I rode with Devin and Jordan (another key Janus guy) in Baja (you can read about that ride here) and it was a hoot.
So it’s this Saturday at 10 Eastern. I’ll be there, and I hope to see you there, too!
Same dimensions, same heft, and it says Colt on the slide. How cool is that?
The Colt .177 1911 Pellet Pistol
That 1911 you see above is the same size and the same weight as a real deal .45 ACP 1911, but this one is a CO2 pistol that fires .177-caliber pellets. I saw it in a Big 5 sporting goods store a good 20 years ago, and for reasons I can’t easily explain, I bought it. It was an impulse buy. I thought it was a cool idea and I figured if I was ever stuck in the house and couldn’t go out, I could entertain myself by shooting my pellet pistol. Little did I know the CV19 debacle would turn that eventuality into reality (I mean, I’ve been under house arrest for over a month…I have everything but the ankle monitor). I paid $150 for my .177 1911, I put it on the shelf, and I forgot about it for the next two decades.
A cool case, too, and it also sports the Colt logo. How could I go wrong?
As you know from following our earlier pellet pistol blogs, I recently set up an indoor pellet pistol range in my garage in an effort to keep myself entertained (I don’t live on a big ranch in New Mexico and I don’t do concrete). I previously wrote about two Crosman pellet pistols that wouldn’t hold pressure and my old Daisy 717 pellet pistol that worked like a champ. A the end of the most-recent Daisy blog I mentioned that I had the 1911 pellet gun and I said I would break it out if I could find it.
Pellet Pistol Packaging Problems
Well, that’s what I did. I found the gun pretty easily…it was in the bright blue case you see above. But when I opened the case, things did not look good.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. In this case, those good intentions were a foam bed that attacked the gun chemically as the foam decomposed.
Hmmm, the foam padding inside the case that was supposed to protect the gun was doing just the opposite. Instead of protecting the gun, the foam was decomposing and appeared that it might be damaging the 1911. Ah, maybe not, I thought. Given a spritz of that powerful spray that cures all evil (that would be WD 40, not YooHoo, Fred), the foam that was sticking to the 1911 would probably fall right off. Or so I hoped. Before you feel compelled to weigh in on this, let me say at this point I realize this is all my fault. I was remiss in letting the gun sit in that case for 20 years without ever pulling it out, checking it, and keeping it wiped down. Maybe. It could be that if I wiped it down the oil I used would have accelerated the foam’s decomposition. Who knows?
Messy. Whoever specified this foam did a lousy job. It was rotting away and sticking to the gun.The appropriate engineering response to this condition is: Yeccchh!The boys at Colt were thoughtful enough to include a tin of pellets. The foam had cruddily bonded to it, too.
Finish Degradation
So I was hoping all this rotting, rotten foam would wipe right off and the gun underneath would be fine. Well, like the old saying goes, you can hope in one hand and poop in the other. You know which one is going to fill up first. A few shots of WD 40, a good scrub with an oily rag, and the verdict was in: Things were not looking good.
That’s not dust. It’s pitting in the finish where the foam had attacked it.
I even tried lightly scuffing the gun with steel wool (that works on light rust on blued steel), but nothing helped. The 1911 has what I’m guessing is a powder-coated finish, and that damned decomposing foam actually was eating into the finish. It was like rust, but it was a different chemical reaction. It actually etched its way into the powder coating.
Another shot of the surface finish damage. You live and you learn. Sometimes, anyway. Interestingly, the Colt pellet 1911 rear sight has an Allen screw that can be loosened to slide the sight left or right to adjust zero.
So I learned a lesson again I learned a long time ago: You can’t just put something away in a box and forget about it. I should have taken that gun out of its case every year and wiped it down. Eh, we live and we learn.
.177 1911 Operation
I cleaned up the 1911’s exterior as best I could, and then I had to figure out how to operate it. I had the owner’s manual, but what would be the fun of simply reading it? Nope, I had to play with my fuzzy friend and figure it out for myself. The 1911 had two little cylinders for holding the pellets and the owner’s manual (what little I read) said it could be fired either single or double action. Hmmm, that’s cool, I thought.
I looked at the gun and it had a lot of the same features as a regular 1911 (i.e., a .45 ACP 1911). You know, the grip safety, the mag release, and the slide release. I tried the grip safety (unlike the rest of this 1911, it’s plastic). It was hinged at the top just like a real 1911. Cool, I gotta check this out, I thought, so I pulled the hammer back, pointed the gun in a safe direction without depressing the grip safety, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell anyway. Okay, so the grip safety is purely cosmetic. The 1911 also has a thumb-actuated safety, but unlike the grip safety, it actually works (it prevented the hammer from falling when I pulled the trigger). The pellet 1911 has a mag release just like a real .45 auto, and what that does is press against the right grip to flex it away from the frame. That allows you to get a fingernail under the grip, and you can pop it off (more on that in a second). And finally, there’s a slide release just like a real 1911. I pressed it down and what do you know, the slide slid! Forward, that is…about three quarters of an inch (more on that in a moment, too).
The thumb safety really works, just like it would on a real 1911. The plastic grip safety is hinged like it would be on a real 1911, but it is cosmetic only.
Like I said, when you press the mag release, it pushes the right grip away from the gun’s frame. You can then pull it off and that exposes where the CO2 cylinder sits. There’s a lever under the grip. You can rotate that down and it releases upward pressure under the CO2 cylinder. Then you rotate a knurled brass wheel to lower it and a brass cup underneath the cylinder, and then the spent cylinder can be removed. To install a new cylinder (which you need to do a lot, as I’ll explain shortly), you just insert the new cylinder, rotate the brass wheel to take out all the clearance between it and the cylinder, and then rotate the 1911’s grip lever (underneath the grip) upward. That pushes the CO2 into the probe that penetrates the cylinder cap and seals the cap against the probe. It’s all very clever.
A CO2 cartridge in the 1911’s grip cavity. That little brass wheel beneath it snugs up against the bottom of the CO2 cartridge.Snap the right grip back on the gun, rotate the lever beneath the grip (shown here in the lowered position), and the gun is charged.
I did all the above, locked a new CO2 cartridge in place, and the gun was charged. And unlike the two Crosman handguns I tried a couple of weeks ago, it held pressure. Next up was loading one of the little revolving cylinders with .177 pellets.
Colt provided two pellet cylinders with the .177 1911. They are like the cylinders in a revolver. Those little protuberances on the face of the cylinder are supposed be engaged by a push from the gun’s internals to rotate the cylinder when it is fired double action or when the hammer is cocked.Here’s another shot of the pellet cylinder with a few pellets inserted. It holds eight pellets, matching the magazine capacity of a real 1911.
After you’ve loaded the cylinder with pellets, the idea is that you drop it into the 1911 between the rear of the slide and the frame, and then pull the slide to the rear to close it. I did all that, and at that point, I was ready to start sending lead downrange.
A loaded cylinder, in place. Rack the slide rearward, and it should be ready to go.
Double Action It Ain’t
Downrange, in this case, was 20 feet away into my house-arrest, Rube Goldberg, cardboard-box-contrived bullet trap. Like my pistol, I was pumped because it felt good to have a hefty 1911 in my hand again. This 1911 pellet gun feels like a real one. It weighs exactly the same, it’s got relatively decent sights, and lining it up on the target felt like the real deal. Alvin York, step aside, ’cause this 1911 has the added advantage of double action.
Or so I thought. With the safety off and the gun pointed at the target, I tried firing double action. I felt the take up on the trigger and I felt it come all the way to the rear, but nothing happened. I tried again, looking at the hammer, but the hammer just sat there. Hmmm. Well, so much for double action.
I manually cocked the hammer, lined up the sights, held my breath, focused on the front sight, and then I heard a satisfying PFFFT! That delightful report was followed a nano-second later by the mighty .177 lead hourglass sharply smacking into my target. I could see the hole it made, and it was in the black! Yeah, baby!
Cool, I thought. Okay, double action was a bust, but that’s no big deal…I’ll just cock the hammer for each shot. So I pulled the hammer back, repeated the steps above, and it was PFFFT again, but this time without the thwack of the pellet hitting the target. I looked downrange and that prior hole on the target was looking mighty lonely. Hmmm again. Shooting blanks with a pellet gun. Whoever heard of such a thing?
I pressed the slide release, the slide slid forward, and I peeked in. The cylinder holding the pellets had not advanced. It was still sitting on the empty chamber I had fired previously. I pulled the hammer back to see if the hand that is supposed to advance the cylinder was moving up to do so, but it wasn’t. Rats. It looks to me like the parts that form the mechanism to rotate the cylinder are plastic. They may be broken, or age-degraded, or maybe stuck in place by agglomerated lube. Who knows? I need to take the thing apart to do a proper proctological exam, but that’s a project for another time. A quick Google search showed that others complained of similar problems with these guns, and one of the comments noted that there are YouTube videos showing how to work on the thing. Hey, Gresh has his Z1 and concrete, and I have my broken-down pellet guns! Life is good.
Sending Lead Downrange
For right now, I have a single shot 1911 pellet gun. I just have to open the breech, take the cylinder out, load a pellet, put the cylinder back in, close the slide, cock the hammer, and take a shot. Which I did several times, and here are the results.
Eh, not bad. Not as good as the Daisy 717, but not bad, either.Another five rounds. One went high.I had a good group going, but this time two went high.Running out of steam. After 25 or 30 shots, the CO2 cartridge was circling the drain. The pellets didn’t have enough poop to pop through the paper.
Cost per Shot (Pellets vs .45 ACP Ammo)
This is a good news/bad news story. You’ve already read the bad news. A little bit more bad news: I only get about 30 shots (maybe less) out of a single C02 cartridge. That surprised me. So much so, that I looked it up on Google, and it seems like 30 shots is about what any CO2 pellet pistol gets. I think I’ll probably get comments from our readers on that and I’m looking forward to reading your inputs. Hey, if your mileage varies, leave a comment and tell me about it.
Just for giggles, and because I have the time while we’re all under house arrest, I thought it would be fun to compare the cost of shooting the pellet 1911 to the real thing.
I checked online (because it’s been a long time since I’ve bought C02 cartridges), and they seem to be going for around $8 for a box of 5. That works out to $1.60 per cartridge, and at 30 shots per cartridge, that’s a little more than 5 cents per shot for the CO2. The pellets seem to run around $7 for a tin of 150, and that’s a little less than 5 cents per pellet. So, every time I pull the trigger on my 1911 pellet gun, I’m sending a dime downrange.
For my .45 ACP reloads, there are costs in the bullets, the powder, and the primer. I don’t count the .45 brass, because I get mine for free and it seems to last forever. My favorite Missouri 230-grain cast roundnose bullets are $50 for a box of 500, so that’s a dime per shot in lead. Unique powder is about $30 a pound, there are 7,000 grains in pound, each cartridge takes 5.6 grains of Unique, and if you do the math, that works out to $0.024 per cartridge for propellant. CCI 300 large pistol primers are $30 per thousand, s0 that’s $0.03 per round for primers. The bottom line here is each time I pull the trigger on a real 1911, it costs me 15 cents.
What the above means is that I’m saving about a nickle per shot with the 1911 pellet gun. I guess need to shoot a whole bunch more…you know, so I can make up for the hit my 401K is taking as a result of the corona virus.
Wrapping It Up
So where am I on all this? The good news is I like my 1911 pellet gun. It’s impressive how much it feels like a real 1911 (without the sound and fury of a real 1911’s bark, of course). The pellet gun 1911’s accuracy isn’t stellar, but it isn’t terrible, either. It doesn’t index when I cock the thing and it doesn’t work double action, but that’s almost an advantage given our current house arrest situation (fixing those problems is just another project to put in the hopper). The bottom line? I like my .177 Colt pellet gun and it’s one I’ll be using more.
A pellet gun that shoots as well today as it did nearly 40 years ago…the Daisy 717!
The pellet pistol you see in the above photo is a Daisy 717, one I’ve owned for nearly 40 years. After learning that my Crosman C02 pellet pistols wouldn’t hold pressure a few days ago, I thought I’d try the Daisy, and whaddaya know, it worked like a champ (just like it did when I bought in the early 1980s). The Daisy is a single-stroke pneumatic air pistol. You pump it once with this long lever that swings out to the left, open the bolt (just like on a bolt-action rifle), put a single pellet in it, close the bolt, and then shoot. No CO2 cartridges required.
Daisy first introduced these guns in 1981, and at the time, they sold for something well below $60. I want to say I paid around $40 for mine at a department store called Gemco. In those halcyon days, I thought I’d give competitive air pistol shooting a shake and I didn’t want to spend a thousand bucks or so on a serious handgun. The range was short (I think it was 10 meters, or 33 feet), and wow, were those targets ever tiny. I only tried that game once…the club where the matches were held was a long drive for me, the competitors had uber-expensive guns, and I just wasn’t that into it. But I didn’t embarrass myself, and I did better than some of the folks out there with their big bucks pellet pistols. Then I put the Daisy away and more or less forgot about it for the last 40 years.
Well, sort of. A friend in the bomb factory (where I was working at the time) told me about another use for air guns, and on occasion, I would put the Daisy to work when the need arose. That story goes like this: No matter how militant a feminist your better half might be, when there’s a spider on the ceiling or in the bathtub she’s going to get all sguiggly and require manly intervention. That’s where yours truly and the mighty Daisy answer the call to arms.
Truth be told, there’s no way I went to get up close and personal with a big old hairy, funky spider. I was always just as scared as Sue was, but I couldn’t let her see that. I know, I used to be an Army officer, I’ve jumped out of airplanes, I’m pretty good with a 1911, and I rode a motorcycle across China. But I’ll admit it, and only to you: Spiders scare the hell out of me. But we’re men, you see. Real men. And when it’s time to step up, that’s what we gotta do.
This guy might be a little much for the Daisy. I photographed him on Glendora Ridge Road in 2003. Maybe a .458 Win Mag would be more appropriate.
The good news? The Daisy 717 makes it easy. All you need to do when you hear that dreaded directive (There’s a spider in the bathroom…get it!) is dig out the Daisy. Cock it without putting a pellet in the gun (that part is real important…make sure you don’t put a pellet in). Stalk your prey carefully and slowly approach the offending arachnid. Place the muzzle (the end the pellet comes out of) approximately two inches from the spider, taking care not to alarm it. Take a deep breath, let it halfway out, and then slowly squeeze the trigger (without jerking it) while maintaining proper sight alignment. When the pistol discharges, a high speed jet of compressed air will strike the spider, breaking it up into its major body parts, legs, and assorted arachnid appendages, which will then fall gently and harmlessly to the floor. It’s likely said appendages will continue to twitch for several minutes after your demonstration of manly marksmanship. More good news: At this point, your job is done (you’ve done what your significant other requested). You were asked to “get it” and you did. If you are of a mind to, you can tell her to clean it up, but I wouldn’t advise doing so (don’t ask how I know this).
All that aside, after nearly four decades of faithful spider stalking and, most recently, trying to amuse myself during our self-imposed shelter-in-place house arrest, I thought I would try my Daisy in my cobbled-up indoor, garage-based pistol range. I made a target stand out of a cardboard box and a phone book, and hey, the Daisy and I can still drive tacks!
Five shots at 20 feet with the Daisy. The 717 does nice work.
Hmmmm….an indoor range with pellet guns during the shelter-in-place. What say you?
Sitting in my home office surfing the net, I’m sheltered in place which basically means staying home. It’s like detention in high school, or maybe house arrest, except if you sneak out you could die. I don’t know what it’s been now. Two weeks? Maybe more? Anyway, I was thinking about how much I missed getting to the range. I’m dry firing my SIG Scorpion a lot and assessing my performance by how stable the sight alignment is when the hammer drops, but it’s not the same thing as seeing the results on target. Then I saw two handguns I hadn’t fired in maybe 30 years. They’re the two you see above…Crosman CO2-powered replicas of a Smith and Wesson Combat Magnum (the Model 19) and the Colt Python. Hmmmm.
So I grabbed the Python and headed out to the garage. You load a CO2 cartridge in these things by popping the left handgrip off, inserting a fresh CO2 cartridge, and then tightening the screw at the bottom of the grip to tap the keg and form a seal. Except it didn’t. Form a seal, that is. Pfffttttt! That’s the sound of a CO2 cartridge emptying. That sound, and a bit of frost on the backstrap due to the rapidly expanding CO2 escaping around what used to be an effective seal.
No problem, I’ll just try the Combat Magnum. It’s good to have spares, you know? Except the results were the same. Pfffffttttt again!
Eternally optimistic, I went back to the Python and took it apart. Cheaply made guts, to be sure, but to my great surprise the internals are more complex than a real Python. Hmmmm. Man, there are a lot of seals inside that thing! I took it all apart and sprayed the hell out of everything with WD40, thinking the seals would be refreshed and, you know, seal. It took a lot longer putting it back together, and then it was another CO2 cartridge. And another frosty Pfffffttttt! Times that by two, and you’ll have a good idea of how I spent Saturday afternoon. Except after the last attempt, I guess I forgot how it all went together again and I reverted to a YouTube video on this specific subject. You can find everything on YouTube. God forbid I ever have a brain tumor, but if I did, I’m pretty sure somebody’s done a YouTube on how to surgically extract it yourself at home using readily-available kitchen utensils.
Sunday morning started with me watching the video again. With the help of a good Mariachi sound track (watch the video) and an artfully-edited YouTube video, I finally got the Crosman back together with no parts left over.
My Crosman .357 had two problems. The first was its Pfffftttt! problem; the other was the “elastomeric spring” that holds the barrel latch up. That part was sort of a rubber chingadera that had degraded and hardened. The spring aspect of its existence didn’t really work because the part no longer had any spring to it. Holding and examining it in my fingers, it fell apart like a cheap politician’s promise (sorry for the redundancy). I thought maybe I could order a new elastomeric spring (which really is an exotic term for a little piece of rubber), but when I went online I saw right away I would have problem. I found parts lists for my pellet pistol, but most of the parts were out of stock, and the few parts that were still in stock were way expensive. I only paid something like $37 when I bought the pellet gun maybe 35 years ago. There’s no way I’m going to pay half that for a little piece of rubber.
Like most exploded drawings, though, it was visually arresting. I was already in mental handcuffs studying it when I noticed the elastomeric spring circled in red. Whoever loaded that drawing evidently needed the same part.
The way the Crosman 357 loads is you depress a button in the top of the frame and it acts against the elastomeric spring you see in the drawing above. That lowers a lever to unlock a tab (the lever is the part immediately above the elastomeric spring in the drawing). That allows you to unlock and rotate the barrel down and the gun opens like an old British Webley. Then you can remove the cylinder and put the pellets in it.
I couldn’t fix the seal problem, but I felt like I wanted to fix something. So I cut up a wide rubber band, superglued the pieces together, and made my own elastomeric spring. It works well. But that’s not the main problem. That honor goes to the seals being (pardon the pun) shot. They are suffering (like me) from age-induced degradation. To make a long story longer, I went through six CO2 cartridges trying to find a fix. You can buy new seals, but they cost nearly as much as what I paid for the whole gun originally. And that’s before you put the larcenous shipping and handling charges on top of it all. Truth be told, I just don’t want to mess with the Crosman anymore. Even if I got those new seals, there’s no guarantee the thing is going to work.
The good news? I know a hell of a lot more about how a Crosman pellet revolver is supposed to work. More good news? The story I’m telling here was an interesting way to spend eight hours of my shelter in place time. The bad news? My two Crosman pellet guns are now nothing more than display pieces. I could probably find a way to make new seals, but I’m just not that committed to it.
I’ve got another CO2 pellet gun (a 1911) laying around somewhere that I’ve had about 10 years and never fired. I might dig it out later and screw around with it. I’ve also got an old Daisy pneumatic pellet pistol, and I think I’ll try to find it to see if it still works. As always, stay tuned.
When you don’t run a carbureted bike for a while and it runs rough or won’t idle, it’s probably because the slow jet is clogged. It’s not from dirt or contaminants getting into the fuel; it’s from the fuel itself. The fuel congeals when the bike sits for an extended period (we’re talking months here), the jet clogs, and your bike just won’t idle or run well at small throttle openings. That often occurs if you let your bike sit over the winter. One way to potentially avoid this is to close the petcock and run the bike out of fuel when you’re done riding. I don’t do that, though, mostly because I don’t want to let the bike idle for an extended period and, truth be told, I’m lazy.
I wrote the CSC maintenance tutorials for the TT250, so I had a bit of a leg up doing this myself on my TT250 when I had the problem recently. I hadn’t ridden my TT250 in a few months, it was hard starting and I couldn’t get it to idle when I finally did get it to start. I knew what was going on immediately: It was the slow jet clogging. All carbed bikes will do this (it’s not a problem unique to the TT250).
Everything I’m showing you here is right out of the CSC TT250 carb maintenance tutorial. That tutorial covers everything about the carb. This blog is specifically focused on cleaning the slow speed jet to address the idling and slow speed roughness issue.
I find the best way to do this is to pull the carb off the engine. To do that, you’ll need to remove the bike’s side panels. Close the fuel petcock and remove the fuel line from it to the carb (you’ll spill a little gas, so don’t do this around open flame or heat). Like a lot of maintenance actions on modern motorcycles, half the job is just removing stuff that’s in the way first.
Disconnect the duct that goes to the airbox and pull it off the carb.You don’t have to disconnect the duct at the airbox end; just take off the end that attaches the carb.Unscrew the top of the carb.Remove the slide from the carb.Working from the left side of the bike (opposite the carb) remove the bolt securing the rear brake fluid reservoir and let it hang free. You need to do this to get to the carb mounting bolt on the left side.Unbolt the carb from the cylinder head. The nut on the right is easy to get to; the nut on the left side of the carb is a bitch to get to, which is why we moved the brake fluid reservoir out of the way.
At this point, you can remove the carb from the bike, and then the float bowl from the carburetor. This will provide access to the jets. Some folks might think that you can remove the float bowl with the carb still on the bike, but I’ve not found a way to do that. It’s best to do it the way I describe here.
Undo the three screws securing the float bowl to the carb.Remove the float bowl. You’ll spill a little gas here, so be careful.
After have removed the float bowl, you’ll be able to see the jets. The one we’re interested in here is the slow jet. Remove it with a flat-bladed screwdriver.
The slow speed jet is the main character in this “won’t idle worth a damn” story.
After removing the slow jet, clean it thoroughly. This involves cleaning all the orifice holes on the sides of the jet, and the main hole through the inside diameter of the jet. You need to use a thin wire to do this. Just blowing it out with carb cleaner or WD 40 won’t dislodge the tiny bits of congealed fuel. There are tools to do this (CSC Motorcycles sells them). I used a small diameter brass wire and it got the job done.
Use a wire to clean the slow jet and then blow it out with carb cleaner or WD40.Looking down the bore of the slow jet.Make sure you use the wire to get everything out of all the holes.
Once the slow jet is clean, reinstall the jet in the carb. There’s no adjustment here; just screw it in taking care not to overtighten it.
After you’ve done the above, assembly is the reverse of disassembly. Your bike should start easily, idle, and run well at small throttle openings.
To continue our Utah exploration, this blog is on the Golden Spike National Historic Park in Promontory, Utah. This is where the Transcontinental Railroad came together, with the Union Pacific building from the east, and the Central Pacific building from the west. The Transcontinental Rail Road was completed on 10 May 1869. It’s quite a story, and Golden Spike National Historic Park does a grand job in telling it.
Heading into Gold Spike National Historic Park.The National Park Service advises not listening to your GPS, but to instead watch for the signs.Jupiter and No. 119. Both locomotives were built in the eastern, industrialized US.Keep going in one direction, and these tracks would lead to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Head in the opposite direction and you’ll arrive in Sacramento.Jupiter and its coal tender. Both this locomotive and No. 119 (see below) are not the originals. They were reverse engineered from photographs and completed in 1979.No. 119. Neither Jupiter nor No. 119 were supposed to be the locomotives that met at this site. Antelope was replaced by Jupiter when it hit a fallen tree trunk along the way to Promontory. No. 119 replaced another locomotive when the first one was chained to the rails in Piedmont, WY, by workers who had not been paid.A reenactment of a famous cowcatcher kiss.Another view of Jupiter.And another. If you are a photography enthusiast, Utah is a target-rich environment.No. 119 basking in the Utah sunshine.I had a new wide-angle lens when I shot these photos.Colorful Jupiter. Both originals, Jupiter and No. 119, died a death that didn’t quite fit their historical significance: They were both sold for scrap (at less than $1000 each) in the early 1900s.And finally, headed back to Ogden, Utah, on State Route 183.
Susie and I arrived late in the afternoon at Golden Spike National Historic Park to catch their last presentation of the day. We hung around for a bit taking a few more photos and were about to leave when one of the docents suggested we stay a little longer. They were about to move the locomotives back to their garage, or barn, or whatever you call the structure where you park a locomotive. We were glad we did, and I grabbed this video.
You know, I did one of the very first San Gabriel videos when those bikes first came to America. It, too, was a hoot.
