ScooterScribes.news and more…


Ah, lots of good news and a few things to catch up on.  For starters, I was alerted to another top notch motorcycle site, and that’s Terry Roorda’s ScooterScribes.news site.  You’ll like it.

Terry is the former Thunder Press editor, and there’s lots of cool V-Twin stuff on ScooterScribes,  and you don’t have to be a Big Twin dude or dudette to appreciate it.  It’s good.  Trust me.

More good news…the ExNotes stickers are in, and the extensive Direct Mail arm of the ExNotes empire is busy sending them out.

We sent an email requesting your address if you signed up, so watch for it and shoot that info back to us.  We promise that as soon as we get your snail mail address and confirmed that you’re on our email list, we’ll shoot them out to you as soon as we get around to it.  Want to help us more?   Hey, share our site and get more folks to sign up for our automatic emails, or just get them to visit www.ExhaustNotes.us.   We think we’ve got a good thing going.  Guns, motorcycles, scooters, opinions, dream bikes, resurrected bikes, books, articles, Baja, and lots, lots more.   Let us know what you think by posting your comments here on the blog.   We get all kinds of inputs.  Folks want more on Harleys, they want less on Harleys, they want more political commentary (seriously?), they want less political commentary…hey, let us know.  There’s no guarantee we’ll take any of it seriously, but you never know.

Yet more news…several online pubs are breaking the news that Harley is working with a Chinese company to offer a small HD.

Hey, we saw a Chinese manufacturer making parts for Harley a decade ago.  But the recent news is this is going to be a complete small bike, just over 300cc.   I’m surprised Harley didn’t do this several years ago, but then, Gresh and I were in the catbird’s seat on the small bike thing from the gitgo.  CSC and Zongshen were way ahead of the curve on this one.  Dollars to donuts says that the small Harley will find its way to the US, and that’s a good thing.  I’ve seen the photos and I think it looks good.  I’m waiting for the inevitable jokes and the anti-China rants to start, but Harley, if you’re reading this, ignore those folks.  The only thing worse than a smartass is a dumbass, and anyone who criticizes a motorcycle based solely on its Chinese origin is most definitely in that latter category.

One last bit of news…make sure you pick up the latest issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine.   It’s got my feature story on our Enfield Baja trip, and my Destinations piece on Tecate.  Good stuff, Motorcycle Classics is.

A Pair of Prancing Ponies…and that first No. 1

Good buddy Python Pete and I went to the range a few days ago to let loose with a pair of prancing ponies (that is to say, Colts), in both revolver and automatic flavors.  The auto was my tried-and-true bright stainless Colt Government Model 1911; the wheelgun was Pete’s stunning 8-inch Colt Python.   Both are stunningly beautiful and both are good shooting guns.

A custom bright stainless Colt, with Baer barrel, Millet sights, and a few other nice touches.

I bought the 1911 you see above at a pawn shop brand new back in the mid-1980s for just over $500.   Colt no longer offers bright stainless steel guns, so I guess you could say mine is collectible, and when you see bright stainless Colt 1911s come up for sale (which doesn’t happen very often), prices start at $2,000 and go north from there.  I guess you could say I made a good investment (except I won’t ever sell it).

A few years ago the front sight popped off my 1911, so I took it to a local gunsmith to have it restaked. That repair lasted all of 50 rounds, and I realized I needed to see an expert.  That’s when I hooked up with TJ’s Custom Guns, and I had TJ revamp the Colt.  It’s got a Les Baer match barrel, an extended one-piece guide rail, an engine turned chamber (I love that look), high profile/high visibility Millet fixed sights, and TJ’s exclusive high reliability tune.  That last little bit means that my Colt 1911 will reliably feed any bullet configuration (semi-wadcutters, hollow points, etc.) and it will work no matter what.   Folks, I’ve put tens of thousands of rounds through my 1911 since TJ massaged it, and it’s never had a failure of any kind (no failures to fire, no failures to feed, and no failures to eject…it just goes and goes and goes).

On to the Python.  I’ve known good buddy Pete for more than 30 years (we sort of grew up together in the aerospace industry).  Pete owns a Colt Python, a gun that is arguably the finest revolver ever made.  His is the super-rare 8-inch model, too.

Revolver royalty…the stunning Colt Python. The Colt Python is perhaps the finest revolver ever made.

Colt no longer makes the Python, probably because they were too expensive to produce.  The fit and finish are superior, and the feel of the thing is just sublime.  It’s a .357 Magnum, one of the world’s all time greats, and a cartridge that dominated the police market before 9mm became all the rage.  Colt revolvers were hand-fitted and involved lots of custom assembly, and I suppose it just didn’t in with the need for low cost manufacture in a market dominated by black plastic 9mm handguns.   No, the Python is from another era characterized by highly polished blue steel and finely figured walnut, an age in which I felt more comfortable.   Seeing a Python on the firing line again was a treat, and when Pete asked if I wanted to try the big Colt, he didn’t have to ask twice.

Pete and I had four handguns with us (the two mentioned above, plus a SIG 9mm and my Rock Island Compact 1911).   I shot my two 1911s offhand for a while, and then I tried my luck with Pete’s SIG and the Python.  It was fun.

You can argue about a good automatic being as accurate as a high-end revolver, but you won’t convince me. The Python is a tack driver.

I fired 5 shots of “nothing fancy” factory ammo with the Python, and the accuracy was superb.   The targets don’t lie, folks.

I’ve owned two Pythons in my life, and both were back in the 1970s.   When I was in Korea, I found out I could order one though the Base Exchange at a substantial discount.  I couldn’t believe what the nice lady was telling me at the Kunsan AFB Exchange, so I ordered a 6-inch blue steel Python for something like $150 (it sounded too good to be true).   Incredibly, it came in the mail to me in Korea.  Before I rotated home, I had to submit a form through the Army to get permission to import the revolver back to the US.  I did that, and a few weeks later I had a letter signed by the Director of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau allowing me to bring my Python home.  It went into my duffel bag, I produced the letter when I went through Customs in San Francisco, and that was that.  Better times.

You know how it goes with these things.  When I was back in Texas shortly after my stint in Korea, I saw a Ruger No. 1 single shot rifle in .30 06 I couldn’t live without, and I traded the Python for it (the guy at the store through in a couple of boxes of .30 06 ammo, too).  Then I felt a void in my life because I no longer owned a Python, so I ordered another one (this time a 6-inch nickel-plated model) through the Fort Bliss Gun Club.  It was under $200.   Then I traded that for something else (I can’t remember what).  Ah, the mistakes we make.  But maybe they weren’t all mistakes.  I’ve sent a lot of lead downrange with the Ruger No. 1 over the last 45 years, it’s one of the most accurate rifles I own, and it has stunning walnut.

The Ruger No. 1 in 30 06 I traded the Kunsan Python to get. It’s a 200th Year Ruger.  I miss the Python, but I love my ’06 No. 1.  Some day I’ll do a blog on this rifle.

Today, Colt Pythons typically sell for something in the $3,000 to $4,000 range.   Pete’s would command even more, because it’s the 8-incher, which is a rare item.  I’ve asked Pete if he wanted to sell his, but all I got in return was a smile.  That’s probably just as well; I couldn’t afford it at today’s prices.


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German Military and Police Motors: Part II

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Our last blog on German Military and Police Motors: Part I ended with a photo 0f good buddy Ben’s his personal bike, and I thought a good way to start Part II would be with another photo from Ben…one showing a vintage Swedish police BMW…

Nothing slowed these guys down…check out this Swedish ski-equipped BMW!

When I wrote the Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles, I guess the word got out and I received a number of police motorcycle photos.  As you might imagine, many of these photos were of police BMWs, as BMW has been a dominant force in the police motorcycle world for decades.   BMW has offered several engine configurations over the years, and nearly all are represented in their police motorcycles.

BMW’s early K-bikes used 3 or 4 cylinder engines (the photo below shows a 4-cylinder model) that were oriented in an unusual manner. The crankshaft was parallel to the frame, and the engine was oriented with the pistons moving in a horizontal plane (the engine laid on its side). The cylinder was on the bike’s left side. BMW tried to enter the US market with these motorcycles, but they made little progress until they offered the 1100cc boxer twin.

An K1100LT BMW formerly in service with Belgium’s federal police. Ruud Willems sent this photo to me.
Another cool photo from Ruud, this time showing an 1100cc BMW boxer twin formerly in service with the Belgian federal police.

The photos came in from all over the world.  Here’s one from good buddy Ian in the UK…

A cool photo from Ian showing police BMWs in Birmingham, England.

And another from my old stomping grounds in New Jersey…

An F650 BMW police bike with ABS in service with Egg Harbor Township in New Jersey. The Egg Harbor PD likes this bike’s ability to go off road. They also use the larger R1200RT-P BMW, which you can see in the background.
One of Egg Harbor’s Motor Officers on the F650 BMW providing an escort to the Police Unity Tour.

Here’s a great photo from my CBX friend Ian Foster of Hong Kong showing two BMW R1100RT-Ps and two Honda VFRs in Hong Kong. How about that…Honda VFRs as police bikes!

Hong Kong police motors…Beemers and VFRs.
A Hong Kong BMW in Causeway Bay, sent to us by Ian.

And good buddy Danny send us a several photos from the Netherlands…

A cool shot of a 1200 cc BMW police bike in the Netherlands from my friend Danny Hoek.
Danny also sent this shot, along with detail photos below of the Netherlands-based BMW police bikes.
An 800cc twin BMW police bike in the Netherlands from Danny Hoek.
And Danny’s shot of the BMW R1200RT-P police bike in the Netherlands

When I wrote Motors for Rider magazine back in 2009, I took a bunch of photos of police motorcycles.  Here’s a cool shot that made the cover of two BMW-mounted Motor Officers in La Verne, California…

A pair of La Verne, California’s finest…on their BMW R1200RT-P police motorcycles in 2009.

When police BMWs are retired from service, they are picked up by civilian motorcyclists. Although the bikes may have a few miles on them, they have usually been meticulously maintained, and they in excellent condition. Converting a police BMW to civilian use is straightforward…the blue and red strobe lights, the police radio, and the insignia come off, and it’s ready to go.  Most civilian riders also remove the police BMW’s extra battery to save weight.

This is a photo of my good friend Bob staying two steps ahead of Hurricane Norbert in Baja, Mexico, on his “demilitarized” R1150RT-P.

So that’s it for now, folks.  Our next bit on police motors will feature Kawasakis, but that’s another time and another blog.  In the meantime, if you would like to see our other police motorcycle articles, please check out the ExhaustNotes Police Motors page!


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Indianapolis

Happy Father’s Day, folks!

On occasion, I’ll read a book that is so good I’ll post a blog about it.  I thought I would share a recommendation here on Indianapolis, a book my daughter gave to me for Father’s Day.

I received Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago, and it’s one of those books I couldn’t put down.   It’s really many stories wrapped into one book:  The story about the mission to deliver the uranium used in the atomic bomb that ended World War II, the story about the Japanese sub that sank the Indianapolis, the story about the ship’s sinking, the story about the delayed rescue and the shark attacks on the men in the water, the story of the recovery, the story about Captain McVay’s court martial, and finally, the story of his posthumous exoneration.  Trust me on this one, folks.  Indianapolis is worth your time.

I have two or three other recent reads I’ll recommend, too.  Stay tuned…those will be in future blogs.  And for all you Dad’s out there…again, enjoy the day.

Sierra Mountain Passes

A photo from a ride through the northern Sierra Nevadas. That’s my old Triumph Tiger.

Hey, here’s an alert to a cool new moto blog from good buddies Val and J.  It’s focused on an area that is arguably one of the best riding locales in the US, and that’s the northern Sierra Nevada mountains.  The site is appropriately titled Sierra Mountain Passes and it’s impressive.  My advice is pay it a visit and add it to your favorites list (it’s now on mine).

Sierra Mountain Passes grabbed my attention for a couple of reasons.  One is that I did an article for Motorcycle Classics magazine on the area a few years ago (Five Sierra Nevada Passes), the other is that J and I will be hunting deer in Idaho later this year. That’s going to be fun.

Good buddy J on a recent Baja ride.

Reloading Part III: Expanding and priming

In our prior two blogs on reloading .45 ACP ammunition, we discussed the equipment and components needed, and the first steps (cleaning the brass, case resizing,  and depriming).  If you’d like to catch up on those two steps, you can do so on our Tales of the Gun page.  In this blog, we’re going to continue the reloading process.

So here we are, with 150 cleaned, resized, and deprimed .45 ACP cases neatly arranged in three reloading trays…

150 resized and deprimed cases.

We’re now going to use the second die in our three-die .45 ACP set.  It’s the die in the middle of the photo below…

The center die is the one we’ll be using this time.

The die is the expander die.  It has an insert that opens the case mouth to the required diameter.  It also flares (or bellmouths) the forward rim of the case to accept the .45 bullet.

Note the expander plug inside this second die.

The drill here is to thread the die into the press.

The expander die body threads into the press, and the expander plug threads into the die.  The trick is to put a resized and deprimed .45 case into the shellholder, lift the press ram all the way up, and adjust both the die and the plug so that the case mouth is very slightly flared.  You’ll have to lower and raise the press ram several times, tweaking the die and expander plug position each time, to get the proper amount of flare.

You’ll need to grab a bullet to assess this adjustment for the amount of case mouth flare.  Once the die is adjusted so that the bullet just enters the flared case mouth, lock the die and the expander plug into position with the locknuts shown in the photo above.

Here’s a .45 bullet on top of a case that has not yet been expanded and flared.  Note that it will not enter the case.

This next photo shows a .45 ACP case that has been expanded and flared.

Note the very slight flare on the case mouth.

As you can see in the photo below, the slight case mouth flare now allows the bullet to start into the case.

A properly-flared case mouth. The trick here is not to overdo the flaring operation. You want to open the case mouth just enough to allow the bullet to start entering the case. The idea is to prevent the case mouth from shaving bullet material in the reloading step that pushes the bullet into the case.

Once the flare is acceptable, we lock both die locknuts and run all of our cases through the press.  This concept of doing one step on all of the cases  at the same time is an important part of the reloading process.  We want to do each step on all of the cases in one run to assure consistency from case to case.  It’s this consistency that leads to enhanced accuracy.

Once all of our cases have been through the above operation, we can now move on to priming, and at this point, it’s time to introduce another optional equipment item.  Most reloading presses come with a priming arm, which is a feature that allows inserting a new primer on the press downstroke.   I don’t use this feature any more, as it never performed consistently enough for me.  Instead, I purchased a separate priming tool made by Lee.  It’s what you see in the photo below.

The Lee priming tool.  This is an older one.  The newer design looks a little different; we’ll see it when we do our series on reloading .300 Weatherby rifle ammunition.  The operating principal is the same.

And we’ll need primers.  There are two or three primer sources. I use whatever I have available, and for now, that’s Winchester.  CCI and Remington also offer primers, and maybe a few other companies.  I buy whatever the store has available.  I’ve not found that primer brand makes any difference in accuracy.

A case of Winchester large pistol primers.

The box you see above holds 1,000 primers.  There are 10 trays of 100 primers each…

A tray of 100 primers. The priming tool cover has been removed in this photo.

The next step is to add primers to the primer tool.  We have to remove the priming tool cover (you do so by rotating it a few degrees), and then adding the primers to the priming tool…

100 primers in the Lee priming tool.

When you drop the primers into the reloading tool, take care not to spill any outside the tray.  They’ll be facing up, down, and some will be on their sides, as you see in the photo above.   See those little concentric striations in the priming tray?  They serve a purpose.  The trick here is to jiggle the priming tool slightly from left to right, and it will make all of the primers orient in the face up position, like you see below.  Don’t shake the priming tool too hard, or primers will go flying out.  Jiggle it just enough to get them all facing up.

100 primers, face up.  Note that there’s also a shell holder in the priming tool.  Different shell holders are required for different cartridge calibers.  When you buy the Lee tool, it comes with a collection of shell holders that covers most cartridges.

Once all of the primers are face up, reinstall the priming tool tray cover.

The priming tool cover, back in place over the primer tray.

At this point, jiggle the priming tool again to feed a primer into position.

A primer, ready to be pressed into the empty case.  Note the No. 2 shell holder.  It’s the one used for the .45 ACP cartridge.   This shell holder also works for the .30 06, .308, 7.65 Belgian Mauser, 7×57, and several other cases that share a common base.

We can now insert a .45 ACP case into the shell holder, squeeze the priming tool handle, and a primer will be seated into the case.

A .45 ACP case in the Lee priming tool.
Squeezing the priming tool lever to seat the primer.
A new primer, seated in the .45 ACP case.

And there you have it.   We’re going to repeat this operation to prime all 150 cases.  That, my friends, is enough for today.

We’ll complete the reloading process in our next and final .45 ACP reloading blog.

Me?  I’m headed out to the range this morning, where I’ll be firing reloaded .45 ACP ammo prepared just like I described here.  I’ll grab a photo or two show you, too.

Stay tuned!


Want to read more about reloading and our other cool gun stories?  It’s all right here on our Tales of the Gun page!

German Military and Police Motors: Part I

As you know, I wrote The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles a few years ago.  One of the things I found interesting was how these motorcycles categorized along national lines.   Three nations stood out: The United States, Japan, and Germany.   This blog (one of two or three) focuses exclusively on the German bikes and their derivatives.

Here’s a World War II German 350 DKW motorcycle. The Wehrmacht used these two-stroke 350 cc motorcycles for dispatch duty. I grabbed this photo at the World War II Museum in New Orleans.

One of the more interesting military motorcycle applications occurred in the German Wehrmacht during World War II. In most other military motorcycle applications, the motorcycle has been used primarily as an escort or messenger vehicle. The Germans actually used motorcycles as infantry weapons. Each motorcycle in a German motorcycle battalion (that’s right, the Germans organized motorcycle units up to the battalion level!) carried three soldiers: A driver, a rifleman on the back seat, and a machine gunner in the sidecar. The Germans used these motorcycle units when they invaded Russia. By the time the Russian winter rolled around, they figured out this was not such a bright idea.

This is a BMW with a sidecar.  This picture came from HP-Hommes in Germany.

A World War II Wehrmacht Motorcycle.

The Russians, realizing a war was coming in the late 1930s, purchased a handful of BMWs from a dealer in Sweden and secretly reverse-engineered the German machines in Moscow. The Russians actually fielded a copy of the BMW military motorcycle during World War II, so troops in Russia on both sides of the front lines were fighting atop essentially the same motorcycle.

After the war, the Russians continued to build these machines. The Russians shifted production to the Ural mountains, and the Russian BMW copies became known as Urals.  The Russians continued to improve the machines, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the motorcycles were offered for sale to the public. Prior to that time, Russia sold Urals to eastern European and other third world communist nations.

You can buy these machines today in the United States, without the machine gun, and own a brand new World War II-era motorcycle. The Russians also make a civilian version. The civilian versions are available with whitewall tires and with or without the sidecar.

This picture came from the Ural brochure.

In the past, Ural has not been hesitant in showing their motorcycles in extreme applications. This is another photo from the Ural brochure. Ural has also showed motorcycles with rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and the 7.62mm PK machine gun.

Just the thing for LA traffic!

I grabbed the next shot on a trip to China in 2001. Note the OHV BMW-clone engine.  In 2001, China had several companies making clones of the older BMW-boxer engine bikes, including some with early-1930s-design flathead engines!

A LongTech-mounted police officer in rural China.

I travel to China on business regularly, and I noticed that you don’t see the Chinese BMW clones any more.  The companies that manufactured them stopped offering them many years ago or went out of business, but I thought I would still some Chinese boxers plying the streets and alleys Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other spots.  Nope.  They’re gone.

In China, you can’t register a motor vehicle more than 10 years old, and if you have one and don’t turn it in to the government for destruction, they will come and take it from you.  There are, I suppose, advantages and disadvantages to this approach.  The disadvantage, obviously, is that there are no classic vehicle collectors or collections in China.  The advantages are that it gets vehicles that don’t have the latest emissions control equipment off the street, and it stimulates the economy.

How about the country where the boxers originated?  BMW is still going strong, and BMW police bikes (in many variants) are in service in both Germany and other parts of the world.   The photos that follow show both vintage and current (in 2001) Beemers.

Back in the early 2000s, German police BMWs were green and white (they may still be; I haven’t been to Germany in a while).  The BMW factory provides the bikes in a range of standard colors, and for an additional $400 per motorcycle (early 2000 pricing) they will paint the motorcycle any color already in the BMW system (for either their cars or motorcycles). Based on the research I did for Military and Police Motorcycles, I believed the then-current BMW R1100 RT-P to be the most advanced police motorcycle in the world.  It had a range of officer comfort features, a torquey 1100 cc twin cylinder engine, and unlike all other manufacturers’ police motorcycles, an antiskid braking system. Every motor officer I interviewed for Military and Police Motorcycles spoke highly of this machine.

This is the BMW R1100 RT-P, on duty at night somewhere in Germany.  Photograph courtesy of Willi Nagel at BMW in Germany.
The photo above shows the BMW R1100 RT-P, but this time in the CHP colors. I photographed this motorcycle with a film Nikon N70 and the 24-120 Nikon lens while visiting CHP headquarters in Sacramento, California.
A couple of CHP officers checking out the classic bikes at the 2004 Hansen Dam Norton Rally. Note that the lead bike has LED strobe lights, while the trail bike is equipped with conventional police lighting. These are BMW R1150RT-P motorcycles.

In the early 2000s, the BMW R1100 RT-P, in black and white, was used by the California Highway Patrol and many other U.S. police departments. If Harley-Davidson wasn’t nervous, they should have been. The BMW was a wonderful police motorcycle.   BMW later upgraded this motorcycle to the R1150RT-P (with the 1150cc engine), and then the R1200RT-P (with the 1200cc hex head engine).

Here are more early BMW police motor photos…

It’s not too hard to guess who these French motor officers are escorting.

The photograph above, which came from BMW in Germany, shows the Pope in France a few years ago, accompanied by a group of earlier BMW police twins. BMW has been the dominant police motorcycle in Europe and many other parts of the world.

My friend Ben sent this next photo to me from Paris, France. This is a vintage photo showing the Gendarmerie from the presidential escort group.

Wow.

This is Ben’s personal bike, a former French police BMW. It’s a 1977 R60/7, in a configuration never made available to civilians.

Good buddy Ben’s personal motorcycle. The French police ordered these with a 600cc engine, the RS fairing, spoked wheels, and leather saddlebags. These were the first bikes the French police ordered in blue; before that they were all black. This is pretty cool stuff.

And folks, that’s a wrap for today.  Watch for more in another day or two.   This blog is already getting long, and we have enough vintage BMW police motors stuff for another blog or two.


Don’t forget to visit our Police Motors page and check out our other police motorcycle posts!

Dream Bike: Norton Commando

I was going to do a Dream Bike bit about the Norton Commando, and then I realized that not only had I sort of done that in an earlier CSC blog, but I actually rode a vintage Norton for that piece.  Without further ado, here you go…


Walt Berkuta on his Knucklehead.

For me, it started when I was 12 years old in the 7th grade, and it started with British bikes. Triumphs, to be specific. Oh, I’d seen other motorcycles before that, and my good buddy Pauly’s father Walt had owned a Knucklehead after the war. But everything changed when the motorcycle bug bit.  It bit hard, and it did so when I was 12 years old. I remember it like it happened last week.

I grew up in a town small enough that our junior high school and high school were all in the same building. It was 7th through 12th grade, which meant that some of the Juniors and Seniors had cars, and one guy had a motorcycle. That one guy was Walt Skok, and the motorcycle was a ‘64 Triumph Tiger (in those days the Tiger was a 500cc single-carbed twin). It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, with big downswept chrome exhaust headers, a cool tank with a dynamite chrome rack, chrome wire wheels, and the most perfect look I had ever seen on anything. I spent every spare moment I had sneaking out into the parking lot to stare at it. Some things in the world are perfect, a precise blend of style and function (things like Weatherby rifles, 1911 handguns, C4 Corvettes, Nikon DSLRs, and 1960s Triumph motorcycles).

A ’64 Triumph Tiger, just like the one Walt Skok owned.

Back to the Triumph: One day Walt started it (I had been drooling over it for a month before I ever heard it run), and its perfection, to me, was complete. In those days, a 500cc motorcycle was enormous. When Walt fired it up, it was unlike anything I had ever heard. It wasn’t lumpy and dumpy like a Harley, it wasn’t a whiny whinny like a Honda, and it wasn’t a tinny “wing-ding-ding-ding-ding” like a Suzuki or a Yamaha (they were all two-strokes back then). Nope, the Triumph was perfect. It was deep. It was visceral. It was tough. The front wheel and forks literally throbbed back and forth with each engine piston stroke. To my 12-year-old eyes and ears it was the absolute essence of a gotta-get-me-one-of-these. It looked and sounded like a machine with a heart and a soul. I knew that someday I would own a machine like this.

Fast forward a few years, and I was old enough own and ride my own Triumphs. I’ve had a bunch of mid-‘60s and ‘70s Triumphs…Bonnevilles, Tigers, and a Daytona (which was a 500cc twin-carbed twin back then, a bike known as the Baby Bonneville). I was a young guy and those British motorcycles were (here’s that word again) perfect. They were fast, they handled well, and they sounded the way God intended a motorcycle to sound. I had a candy-red-and-gold ’78 750 Bonneville (Triumph always had the coolest colors) that would hit an indicated 109 mph on Loop 820 around Fort Worth, and I did that regularly on those hot and humid Texas nights. Life was good.

Fast forward another 50 years (and another 40 or 50 motorcycles for me). We saw the death of the British motorcycle empire, the rise and fall and rise and impending fall of Harley-Davidson, this new thing called globalization, digital engine management systems, multi-cylinder ridiculously-porky motorcycles, and, well, me writing a blog extolling the virtues of whatever.

So here we are, today.

My good buddy Jerry, the CSC service manager at the time, owned this ultra-cool Norton Commando.  And good buddy Steve, the CSC CEO, bought the bike and put it on display in the CSC showroom. We had a lot of cool bikes on display there, including vintage Mustangs, Harleys, Beemers, RX3s, RC3s, and TT250s, and more. But my eye kept returning to that Norton. I’d never ridden a Norton, but I’d heard the stories when I was younger.

A selfie, sort of. A stunning motorcycle.

Back in the day (I’m jumping back to the ‘60s and ‘70s again) guys who wanted to be cool rode Triumphs. I know because I was one of them. We knew about Nortons, but we didn’t see them very often. They had bigger engines and they were more expensive than Triumphs, and their handling was reported to be far superior to anything on two wheels. Harleys had bigger engines and cost more than Triumphs, too, but they were porkers.  Nortons were faster than Triumphs (and Triumphs were plenty fast).

But guys who rode Triumphs really wanted to ride Nortons. Nortons were mythical bikes. Their handling and acceleration were legendary. In the ‘60s, the hardest accelerating bike on the planet was the Norton Scrambler. Norton stuffed a 750cc engine into a 500cc frame to create that model, like Carroll Shelby did with the AC Cobra. I remember guys talking about Norton Scramblers in hushed and reverential tones back in the LBJ years. You spoke about reverential things softly back then.

Fast forward again, and there I was, with Steve’s 1973 Norton Commando right in front of me (just a few feet away from where I wrote the CSC blog). Steve’s Norton is magnificent. It’s not been restored and it wears its patina proudly.

“Steve,” I said, “you need to let me ride that Norton.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll have Gerry get it ready for you.”

Wow, I thought. I’m going to ride a Norton. I felt like the little dog who finally caught the bus. I had a mouthful of bus. What do you do when that happens?

I sat on the Norton that afternoon. It felt big. The pegs were set far to the rear and my hips hurt immediately from the bike’s racing ergos (and maybe a little from the femur and spine fractures I suffered in a motorcycle accident a few years before that; I don’t bend as easily as I used to). Maybe I shouldn’t have asked to ride this beautiful beast. Maybe my mouth had written a check my body couldn’t cash.

But I was committed. The Norton went back to Gerry so he could get it ready for me to ride. There could be no backing out now.  I was nervous, I was excited, and I was a little giddy. The only bikes I had ridden for the last 7 or 8 years were 150cc Mustangs and the 250cc Zongs. Lightweight bikes. Singles. Under 25 horsepower. Electric starters and all the amenities. Modern stuff.  I thought about riding the 850 Norton. It dawned on me that I had not even heard it run yet. I realized I liked electric starters. I hadn’t kick started a bike in probably 35 years. The Norton is an 850, and it was kick start only. No electric starter. Hmmm.

When I arrived at the plant, Steve pushed the Norton outside for me. We both tried to figure out where the ignition key went (it’s on the left side of the bike). We tried to guess at the ignition key’s run spot (it has four or five positions). We picked the second one and I tried kicking the engine. It was a complicated affair. You had to fold the right footpeg in, and when you kick the starter, you had to try to not hit the gear shift lever on the right side of the bike. We kicked it a couple of times. Hmmm again. Lots of compression. Then Steve had to run back into the plant to take a phone call. I tried kick starting the Norton a couple of times again.   Not even a cough from the engine.

I played with the key and clicked it over one more notch. Another kick, and the mighty 850 fired right up. Ah, success!

The Norton settled into an easy idle.  It was wonderful. It sounded just like Walt Skok’s Triumph. I was in the 7th grade again. I looked around to see if Steve had seen me start it, but no one was there. It was just me and the Norton. Okay, I thought, I’ll just ride around in the parking lot to get the feel of the clutch, the throttle, and the brakes.

Whoa, I thought, as I let the clutch out gingerly. That puppy had power! The Norton was turning over lazily and it felt incredibly powerful as I eased the clutch out. I tried the rear brake and there was nothing (oh, that’s right, the rear brake is on the other side). I tried the front brake, and it was strong. Norton had already gone to disk brakes by 1973, and the disk on Steve’s Commando was just as good as a modern bike’s brakes are today.

I rode the Norton into the shop so Gerry could fill the fuel tank for me. The Norton has a sidestand and a centerstand, but you can’t get to either one while you are on the bike. You have to hold the bike up, dismount on the left, and then put it on the centerstand. The side stand was under there somewhere, but I didn’t want to mess around trying to catch it with my boot. It was plenty scary just getting off the Norton and holding it upright. It was more than a little scary, actually. I’m riding my boss’s vintage bike, it’s bigger than anything I’ve been on in years, and I don’t want to drop it.

Gerry gave me “the talk” about kick starting the Norton. “I don’t like to do it while I’m on the bike,” he said. “If it kicks back, it will drive your knee right into the handlebars and that hurts. I always do it standing on the right side of the bike.”

Hmmmm. As if I wasn’t nervous enough already.

I tried the kickstarter two or three times (with everybody in the service area watching me) and I couldn’t start the thing, even though I had started it outside (when no one was around to witness my success). Gerry kicked the Norton once for me (after my repeated feeble attempts) and it started immediately. Okay. I got it. You have to show it who’s boss.

I strapped my camera case to the Norton’s back seat (or pillion, as they used to say in Wolverhampton), and then I had a hard time getting back on the bike. I couldn’t swing my leg over the camera bag. Yeah, I was nervous. And everybody in the shop was still watching me.

With the Norton twerking to its British twin tango, I managed to turn it around and get out onto Route 66. A quick U-turn (all the while concentrating intensely so I would remember “shift on the right, brake on the left”) and I rode through the mean streets of north Azusa toward the San Gabriels. In just a few minutes, I was on Highway 39, about to experience riding Nirvana.

This is what a motorcycle instrument cluster should be. The Enfield Interceptor Gresh and I tested in Baja was very similar.

Wow, this is sweet, I thought as I climbed into the San Gabriels. I had no idea what gear I was in, but gear selection is a somewhat abstract concept on a Norton.  Which gear didn’t seem to make any difference.  The Commando had power and torque that just wouldn’t quit.  More throttle, go faster, shifting optional. It didn’t matter what gear I was in (which was good, because all I knew was that I was somewhere north of 1st).

A photo stop along the East Fork Road. That’s East Fork, as in the East Fork of the San Gabriel River.

I looked down at the tach. It had a 7000-rpm redline and I was bouncing around somewhere in the 2500 zip code. And when I say bouncing around, I mean that literally. The tach needle oscillated ±800 rpm at anything below 3000 rpm (it settled down above 3000 rpm, a neighborhood I would visit only once that day). The Norton’s low end torque was incredible. I realized I didn’t even know how many gears the bike had, so I slowed, rowed through the gears and counted (the number was four).

A shot from the rear. I was shooting with a Nikon D3300 DSLR (an entry-level digital camera) and the Nikon 16-35 lens.

The Norton was amazing in every regard. The sound was soothing, symphonic, and sensuous (how’s that for alliteration?). It’s what God intended motorcycles to be. Highway 39 is gloriously twisty and the big Norton (which suddenly didn’t feel so big) gobbled it up. The Norton never felt cumbersome or heavy (it’s only about 20 lbs heavier than my 250cc RX3). It was extremely powerful. I was carving through the corners moderately aggressively at very tiny throttle openings. Just a little touch of my right hand and it felt like I was a cannon-launched kinetic energy weapon. Full disclosure: I’ve never been launched from a cannon, but I’m pretty sure what I experienced that day on the Norton is what it would feel like. Everything about the Norton felt (and here’s that word again) perfect.
I was having so much fun that I missed the spot where I normally would stop for the CSC glamour shots. There’s a particular place on Highway 39 where I could position a bike and get some curves in the photo (and it looked great in the CSC ads).  But I sailed right past it. I was enjoying the ride.

When I realized I missed the spot where I wanted to stop for photos, it made me think about my camera.  I reached behind to make sure it was still on the seat behind me, but my camera wasn’t there! Oh, no, I thought, I lost my camera, and God only knows where it might have fallen off. I looked down, and the camera was hanging off the left side of the bike, captured in the bungee net. Wow, I dodged a bullet there.

The view from above. It was a glorious day.

I pulled off and then I realized: I don’t want to kill the engine because then I’ll have to start it, and if I can’t, I’m going to feel mighty stupid calling Gerry to come rescue me.

Okay, I thought, here’s the drill.   Pull off to the side of the road, find a flat spot, keep the engine running, put all my weight on my bad left leg, swing my right leg over the seat, hold the Norton upright, get the bike on the centerstand, unhook the bungee net, sling the camera case over my shoulder, get back on the bike, and all the while, keep the engine running.  Oh, yeah.  No problem.

This is what a motorcycle should look like. Why can’t other manufacturers do this? Oh, wait, Enfield did…

Actually, though, it wasn’t that bad. And I was having a lot of fun.

I arrived at the East Fork bridge sooner than I thought I would (time does indeed fly when you’re having fun). I made the right turn. I would have done the complete Glendora Ridge Road loop, but the CalTrans sign told me that Glendora Ridge Road was closed. I looked for a spot to stop and grab a few photos of this magnificent beast.

That’s when I noticed that the left footpeg rubber had fallen off the bike. It’s the rubber piece that fits over the foot peg. Oh, no, I thought once again. I didn’t want to lose pieces of Steve’s bike, although I knew no ride on any vintage British vertical twin would be complete without something falling off.   I made a U-turn and rode back and forth several times along a half-mile stretch where I thought I lost the rubber footpeg cover, but I couldn’t find it. When I pulled off to turn around yet again, I stalled the bike.

Hmmm. No doubt about it now. I knew I was going to have to start the Norton on my own.

We (me and my good buddy Norton, that is) had picked a good spot to stop. I dismounted using the procedure described earlier, I pulled the black beauty onto its centerstand, and I grabbed several photos. I could tell they were going to be good. Sometimes you just know when you’re behind the camera that things are going well. And on the plus side of the ledger, all of the U-turns I had just made (along with the magnificent canyon carving on Highway 39) had built up my confidence enormously. The Norton was going to start for me because I would will it to.

And you know what? That’s exactly what happened. One kick and all was well with the world. I felt like Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, and Peter Fonda, all rolled up into one 66-year-old teenager.  At that moment I was a 12-year-old kid staring at Walt Skok’s Triumph again. Yeah, I’m bad. A Norton will do that to you. I stared at the bike as it idled. It was a living, breathing, snorting, shaking, powerful thing. Seeing it alive like that was perfect. I suddenly remembered my Nikon camera had video. Check this out…

So there you have it. A dream bike, but this time the dream was real.  Good times, that day was.


If you like reading about vintage iron, check out our Dream Bikes page!

Bill Murar appointed to Board of Directors, Antique Motorcycle Foundation

A Bill Murar self-portrait at 60mph while riding the Lake Erie Loop.

In the early days at CSC, when we were casting about for ways to the publicize the new CSC Mustang replicas, we heard from a guy named Bill Murar.  Bill is a retired firefighter, vintage Allstate motorcycle expert, and motorcycle endurance rider, and he wrote to ask if he could ride one of the 150cc Mustangs in the Lake Erie Loop.   That’s a 650-mile endurance run around the periphery of Lake Erie for small bikes and scooters.  It was a godsend for us, and it was one of the things that helped put CSC on the map.

Bill Murar, at speed, on a CSC 150 riding the Lake Erie Loop.

Bill and I became good friends, and we’ve stayed in touch over the last decade.  I was pleased to get this news from Bill yesterday…


Joe,

I’m pleased to let you know I’ve been named to the Board of Directors of the Antique Motorcycle Foundation. Starting a new page in the Murar chronicles.  Yikes, responsibilities!  If you go to their website there’s a photo of all the members of the board along with a short bio.

I helped the VP of the AMF restore his Allstate 175, mostly with hints over the phone, me sharing my personal parts source people, as well as my own stock of Allstate stuff. That and 50+ years of Sears Allstate buying and selling and collecting helped as well. He also used his own unique collection of painters, re-chromers, cable makers, foreign parts suppliers, etc., and he finally had a product good enough to grace the cover of this Spring’s edition of the Vintage Motorbike Newsletter.

With everything I had going for me with my Allstate knowlegde, coupled with almost 15 years as the north Central WERA-Vintage regional race director, and overall general knowledge of small displacement bikes, he thought I might be a good fit to fill one of the Board of Director openings.

So, I was interviewed via a phone conference call and ended up getting voted in by the Board. We’ll have out first meet and greet with the entire board at the Wauseon, Ohio meeting of the Antique Motorcycle Association on July 19th.

My new life chapter begins.

As a side note, I rode to AMF VP Roger Smith’s home north of Pontiac, Michigan where we finally met face-to-face (everything up til then was all via email, texts and old fashioned phone calls) last Thursday. He was kind enough to arrange a tour of the studio of Biker Build Off legend, Ron Finch. What a treat that was! Ron is an unbelieveable visionary with his projects. Do yourself a favor and Google his place, I’m not sure of the name of his shop, I simply entered “Ron Finch Studio Michigan.”

Bill


Bill, congratulations to you!  Thanks very much for letting us know about your new spot and sharing it with us here on the ExhaustNotes blog.  Ride safe, my friend, and best of luck to you in your new assignment.

Home Page Updates, and more…

We updated the ExNotes home page to make it easier to find our blogs on Baja, Epic Rides, Berk’s magazine articles, Gresh’s magazine articles, our YouTube videos, the new CSC RX4, motorcycle resurrections, Dream Bikes, Tales of the Gun, electric motorcycles, police motorcycles, and how to advertise on the ExNotes site.   Here are the home page links and the stories behind the photos…

This is the first image on the ExhaustNotes home page, and it provides a link to the ExNotes blog. This is the Gobi Desert in northwestern China, and that’s the real deal…a camel caravan. Gresh and I rode there on our motorcycles.
The link to articles by Joe Gresh previously published in a variety of magazines. There’s good reading here! The photo? That’s Gresh entering the Gobi Desert on a Zongshen RX3.
This is at the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing, and it’s your link to magazine articles by Berk.
Want to know what the ExNotes site is all about? You can get the story here. That photo? Hey, Gresh and I like gladiator movies. We were actors in one filmed in central China, near the city of Liqian.
Trust me on this: You need to advertise on ExhaustNotes.us. Here’s the link to get that process started. This photo was up on the Tibetan Plateau, with the city of Aba in the background.
The best riding on the planet, and it starts just across the border! Click this link to get our stories, our guidance, our suggested itineraries, and more on this magical place.  I took this photo while riding my CSC Mustang through Baja’s Catavina boulder fields.
Yep, we’re a motorcycle site, but this is one of the busiest places in all of the ExhaustNotes empire. Click this link for our Tales of the Gun stories.  That’s me firing the mighty M1 Garand.  My daughter shot the above photo on her iPhone, capturing the cartridge case in midair!
The only thing better than our Epic Motorcycle Rides page is actually getting out and creating the adventure yourself! Enjoy our tales of the adventure riding trails here!  Oh, and that photo?  It’s Gresh on an Enfield in Mexico!
Gresh doesn’t do 100-point restorations. Nope, his deal is rustorations, not restorations. A bike is only original once. The photo is Gobi Gresh’s mighty Z1 Kawasaki at the Tinfiny Ranch. It runs now, and you can read about how Joe brought it back to life here.
The stuff of dreams, the ones that got away, and more. You can peek into our dreams here. That’s my old 1200 Triumph Daytona after a 120-mph sprint across Highway 58 in California.
Who you calling Tubby? Here’s a cool collection of our videos. The photo was taken in Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. Gresh and others are grabbing videos during a changing of the guard ceremony.
Motors, the best job on the force. I believe it, and you should, too. We’ve recently added a page indexing our police motorcycle stuff, and you can get to it here. The photo is good buddy Jim Watson on a Honda ST1300P police motorcycle.
The RX3 is a great bike, but folks wanted more displacement. Zongshen responded with the RX4, and upsized version of their iconic RX3, and CSC is taking orders now. You can read all about the RX4 and how it compares to the RX3 and the KLR 650 here. We rode the one above in the San Gabriel Mountains, which is where we shot this photo.
It’s a new world out there, folks, and electric motorcycles are part of it. You can catch up on what’s happening here. That’s a CSC City Slicker, a phenomenal buy at just $2495!
Writers write. Hey, it’s what we do. With something north of 20 titles under our belt, yeah, we’re gonna brag a bit. Read all about it here, and get links to buy our books on this page!
Want the e-ticket ride back to the ExhaustNotes home page? It’s right here. And that photo? It’s the Bridge of the Gods, spanning the mighty Columbia River from Washington to Oregon. When I’m there, it feels like it’s a place where I belong. What could possibly be a more fitting home page link?

There you have it, my friends.   You’ll see all of the above when you open our home page, and it’s your nav system to the rest of the site.


Hey, there’s more good stuff coming your way.  We do our best to blog every day, and we’ve got great stories lined up for you:

Good buddy Steve’s Norton Commando
More vintage police motors
The continuation of our .45 ACP ammo series
The Indiana Jones aspects of riding in China

And much, much more.   Don’t miss any of it…sign up for our automatic email updates (add your name to our email list), and you’ll stay up to date!