Back In The Day – Page 13 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Wayback Machine: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto…

By Joe Berk

This Wayback Machine post goes back to a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles in December 2014. The nine years between then and now has been quite a blur. A bit of background…CSC was transitioning from production of its Mustang replica bikes to importing the about-to-be-released Zongshen RX3. Susie and I went to Chongqing to help finalize the deal, and this was a blog I wrote while I was in that city.

I guess I’ll start by telling you that riding my CSC-150 Baja Blaster, Steve Seidner’s resurrection of the venerable vintage Mustang, has been good practice for me and this visit to Chongqing. When you ride a CSC motorcycle, you collect stares wherever you go (we call it the rock star syndrome, and we even had a CSC custom in the early days we named the Rock Star). The photo at the top of this blog is Steve’s personal CSC-150, the Sarge, and it draws stares wherever it goes. That’s sure been the situation with Susie and me here in Chongqing. Susie and I are the only non-Chinese folks everywhere we’ve been, starting with our getting on the airplane in Beijing, and people are naturally curious. It’s like riding the CSC…we’re drawing the stares. Like the title of this blog says, we’re well off the tourist trail on this trip.

The view from our 21st floor hotel room…it stays misty in this mystical city!

After a great breakfast this morning (see the blog below), we asked about the things to see and do in Chongqing, and our sights this morning settled firmly on a cable car ride across the Yangtze River. We started by grabbing a cab…

I hope this guy knows where we want to go, I thought to myself as we got in his cab…

It’s strange…the cabbie spoke no English, so the guy at the hotel had to explain what we wanted. Then he gave us a card so that when wanted to return, we could show it to the next cab driver. Another sign of not being in Kansas anymore.

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It’s a bit on the cold side over here, but riders ride and the Chinese are no exception to that rule. These folks use their motorcycles as transportation, as trucks, as cabs, and more.

This guy would make a good KLR rider…looks like this bike gets washed about as often as my KLR!

If you take a close look at the photo above, you’ll notice something that’s pretty common here in Chongqing…a set of handwarmers. These are no-fooling-around, guaranteed-to-keep-your-paws-toasty, sure-fire handwarmers, folks! They go way beyond the heated grips that BMW brags about (and that we’ll be offering as options on the Cyclone, by the way). I’ll show you a few more motorcycle photos; be sure to check out the handwarmers on many of these bikes.

Here’s another shot…a Chinese scooter equipped with what has to be the ultimate luggage rack…

The Yangtze River cable car ride was awesome. It’s about 4,000 feet across the river, and we were packed into that little box like sardines. Going up to the cable car in the elevator gave a hint of what was to come…we were squeezed in with folks I’ve never met before, and I was already more intimate with them than I had been on most of my high school dates. I guess that’s just a natural consequence of being in a city with 34 million inhabitants.

A scene vaguely reminiscent of a James Bond movie…that’s downtown Chongqing in the mist

In the photo above, just to the right of us is where the Yangtze and the Jialing rivers meet. It’s the downtown area that you’ll see in the following photos. 34 million people live here. I’m pretty sure we met about half of them this morning.

First, a photo of a Chinese postal service motorcycle. They paint their postal service vehicles green. Zongshen is a big supplier of motorcycles to the Chinese postal service. Check out the handwarmers on this rig!

A postal service motorcycle in downtown Chongqing…check out the handwarmers and the parcels

Here’s another bike we spotted while walking downtown.

Live to ride…ride to live…and loud pipes save lives.

There were a lot of people out and about. There were so many people on the sidewalks we were starting to get a little claustrophobic. It’s way worse than New York City. You won’t get a sense of that in the photos that follow, mostly because I waited until there were brief instances when the crowds parted to give me a less-obstructed photo.

Fresh fruit delivered the old-fashioned way.

I grabbed a few more scenes on our walk downtown.

This fellow was making and selling necklace pendants from animal teeth…those are skulls on the ground in front.

Here’s a cool shot of a youngster who wasn’t too sure about this old guy in an Indiana Jones hat taking his photograph…they don’t see too many people like Susie and me in this neighborhood.

And of course, the food vendors. We did a lot of walking and bumping into people (literally; the sidewalks were jam packed…it was wall-to-wall humanity). It made me a little hungry. Check out the food photos.

Chongqing used to be known in the West as Chun King. The way the Chinese pronounce it, it almost sounds like Chun King. When I was a kid, my Mom used to buy Chinese noodles and the name of the company on the can was Chun King. Little did I know that it was a real place and one day more than a half century later I’d be visiting it!

People…lots of people…and motorcycles…lots of motorcycles!

Another Chinese rider in downtown Chongqing.

Just another photo or two, folks. The Chinese use these three-wheel vehicles that I guess are cars, but they are based on a tricycle design. I had not encountered this particular model before, so I grabbed a photo…

I looked inside of one of the three wheelers and it actually looked pretty nice in there. They are used as taxis. Maybe we’ll grab a ride in one before we leave Chongqing.

I told Susie that I was getting a bit tired (we’re still fighting the time change). I think I said I wanted to stop monkeying around and head back to the hotel. That’s when she pointed this scene out to me…

I think that’s probably enough for now. Tomorrow’s the first day of this visit with the good folks from Zongshen. I’ve been following all the stuff on the forums and in your emails to me, and I’ll address many of the things you’ve written about. I won’t be able to post all of it here, but keep an eye on the blog and maybe I’ll get a photo or two of the factory. I’m pumped, and I’m looking forward to our discussions tomorrow.

That was quite a visit. I’d been to Chongqing once before, but that was an in-and-out trip, and on the visit described above, Sue and I poked around the city a bit. I loved it. It was one of the most beautiful and exotic places I’d ever been. It was fun because we were in a place most Americans don’t get to visit, I made great friends in China, and it was cool being in on the ground floor of the effort to bring the RX3 to America. I know there are a lot of people out there who hate China and who think anything that comes from China is of low quality. I’m not one of those people and I make no apologies for it.

The RX3 was a watershed motorcycle. It was the only small displacement adventure touring bike in America until BMW, Kawasaki, and others tried copying the RX3. The RX3 was still the better motorcycle, and I had a lot of fun on mine.

If you’d like to know more about the RX3 and CSC Motorcycles bringing the bike to the US, pick up a copy of 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM. I’ve been told it’s a good read.

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A Cup of Joe?

By Joe Berk

So where did the phrase “a cup of Joe” originate? For the book, that’s easy. Good buddy Marcus won the naming contest a few weeks ago with his suggested A Cup O’ Joes, which was the first suggestion to arrive in our Comments section and my immediate favorite. Yeah, that’s the commercial, and yeah, if you haven’t bought a copy already, please do so. But from where did the term “a cup of Joe” actually emanate?

There’s no conclusive answer, but like many things, there are lots of opinions (making it a near perfect topic for Internet musing, I suppose). Here are a few I found.

The Navy Angle

One hypothesis holds that “a cup of Joe” is based on a US Navy booze ban. Secretary of the Navy Josephus “Joe” Daniels prohibited alcohol on ships in 1914. After that edict, the strongest thing a sailor could drink on board a US Navy vessel was coffee. Angry sailors coined “a cup of Joe” to describe their coffee as a result.

The Big Jamoke?

Language historians think “a cup of Joe” didn’t enter the English language until around 1930. Linguists think the term came from an adaptation of the invented word “jamoke,” which was a combination of java and mocha. “Jamoke” may have become “Joe.” Eh, that seems a bit farfetched to me, but the term “jamoke” sounds kind of cool to me. I like it.

An Average Joe

A third hypothesis is that the word “Joe” means something common. You know, like “the average Joe” (understandably, not one of my favorite expressions). Because coffee is such a common man’s drink (a common woman’s drink, too, based on the long line of women I always see at any Starbuck’s ordering obscene $8 coffee-based concoctions), the expression “a cup of Joe” emerged. I don’t put much stock in this one, either.

So what’s the answer?

Beats me. Maybe good buddy and coffee empresario Ren of Batdorf & Bronson Coffee can weigh in with his opinion. Or maybe one of our other readers knows. Let’s hear what you think.

My take on all the above? “A cup of Joe” just seems to fit. I am not the sharpest matzo in the box when I wake up in the morning, and I need my coffee to sharpen my thinking. “A cup of Joe” is an expression that fits perfectly for me. I’m enjoying mine now.

Oh, one more thing…don’t forget to buy your own copy of A Cup O’ Joes! And don’t forget to click on the popup ads.

The Wayback Machine: Zongshen, Chongqing, and Tempus Fugit

By Joe Berk

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe it’s been a dozen years since I first visited Zongshen for CSC Motorcycles, and when I did, the RX3 wasn’t even a thought. I went to Zongshen looking for a 250cc engine for CSC’s Mustang replica (the photo above shows CSC’s Mustang and an original 1954 Mustang Pony). CSC’s Mustang replica had a 150cc engine and some folks said they wanted a 250, so we went hunting for a 250cc engine.

The quest for a 250 took me to a little town called Chongqing (little as in population: 34,000,000). I spent a day with the Zongers and, well, you know the rest. This is the email I sent to Steve Seidner, the CSC CEO and the guy who had the foresight to dispatch me to Chongqing. I was energized after my visit that day, and I wrote the email you see below that night. It was a dozen years ago. Hard to believe.

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17 Dec 2011

Steve:

Just got back from the Zongshen meetings in Chongqing. This letter is a summary of how it went.

Our host and a driver picked us up in a Mercedes mini-van in the morning at the hotel. It was about a 1-hour drive to the Zongshen campus. Chongqing is a massive and scenic city (it just seems to go on forever). Imagine mid-town Manhattan massively larger with taller and more modern buildings, built in a lush green mountain range, and you’ll have an idea of what the city is like. We took a circular freeway at the edge of town, and the views were beyond stunning. It was an overcast day, and every time we came around a mountain we had another view of the city in the mist. It was like something in a dream. Chongqing is the Chinese name for the city. We in the US used to call it Chun King (like the noodle company). We drove for an hour on a freeway (at about 60 mph the whole time) to get to the Zongshen campus, and we were still in the city. I’ve never seen anything like it. The city is awesome. I could spend 6 months here just photographing the place.

The Zongshen facilities are huge and completely modern. The enterprise is on a landscaped campus (all fenced off from the public) in the city’s downtown area. We were ushered into their office building complex, which is about as modern and clean as anything I have ever seen. You can probably tell from this email that I was impressed.

Let me emphasize this again: The Zongshen campus is huge. My guess is that they have something in excess of 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space.

Here are some shots of some of their buildings from the outside…they have several buildings like this. These first two show one of their machining facilities.

There were several buildings like the ones above on the Zongshen campus. It was overwhelming. This is a big company. The people who work there live on the Zongshen campus (Zongshen provides apartments for these folks). They work a 5-day, 8-hour-per-day week. It looked like a pretty nice life. Zongshen employs about 2,000 people.

Here’s a shot showing a portion of the Zongshen office building. Very modern, and very nicely decorated inside.

Zongshen is the name of the man who started the business. The company is about 20 years old. Mr. Zongshen is still actively engaged running the business (notice that he is not wearing a beret). I had the Chinese characters translated and what he is saying is “I want Joe to write our blog.”

Zongshen has a few motorcycles and scooters that have received EC (European Community) certification. They do not have any motorcycles that have received US EPA or CARB certification. They do have scooters, though, approved in the US. They have two models that have EPA and CARB certification. I explained that we might be interested in these as possible powerplants for future CSC motorcycles.

I asked to see the factory, and they took us on a factory tour. In a word, their production operation is awesome. The next several photographs show the inside of their engine assembly building (they had several buildings this size; these photos show the inside of just one). It was modern, clean, and the assembly work appears to be both automated and manual (depending on the operation). Note that we were in the factory on a Saturday, so no work was occurring. I was thinking the entire time what fun it must be to run this kind of a facility. Take a look.

Zongshen has onsite die casting capabilities, so they can make covers with a CSC logo if we want them to. Having this capability onsite is a good thing; most US manufacturers subcontract their die casting work and I can tell you that in the factories I have managed, getting these parts on time in a condition where they meet the drawing requirements was always a problem in the US. Doing this work in house like Zongshen is doing is a strong plus. They have direct control over a critical part of the process.

In addition to all the motorcycle work, Zongshen makes power equipment (like Honda does). I grabbed this shot as we were driving by their power equipment factory.

Here are some photographs of engines in work. Zongshen makes something north of 4,000 engines every day.

Yep, 4,000+ engines. Every day.

The engines above are going into their automated engine test room. They had about 100 automated test stations in there.

Zongshen makes engines for their own motorcycles as well as for other manufacturers. They make parts for many other motorcycle manufacturers, including Harley. They make complete scooters for several manufacturers, including Vespa.

These are 500cc, water-cooled Zongshen ATV engines….

Zongshen can make engines in nearly any color a manufacturer wants. When we walked by this display I asked what it was, and they told me it showed the different colors they could powder coat an engine.

Quality appears to be very, very high. They have the right visual metrics in place to monitor production status and to identify quality standards. The photo below shows one set of their visual standards. These are the defects to avoid in just one area of the operation.

This idea of using visual standards is a good one. I don’t see it very often in factories in the US. It’s a sign of an advanced manufacturing operation. And here’s one set of their production status boards and assembly instructions…boards like this were everywhere.

The photo below shows their engine shipping area.

Here’s a humorous sign in the Zongshen men’s room…be happy in your work, don’t take too long, and don’t forget to flush.

As I said before, this entire operation was immaculate. Again, it’s a sign of a well-run and high quality plant.

We then briefly ducked into the machine shop. It was dark so I didn’t grab any photos. What I noticed is that they use statistical process control in manufacturing their machined parts, which is another sign of an advanced quality management approach.

I also have (but did not include here in this email) photos of their engine testing area. They test all engines (a 100% test program), and the test approach is automated. I was impressed. Zongshen’s quality will be as good or better than any engine made anywhere in the world, and we should have no reservations about using the 250cc engine in our CSC motorcycles. These guys have it wired.

My host then took us next to a factory showroom at the edge of the Zongshen campus. Here are a few photos from that area.

Check this one out…it’s a 125, and it looked to me to be a really nice bike.

Now check out the price on the above motorcycle. This is the all inclusive, “out-the-door-in-Chongqing,” includes-all-fees price.

Yep, that’s 8980 RMB (or Yuan), and that converts to (get this) a whopping $1470 US dollars. I want one.

The Chinese postal service uses Zongshen motorcycles….as do Chinese Police departments, and a lot of restaurants and other commercial interests. These green bikes are for the Chinese Post Office, and the red ones are for commercial delivery services.

Another shot from their showroom.

Zongshen also has a GP racing program, and they had their GP bikes on display with photos in the factory and the actual bikes in an office display area. Cool.

And finally one last photo, Steve, of Indiana Jones having a blast in Chongqing.

The bottom line, Boss, is that I recommend buying the 250 engine from these folks. Their factory is awesome and they know what they are doing. I write books about this stuff and I can tell you that this plant is as well managed as any I have ever seen.

I’ll be in the air headed home in a few more days. This trip has been a good one.

That’s it for now. I will send an email to the Zongshen team later today confirming what we want from them and I will keep you posted on any developments. Thank you for the opportunity to make this visit.

Joe

So there you have it. What followed was CSC becoming Zongshen’s North American importer, the RX3, the RX4, the TT 250, the San Gabriel line, the electric motorcycles, the Baja RX3 runs, the Andes Mountains adventure ride, the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride, the ride across China, the Destinations Deal ride, and more. Lots more. The first big ride with Zongshen was the Western America Adventure Ride, and in a few more days, we’ll post the story about how that came about. We were excited about hooking up with Zongshen; the Chinese were excited about riding through the American West. And ever since then, it has been one hell of a ride.

Stay tuned.

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The Wayback Machine: The Five Deadly Sins of Motorcycle Restoration

By Joe Gresh

My idea of a good restoration and your idea of a good restoration may differ, but you know deep down inside that I’m always right. I am the arbiter of cool. I am the final word, I am…Omni Joe. Here are 5 common restoration mistakes that drive me crazy.

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Sin #1: Gas tank liners.

That sealer crap people pour into their motorcycle gas tanks is the worse invention of all time. Guys swear by this junk but don’t listen to those lazy bastards. When I read the words, gas tank liner and/or Caswell sealer in a motorcycle description I know an amateur’s hands have been fiddling the motorcycle. Who would pour that devil’s goop into a nice motorcycle gas tank? It makes me wonder what else they screwed up. The way to fix a leaking, rusty gas tank is to get rid of the rust and weld/braze any holes. Any other method is destined to fail. There’s no excuse for using devil’s goop, YouTube is lousy with videos explaining how to clean out a rusty gas tank and how to stop it from re-rusting.

Sin #2: Repainting serviceable original finishes.

Nothing annoys me like a guy posting up a 90% perfect, original-paint motorcycle and asking where he can get it repainted. Stop! If the paint has a few chips or is faded a tiny bit leave the damn thing alone. One of the most underused old-sayings is, “It’s only original once.” No matter how shiny and beautiful you think your topcoat turned out its still vandalism. There are many phony re-pop’s running around, don’t make your motorcycle one. By painting over your once desirable survivor you lower its historic value. Listen, I’m not against repainting really bad original body parts, lord knows my Z1 needs it but I know anything I do that covers over the factory work erases a story, and vintage motorcycles are commodities without a story.

Sin #3: Over restoration.

When the Japanese bikes that are considered classic today were first sold they had acceptable build quality. For some strange reason many motorcycle restoration experts go way overboard making the motorcycle a show bike that bears little resemblance to real motorcycles. Chrome back in the day was thin and yours should be too. Nothing depresses me as much as these tarted-up travesties. The nerve of some Johnny-Come-Lately with a fat wallet and no soul thinking he can render a better motorcycle than the factory. Keep it simple and try to match the level of finish that you remember. Otherwise, what’s the point? It’s already worth less because you damaged the original build by trying to improve the bike. Why pour money into the thing making it something it never was?

Sin #4: Giving a damn about numbers.

As people get deeper into the vintage bike hobby they grow ever more insane. It’s not enough to have the correct parts anymore: Now you must have the exact build date on the part to suit your motorcycle’s VIN number. This is madness. Nobody except lunatics and bike show judges will care that your sprocket cover was made a year or two after your bike left the factory. The only part number that matters is the one that can get your bike registered for the road. I’ve seen people on vintage groups debating a slight casting change or a vestigial nub as if it were the most important thing in the world. People like that have no business owning a motorcycle; they should go into accounting or better yet, prison.

Sin #5: Parking it.

The final and biggest sin of all is to restore a motorcycle and then park it. I can over look all the other sins, even tank sealer, if the owner rides his vintage motorcycle. Get the thing muddy. Do a burn out. Ride it to shows in the rain. Honor the motorcycle by using it. A show motorcycle that is too valuable or too clean to ride is nothing, less than worthless. The machine was built for you. It has a seat and controls for you. The engine wants to pull. Do the right thing by your motorcycle and your sins will be washed away, my brothers.

Keep up with the Zed resurrection!!

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ExNotes Movie Review: The Highwaymen

The Highwaymen, starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, is not a new movie and maybe you’ve seen it already. But if you haven’t, it’s worth watching. In my case, it was worth watching again. I’d seen it twice already when it popped up on the Netflix menu last night, and I watched it a third time. It was great. There have been a few movies and a lot written about Bonnie and Clyde; in my opinion, this movie stands way above the other stories.

The real Frank Hamer was a hell of a man (as was Maney Gault), although one of the earlier Bonnie and Clyde movies portrayed him as a bumbler and a buffoon. His widow sued Warner Brothers over that and the studio settled out of court. This movie sets that record straight.

Maney Gault (left) and Frank Hamer (right).

The story is about two Texas Rangers (Frank Hamer and Maney Gault) coming out of retirement to track down and kill Bonnie and Clyde. I don’t know how close it adheres to what actually happened, but that doesn’t matter (at least to me). From what I’ve previously known and the research I did online, I think The Highwaymen stays pretty close to the truth. It’s a hell of a story and it’s extremely well done. It hits home for me, too. I’m an old guy and I can sympathize with the two geezers played well by Costner and Harrelson. Their aches and pains made me laugh. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a bad movie with Harrelson in it; I have seen one or two turkeys with Costner. But in this film both actors were superb (as was the writing) and I appreciated the attention to getting the firearm details right. There’s a gunstore scene that’s awesome. In one of the opening scenes, Hamer is shown to have a pet wild boar. I tried to find out if that was true and what popped up on Google was inconclusive. There are references to his having a pet javelina.

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Trust me on this: The Highwaymen is a wonderful flick. Watch it and you can thank me later.

Dream Bikes: Honda Super Hawk

By Joe Berk

That’s me, age 15, in the photo above. I’m on my Dad’s Honda Super Hawk, and no, I wasn’t getting ready to do my best impression of Rollie Free or Walt Fulton (even though I was apparently wearing the same swim trunks as ol’ Rollie). I wasn’t getting ready for a high speed run at all…it was summer, and we spent a lot of time in the water in those days. And when Dad said it was okay (and sometimes when he didn’t), I rode the Super Hawk in the fields behind our house.

We didn’t know as much about photography back in the mid-’60s. But you get the idea. That Super Hawk was a lot of fun. That’s me in the summer of 1966.

Rollie Free at Bonneville in 1948, on his way to a romping 150.313 mph land speed record. Check out the swim trunks.

Walt Fulton breaking 100 mph in 1952 at El Mirage, California, on a Mustang motorcycle.

The Honda fascination started with me as a 13-year-old kid. We weren’t motorcycle people. Yet. I was mesmerized by a ’64 Triumph 500cc Tiger a guy at school owned. That started a slew of snail mail requests to the motorcycle companies (snail mail was all we had back then, but we never felt communications deprived), and pretty soon I had a collection of moto sales literature. Dad started looking at it. Then we saw a Honda Dream at a McDonald’s (I wrote about that a few blogs back). A short while later, Dad’s trapshooting buddy Cliff Leutholt (one of those nicest people who rode a Honda) visited us on his Super Hawk. Jet black, chrome, silver paint, twin carbs, electric start, it was stunning. Cliff said it was good for 100 mph. Dad rode it (a first for my father) and he was hooked. The 1960s were good times.

Me, with Dad’s CB 160, in February 1966. No snow, but it was cold that time of year in New Jersey.

The bug bit hard. Dad started looking at the classifieds (remember those?), and in 1965, he bought the Baby Super Hawk, a scaled down, 160cc version of the 305. Dad owned that bike for only a few months, and then he traded it in on a Super Hawk. Sherm Cooper (of Cooper’s Cycle Ranch) offered Dad $450 for the 160 against the Super Hawk’s $730 (it was $50 more than Dad had paid for the 160), and just like that, we had a Super Hawk. Boy, that was a blast.

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The Honda Super Hawk emerged from a vibrant and dazzlingly successful Honda Motor Company. Honda first brought its motorcycles to the US in 1959, and, well, you know the rest. 1961 saw the creation of the 250cc Honda Hawk, which quickly evolved into the Super Hawk. The Super Hawk bumped displacement to 305cc, and its 180-degree parallel twin was good for 28 horsepower at 9200 rpm (unheard of engine speeds back in the early 1960s). The Hondas had 12-volt electrics, twin 26 mm Keihin carbs, a single overhead cam, a 4-speed transmission, and a wet sump lubrication system.

Like the Honda Dream in our recent blog, the Super Hawk had an electric starter, along with a kickstarter that oddly rotated forward (it was hard to look like Marlon Brando kick starting a Super Hawk, but I did my best). The instrumentation was a cool touch. Instead of the more conventional (i.e., British) separate cans for the tach and the speedo, both were contained in a single panel atop the headlight. The Super Hawk had a tubular steel frame and front forks, but no front frame downtube (the engine was a stressed member). The electric starter occupied the space where front downtube would be. It was a clever engineering solution and that electric starter made life easier, but the Super Hawk didn’t look as cool as the 305cc CL 77 Scrambler (more on the Scrambler in a future blog).

The Super Hawk was a runner. A road test in Cycle World magazine had the top speed at 104.6 mph and the bike ran a respectable 16.8-second quarter mile at 83 mph. Super Hawks had twin leading shoe front brakes (something special in the pre-disk-brake era). The motorcycle weighed 335 pounds. The Super Hawk could be had in the same blue, black, white, or red color choices as the Honda Dreams, but unlike the Dream, all the Super Hawks had silver frames, side covers, and fenders. I remember that nearly all Super Hawks were black; it was very unusual to see one in any other color unless you were an Elvis fan.

The Super Hawk had good starring roles, too, before product placement became the mega-industry it is today. There were pop songs about Hondas. Elvis Presley rode a red Honda Super Hawk in the 1964 movie Roustabout. And a fellow named Robert Pirsig rode across the US on one with his son and wrote a book about it (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance); that book has become something of a bible in the travelogue and motorcycle deep think genres. Pirsig’s Super Hawk currently resides in the Smithsonian.

So, back to my early days and my turning Dad into a rider: As awesome as the Super Hawk was, it didn’t last long. The progression back in those days was a small Honda, a bigger Honda, and then (before the advent of the Honda CB 750 Four), a jump to a Triumph or BSA. Dad had been bitten by the bug big time, and in 1966, he bought a new Triumph Bonneville. But that’s a story for another blog.

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More Dream Bikes!

Our previous blog on the Honda Dream is here. And here’s our blog on riding a Honda Scrambler in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens: Jerry and the Jersey Devil.

The Wayback Machine: Welcome to the Show

By Joe Gresh

I’ve been so busy with home-nesting projects my motorcycles have succumbed to time’s crumbling embrace. I parked the ZRX1100 Kawasaki after the carburetors clogged up and it began running on three cylinders. Since it has been sitting a few years naturally the brake pistons seized. Followed by fluid leaking out of the calipers. Followed by me robbing the battery to start the generator that powers the nest. In any event, it needed tires, a chain and sprockets and the throttle cable repaired. So the big green Eddie Lawson lookalike has suffered the indignity of being dragged across the countryside on a two-hundred-dollar Harbor Freight trailer.

Even worse, the mini bike my pops built for me when I was a wee lad is on the injured reserve list. Forty-eight years idle, Mini has untold issues although the Briggs and Stratton engine still turns over. I’ve lost a few critical, hand-made parts and since the Old Man has shuffled off I’ll have to re-make the stuff myself. It’s not easy handling such a precious thing. The mini is lousy with my father’s engineering and artistic skills. The welds and frame geometry are a direct, tangible link to happy times working together in the garage.

The 1965 Honda 50cc went under water in one of Florida’s many hurricanes so I took it apart and threw everything into boxes and plastic tubs. It’s been apart so long the tubs have crystalized into the finest, most fragile parts bins in existence. The slightest touch turns them to dust. Dry, chalky plastic oxide mingles with 4mm JIC screws and yellowed wings. The sheet-metal swing arm rusted completely in half so I’ll have to rig something in aluminum to secure the rear wheel to the frame and lower shock eyes. I do have a good engine for the Honda: a fire breathing 140cc Lifan clone that clears the front fender by a quarter-inch.

The newest dead-bike I own is a Husqvarna. On the last, long-ish motorcycle ride I took to Big Bend Park way down in south Texas the Husqvarna SMR510 lost its clutch release. Bit by bit, little by little the clutch action faded away until finally pulling the clutch lever had no effect on events. The headlight also broke off but on a dirt bike that’s hardly worth mentioning. We were doing some trail riding down there and the Husky did ok shifting motocross style. Starting out was the main problem as you had to push the thing, jump on, and pop it into first. The bike would either stall or roar off on a wheelie. On the ride home I would circle the backfield waiting for traffic lights to change. Sorry, everyone in El Paso.

At least the Z1 Kawasaki never ran for me. I bought it from the owner of the property we now live on. I had to get it out of there because things were disappearing and I felt someone was going to pilfer the Z before I could. The Z needs all sorts of stuff but I get the feeling this bike will be a keeper. The lines are so clean and simple compared to modern bikes. It sits damn near perfect, doesn’t feel heavy and I know from following David Howell through the Everglades, Z’s do well in the dirt.

Which leaves us with the only motorcycle I own that works: a 360cc, 1971 Yamaha RT1B. Fondly known as Godzilla to dirt riders far and wide, the old Yamaha just keeps popping along. Analog everything, smoky, noisy, sweating petroleum from every pore, this is the bike that will not die. Even with me maintaining it.

Everything around us is constantly falling apart. Even the Great Pyramid in Egypt will be a sand dune one day. I just hope that when it finally falls to the ground replacement parts will still be available on Ebay.

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Why think small?

By Joe Berk

Half a lifetime ago I was a yuppie, and the symbols of being a successful yuppie included an MBA and a Rolex. The Rolex was easy (the only requirement was having more money than brains). The MBA was more difficult. It required going back to school, which I did. Getting the MBA definitely gave me a boost. My career at the munitions company was on fast forward; at one point I was the youngest vice president in the Aerojet corporation (then I got fired, but that’s a story for another time). I loved being in the bomb business (business was booming, so to speak), and being a former Army guy, I was in my element.

That could have been me in the ’80s and ’90s. I wore a jacket and tie to work every day. I had the big glasses, too.

Anyway, while I was going to night school for the MBA, one of my classes was titled Human Behavior or something like that. The guy who taught it was a Ph.D in one of the soft sciences, and I knew pretty quickly that he leaned way left. That’s okay; in my book you can lean however you want as long as you don’t expect me to agree with you on every issue.

The first night of class the prof had everyone tell the rest of their class their name and what they did. We were all yuppies, we were all young, and we all had good jobs. It made for good entertainment, but I had a feel for how things were going from the first several yuppies who told us what they did and the prof’s reactions and questions. Yep, the guy was a definite leftie. I started to wonder what his reaction would be to me…a guy firmly entrenched in the military industrial complex working for a munitions company.

“So what do you do, Joe?” Dr. WhatsHisName asked.

“Uh, I’m an engineer,” I said, hoping he would leave it at that, but knowing he wouldn’t.

“What kind of an engineer are you, and who do you work for?”

“Uh, I’m a mechanical engineer,” I said. No sense in oversharing, I figured. Maybe he wouldn’t notice I didn’t name my company.

“Who do you work for?”

“I work for an aerospace company.”

“What company, and what do you engineer?” This guy wasn’t going to give up. I liked my job and I liked what I did, but I wasn’t about to tell Jerry Rubin here I supported the Vietnam War.

“I work for Aerojet, and we make a variety of products.” It had become a contest, and I was losing.

“What are your products?” He had me. Time to ‘fess up.

“I do cluster bombs.” There. It was out. I knew the guy was going to call whoever it is you call when you find someone violating the Geneva Convention. The good doctor stared at me for several seconds. The other 30 or so yuppies in the class were dead silent. It was a pregnant pause if ever there was one and we were pretty close to the 9-month mark. Somebody’s water was about to break.

“Does your family know what you do?” he softly asked, speaking almost in a whisper.

“My wife does,” I said, mirroring his subdued tone.

“And how does she feel about how you earn a living?”

At this point, I knew I had to come clean. “Truth be told, Professor, she’s disappointed in me.” I had hoped that would end the discussion, but the guy would not let up. He was a dog and I was the bone. Then I sensed a way out, anticipating what his next question would be.

“What does she say to you?” he asked.

“Well, Doc, like I said, she’s disappointed, and she’s made that known on several occasions.” The good Professor was nodding knowingly. He was hearing my confession. I don’t recall specifically, but I’m pretty sure he was smiling. I was on a roll and I continued. “You see, Professor, my wife works for TRW’s Ballistic Missiles Division. They do nuclear intercontinental missiles and she’s always asking me why I’m wasting my time screwing around with conventional weapons. If you’re going to go, she always says, go big. Go nuclear.”

My yuppie classmates started laughing. Me, I was scared. I was running a perfect 4.00 grade point average in the MBA program up to that point, and I thought I had just blown any chance of aceing this course. The professor nodded without expression, made a note on his pad, and went on to the next yuppie. My being a wiseass had earned a good laugh, but that note he made couldn’t have been a good thing and I was afraid it would cost me.

So how did it turn out? I busted my chops in that course and I got my A. But I was sweating bullets for the rest of the term. Little, non-nuclear bullets, but bullets nonetheless. More importantly, the cluster bombs I helped engineer won the Gulf War a few years later in 1991. Most of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard tanks were taken out with CBU-87/B cluster bombs and GAU-8/A 30mm ammo (and my company, Aerojet Ordnance, also made the ammo for those A-10 Gatlings). Sometimes when studying human behavior, the guys who know (I mean, really know) reach the only conclusion and solution possible: An adequate quantity of high explosives delivered on target. I’m not at all embarrassed about having had a hand in that. Fact is, I’m proud of it.

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The Apache Main Rotor Blade Failures

By Joe Berk

Like that photo you see above? Yeah, me, too. I took it on the parade grounds at Fort Knox, Kentucky, a few years ago. I used to run the Composite Structures plant that made rotor blades for the Apache helicopter. It was one of the best jobs I ever had.

We recently reposted (under the Wayback Machine banner) our blog about the Gator mine system, and in it I promised to write about the Apache main rotor blade failures. This is another defense industry failure analysis war story that crosses company lines and supplier/customer boundaries, and I’m not entirely sure that there wasn’t some nefarious behavior going on at McDonnell Douglas. I’ll tell you what happened and you tell me.

The UH-1 Huey was a Vietnam War workhorse. It was extremely susceptible to small arms fire and you could hear it coming miles away.

During the Vietnam War, the Army (my alma mater) found that the Huey helicopter had a few shortcomings. I guess that’s to be expected; it was the first time the Army used helicopters in a major way in a real war. The Huey was susceptible to small arms fire (and big arms fire, too, for that matter) and it was noisy. On a clear night, you could hear a Huey coming in from a long way out with its characteristic “wop wop wop” signature as it beat the air into submission. That “wop wop wop” sound was actually the rotor tips breaking the sound barrier on the left side of the helicopter, so the Army knew it had to do something to get the blade tip speed below the speed 0f sound on its next-gen helicopter. Another big problem was small arms fire; a single .30-caliber AK-47 bullet through a Huey rotor blade would destroy the blade’s structural integrity (and there were a lot of AK-47 rounds in the air in those days). When that happened, the helicopter and its crew were lost. There could be no autorotation (you can’t autorotate without a blade) and you couldn’t bail out. The next-gen helicopter blades would have to be impervious to small arms fire.

Fixing the blade tip speed problem was simple. Instead of having two blades like the Huey, the Apache went to four blades. That cut the rotor speed and let the blade tips go subsonic. “Wop wop wop” no more. Easy peasy.

The structural integrity issue was the more significant challenge. The engineers at McDonnell Dougas (the Apache prime contractor) designed a blade that had four spars that ran longitudinally (with the length of the blade) contructed of AM455 stainless steel (a special blend used on the Apache and, at the time, nowhere else). The spars had overlapping epoxy-bonded joints that ran the length of the blade. The idea was that a hit anywhere on the blade (up to and including a 23mm high explosive Russian anti-aircraft round, roughly the explosive equivalent of a hand grenade) would damage that spar, but the remaining three spars would hold the blade together. It worked. An Apache blade actually took a blade hit from an Iraqi ZSU-23/4 and made it back to base.

A cross section of the McDonnell Douglas Apache blade showing the four spars.

So here’s the problem: The Army specified a blade life of 2200 hours (blades on a helicopter are like tires on a car…they wear out), but our blades were only lasting about 800 hours before the blades’ bondline epoxy joints holding the spars together starting unzipping. It wasn’t a catastrophic failure (the helicopter could still fly home), but the blades had to be repaired. The Army would send the blades back to McDonnell Douglas, and McDonnell Douglas sent them back to us at Composite Structures for refurbishment. If they couldn’t be repaired, we sold McDonnell Douglas a new blade (back in the 1990s, each blade cost just north of $53,000, and McDonnell Douglas put a hefty markup on that when they sold the blade to the Army). When they could be repaired, we still charged a hefty fee.

When I entered the picture as the plant manager, I learned that both Composite Structures (my company) and McDonnell Douglas (my customer) had made half-assed efforts to fix the blade problem, but neither company was financially motivated to eliminate it. We were making good money selling and repairing blades and so was McDonnell Douglas. The Army, however, was taking it in the shorts.

This was also a major problem for me as the manufacturing guy. I didn’t like having to make two blades to get one good one. We were rejecting one of every two blades we made for spar disbonds in the factory. You read that right: We had to make two blades to get one good one. Because of this, we were in a severe past due delivery condition, and my mission was to correct that situation. So we went to work on solving the problem. We found and fixed plenty of problems (blade cure profile issues, cleanroom assembly shortfalls, epoxy shelf life and pot life issues, nonconforming components issues, and contamination issues), but the blade disbonds continued. McDonnell Douglas continued to pound us for quality issues, all the while secretly smiling all the way to the bank as they continued to sell twice as many blades as they should have been selling.

We went through everything and finally concluded that there had to be a design issue with the blades; specifically, that the bondline width where the spars were glued together had too much variability. If that glue line was small enough, we reasoned, it wouldn’t hold up and the blade would disbond. We asked McDonnell Douglas about that (McDonnell Douglas was responsible for the design; we were building it to their engineering drawings), but they kept blowing us off. The bondline width wasn’t dimensioned on the McDonnell Dougas drawings. The other parts were, and McDonnell Douglas’ idea was that if the blade parts met their drawing requirements, the bondline width would be okay. That’s what they hoped for, anyway. But you know what they say about hope. You can poop in one hand and hope in the other, and see which one fills up first.

A macro shot of the bondline joint. The scribe lines (in the blue Dykem) show the bondline area.

I asked for a meeting with our company and McDonnell Douglas on the blade failures, and they wouldn’t meet with us. So I sent out another invitation, and this time I included the Army. McDonnell Douglas was livid when the Army quickly said yes; now, the McDonnell Douglas wizards had to meet with us on this issue. That meeting started about like I expected it to, with McDonnell Douglas tearing us a new one on the blade failures, telling us our quality was terrible, and basically letting me and the rest of the world know that, in their opinion, things had gone downhill since I had taken over as plant manager (no matter that this 50%-rejection-rate blade issue had existed for a dozen years prior to my arrival). I patiently explained the issues we had found and corrected, and then emphasized that the problem with blade separations had continued unabated. I then asked the McDonnell Douglas program manager about the bondline width and the fact that this apparently critical requirement was not on their engineering drawings. He denied it was the issue and went off about our poor quality again. When he ran out of steam, I asked the question about the bondline dimension yet again, and specifically, how narrow the bondline could be and still provide an adequate joint. There were more accusations about our lousy quality (the guy only knew one tune and he loved singing it), and I again waited for him to finish. When I asked the question a third time, before McDonnell Douglas lit up about our poor quality again the Army representative asked “yeah, how narrow does it have to be before the blade fails?”

The McDonnell Douglas guy stared at me like cobra looks at a mongoose (I’ve only seen this in YouTube videos, but I’m pretty sure the analogy is a good one). He sputtered and stammered and I think I saw a little spit fly from his mouth. “If you make it to the drawing it will be okay,” he said. I mean, under the circumstances it was the only thing he could say. I almost felt sorry for him, in the same way you feel sorry for a rat when a red-tailed hawk is swooping down with talons extended. You feel bad, but you look forward to seeing the hawk doing his thing.

The Army guy sensed this was something big. “How low?” he asked again. If there is such a thing as a perfect impersonation of a deer caught in the headlights, the McDonnell Douglas dude was nailing it. It was what we in the literary world call a pregnant pause, one of those “what did the President know, and when did he know it?” moments. As I type this, I can remember the scene like it happened 10 minutes ago, but it’s been close to 30 years.

“0.375 inches,” the McDonnell Douglas dude finally answered. He actually said the zero in a half-assed attempt to add engineering gravitas to his answer. “As long as they build it to the print, they’ll be okay,” he added, with a “so there” smirk. He was answering the Army man, but the smirk was all for me.

What the McDonnell Douglas guy didn’t know was that my guys could see the bondline width in an x-ray, and we x-rayed every blade returned for repair. And I guess he didn’t realize how easy it was to do a tolerance analysis to show what the drawings allowed the bondline width to be.

What happened next was one of those moments I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I looked my engineering guy and my QA guy. They knew what I wanted. They both left the room. Fifteen minutes later they were back. My engineering guy handed me the results of his tolerance analysis. The McDonnell Douglas engineering drawings tolerance stackups allowed the bondline width to go as low as 0.337 inch. The QA guy had even better information. All the blades that had been returned to us for spars unzipping (which was the only reason we ever saw a blade returned) had bondline widths less than 0.375 inches (McDonnell Douglas’ admission for the lower limit) but above .337 inches. In other words, our quality was fine. The failed blades met the McDonnell Douglas engineering drawings but were below the value I had finally prodded McDonnell Douglas into revealing.

I could have been more diplomatic, I guess, but that wasn’t me. I shared that information with the room. The Army rep smiled. “I think you guys might want to continue the meeting without me,” he said. And then he left.

The McDonnell Douglas guy exploded as soon as the door closed. He was apoplectic (I looked that word up; it means overcome with anger and extremely indignant, and that was him). McDonnell Douglas had been screwing the Army for years with a deficient design and now it was out in the open. They were potentially exposed to defective design claims from the Army (and from us) for hundreds of millions of dollars. Think about it: 12 years of Apache blade production, a 50% failure rate in production, a blade life of only 800 hours (against the Army’s spec requirement of 2200 hours), and the fact that we and McDonnell had factored all that waste into our pricing.

Fortunately for McDonnell Douglas, the Army wasn’t interested in suing them (all they wanted was good blades). My boss wasn’t interested in pursuing a claim against McDonnell Douglas, either, as they were our bread and butter and he wanted to keep the business. We fixed the problem by holding the blade components to tighter tolerances (tighter than McDonnell Douglas had on their drawings) so the bondline width would always be above the magical 0.375 inch, and we never had a blade unzip in production again. McDonnell Douglas did not correct their drawings, as it would have been an admission of guilt on their part that would absolutely guarantee a loss if the Army ever took them to court.

So there you have it: The Apache main rotor blade failures, all caused by sloppy engineering at McDonnell Douglas. It’s hard to believe that the blades had a 50% failure rate and didn’t meet the Army’s specified blade life for a dozen years before the problem was fixed, but that’s what happened. It’s also hard to believe that nobody at McDonnell Douglas went to jail for it.

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An Unfired NIB Liberty Model 77

By Joe Berk

The Ruger Model 77 rifle goes back to 1968. It gave Ruger a place in the centerfire hunting rifle class, and like the Remington Model 700 and Winchester Model 70 it would compete against, it outdid both by using the lucky number 7 twice in its name. The Model 77 is a good-looking bolt action rifle based on the Mauser design, with a classic walnut stock designed by famed custom rifle builder Lenard Brownell. I’ve owned several Model 77 Rugers, including this new-in-the-box .30 06 Liberty gun. I’d like to be able to tell you how accurate it is, but I can’t. I’ve never fired it. Nor has anyone else, other than the person who test fired it before it left the factory.

Every firearm Ruger manufactured in 1976 carried this inscription.

There’s no lawyer’s warning on the barrel about reading the instructions. We call these “pre-warning” guns. They were made in a time when people had more common sense.

The Liberty designation mentioned above refers to the “Made in the 200^th Year of American Liberty” roll marking on the barrel, which was a feature Ruger had on all its guns made in 1976. I bought the rifle in El Paso that year (I was in the Army stationed at Fort Bliss). This one has every thing that came with the rifle (the original serial numbered box, the scope rings and their blue cloth bag, the instructions, and the warranty card). It’s a brand new, unfired, almost-50-year-old rifle.

The tang safety Model 77 is considered more desireable.

The original box. The cardboard held up surprisingly well. This gun is new in the box (NIB) and this is the original box.

The box is serialized to the rifle. I obliterated the last number, which almost makes it look like the serial number matches the chambering.

You know, Rugers (and most guns, for that matter) were different 50 years ago. The bluing was deeper, the checkering was hand cut (and way better than the laser cut fuzzball checkering you see today), and the guns just felt better. This Ruger is like that. It’s immaculate, and there’s only safe ding on the stock. Other than than, there’s not a mark, dent, ding, gouge, scratch, or (Heaven forbid) spot of rust anywhere on the rifle. Even the anodized aluminum floorplate is pristine.

The Ruger Model 77 MSRP was $169.50 in 1976 and I believe I paid something like $139 for this one. I probably have the original receipt for it somewhere. A new Ruger Hawkeye in .30 06 (the rifle the Model 77 evolved into) lists for $1399 (yep, ten times what I paid in 1976), but a new one is not as cool as the one you see here.

Plain walnut, but elegant in its own way.

The unmarred anodized aluminum floorplate.

Early Ruger Model 77s wore this grip cap.

Check out this gorgeous hand cut checkering. You don’t see that too much today!

The rifle’s sole safe ding, done by yours truly. Nobody’s perfect. It will steam out. I’m leaving it like this.

God’s cartridge. The .30 06 is one of the all time greats.

This rifle may be going on the block soon. It’s time to start downsizing the armory and it’s time for someone else to enjoy owning it. You’re probably wondering how much I’m going to ask for it. So am I. As I look at this magnificent example of 1970s firearm manufacturing and post these photos, I’m having second thoughts. It is a .30 06, and that’s God’s cartridge. Maybe it needs to send a few rounds downrange, and maybe I’m the guy to do it. We’ll see.

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