I miss a lot of things about our pre-COVID days, and one is the foreign travel. I love heading to exotic cities all over the world, and one at the top of my list is Bangkok. I’ve been there a few times on assorted secret missions. These photos are from a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles a few years ago, and I thought I would share them here.
Soi Cowboy (“soi” sort of means street) is a famous Bangkok road that played a role in the movie Hangover II and another movie named, well, Soi Cowboy (a movie I haven’t seen, although I’ll look for it). It’s sort of an entertainment district with a lot of clubs. There were a lot of photo ops centered on two of my interests – food and two-wheeled transportation. With that as an intro, here we go.
These guys in orange vests are motorcycle taxi dudes. They carve paths through traffic as if it wasn’t there. It’s an amazing thing to see.One of the many food carts and clubs on Soi Cowboy.Another food cart. I had my Nikon D3300 (a relatively small but incredibly capable DSLR) on its “auto ISO” setting, which basically means it runs the ISO up as high as it thinks it needs to be to get a good shot. Some of these photos were at ISO 12,800.Scooters and small-displacement motorcycles dominate Bangkok. Here are a few scooters lined up on Soi Cowboy.More Thai street food.A look down Asoke (that’s the street name) from a pedestrian overpass. Soi Cowboy is just off of Asoke.The Bangkok grand prix.Good buddy Kevin and friend. Rain? Not a problem!A Thai SUV.A Thai taxi scooter in action. Scenes like this are common throughout Bangkok.
One more thing, and that’s a video I shot just off Soi Cowboy showing the scooter action in vibrant downtown Bangkok. It sure was fun.
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Here at ExhaustNotes we like to support local businesses. Without local stores and a healthy business environment a town dries up and becomes a collection of houses. Interaction between the town populace slows to a crawl and sad as it is, the only action will be found at Walmart or the Chevron station out by the highway. That’s no way to live.
In the USA we operate on the capitalist economic system. This means I do your laundry and you do my laundry, we keep handing the same money back and forth. The cyclical movement, or pumping action, of these few, tattered dollars are where the magic happens. Capitalism relies on all of us constantly spending and gathering dollars: the trick is to keep that money supply moving. If no one buys anything no one earns anything and the whole system crashes.
When we buy stuff online that money goes out of our local economy to some far-fetched location. In other words, they do our laundry but take their laundry to another town or state. Maybe they don’t even get their laundry done. Maybe they invest in block-chain cyber securities and sit on it.
If the system is functioning correctly you will eventually do the laundry of someone who did the laundry for someone else three states over who did the laundry for someone else. Except when the system gets so large and ruthlessly efficient your town becomes unable to do laundry at the massive scale required to match the price of the other, Mega-Laundry-Towns.
The local pool of cash begins to flow in one direction: out of here. Your neighbors no longer want you to do their laundry. It’s easier and cheaper to send dirty clothes to an Internet laundry service. The people in your town become bitter, superstitious and convinced the system is rigged against them. Less money circulating means people have to shop for the cheapest place to get laundry done or forego clean clothes altogether, taking money out of circulation even faster.
Look around now: the people are wearing dirty clothes because no one can afford laundry service. There’s nothing to buy and no money to pay for it if you did find something to buy. Since there is no money circulating the pulse of your community grows weaker. Young people see a bleak future with no one to do laundry for and leave. They move elsewhere, anywhere clothing is being washed, leaving the halt and the lame behind.
Neighborhoods become run down due to deferred maintenance. Angry, desperate, hungry and poor, this is the point when you turn to a life of crime. You steal from other poor people, your neighbors, and get caught doing it. After the trial you are sent away to a privatized, for-profit prison because your local prison cannot compete with the private Mega-Prisons. There you are: locked up and forced to do laundry. For free.
So ExhaustNotes likes to shop local. Like the other day when my wife’s lock switch fell out of the driver’s door of her Jeep. It’s a Jeep thing. The plastic bezel that holds the switch has two little tabs that fit behind the door panel and the switch is held in by two metal flat springs. The whole magilla snaps into place and works fine unless the tabs break off. I spent 45 seconds on Amazon and found a replacement selling for $14 with free 2-day shipping. I was about to send the bezel to my cart when I thought about our local Jeep dealer and figured I’d practice what I preach. I like having a Jeep dealer in town and I want him to stay in business.
The Jeep dealer is about 23 miles away and I know I should have called first but I usually have a hard time describing what I want to the parts guy. I drove down the hill to the Jeep dealer and chatted up the parts guy. He found the driver’s side switch bezel on his computer after 15 minutes. “We don’t have it in stock, it’ll take a couple days.” I said, “go ahead and order it for me.” The price was $35. I asked the parts guy if he gave a local discount and he knocked $10 off. I was well-chuffed as they say in England.
A few days later the Jeep dealer called and said the part had arrived. I drove back down the hill and picked up the bezel. All was well with the world. Sure, I paid $10 more than Amazon but I had supported our local economy: I kept the money in town.
When I tried to install the bezel I noticed that it was the bezel for the passenger door. The little graphic of locked and un-locked would be upside down and the angle was wrong. Darn it. Ah well, mistakes happen. I rigged a few pieces of sheet metal to hold the switch in the door and drove back down to the Jeep dealer. I know I could have called but I figured I’d have a hard time explaining that they ordered the wrong part and it’s easier to deal in person. The parts guy looked the bezel over and apologized. He said he would order the driver’s side bezel for me.
A few days later the Jeep dealer called and said the part was in. I drove back down the hill and picked up the part. It was the correct one and fit perfectly. All in, I drove 184 miles to get a $25 switch bezel that cost $14 on Amazon. I used around 12 gallons of gas. Gas is right around $3 a gallon here so I spent $36 on gasoline. My time doesn’t really count because I enjoy riding around in old Brumby but if you’re counting I spent about 11 hours driving back and forth and talking with the parts guy.
I feel really good that I supported a local business. The money I spent was circulated to the gas stations, the Jeep place and a hamburger stand where I ate lunch on one of the four trips to the dealership. I really spread it around, man. I used my Social Security check to pay for the switch so that’s Uncle Sam’s money injected right into the veins of my town. Buying local is the best way we can work together to save capitalism… and have clean clothes to boot.
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The New Year is a good time to take a clear-eyed look at your past and relive your many failures. It’s a time to regret what you have done, a time for guilt and bitterness, but no matter how badly you screwed things up the preceding year the New Year is also a chance to make things right. The New Year is like a fresh tub of store-brand guacamole, its smooth machine-made surface waiting for that first nacho chip. Full of promise, the New Year is a blank slate upon which to write your opus of good intentions. This is your moment, this is your time: don’t blow it by double dipping.
Making resolutions in real life often requires some effort on our part to accomplish. Things like losing weight or getting stronger, maybe to change into clean underwear, or foolishly, to drink less. These are hard things to do which is why so many New Year’s resolutions lie broken and forgotten by February. Social media resolutions are much easier to keep. In fact, most of them only require you to pause, to not do, to disengage. With that here are my five social media resolutions for 2022.
Social Media Resolution Number 1: I will stop informing Internet grifters… I mean sellers that the price they are asking for their well-used sale item (without shipping) exceeds the price of a brand new, duplicate item with shipping included. I don’t know why I have chosen to be Mr. Price Check on various forums but it needs to stop. If Joe Blow wants to list a rusty old Yamaha gas cap for three times more money than a new one from Yamaha who am I to post a link to the cheaper new item? Why do I care? Am I really trying to warn other idiots of the price gouging or am I a Bob Barker-like crusader for the frigging Price Is Right? From now on I vow to stay out of the grifter’s deal and let the buyer beware. Unless it’s a basket case JT1 Mini Enduro for 2800 dollars; then I have to pipe up.
Social Media Resolution Number 2: When some tasteless, classless, skill-deprived person puts up a photograph of their sad, pipe-wrapped, loop-butchered, Brat style motorcycle and then asks the hive mind what do we think about it, I vow to stop telling the builder what I think about it. It does the builder, and I use that term loosely, no good to list all the horrible things he has done to what was a pretty cool vintage Japanese bike. I promise to stop telling the idiots who vandalize a decent motorcycle that the bike is worthless now and they should give their 4-inch angle grinder to a chimpanzee because the average chimp has a better grasp of style and tool usage than the so-called builder. Look, if Brat builders had any chance of turning around their lives I’d go along with the god-awful mess as just a phase. I’d try to steer them in the right direction, you know? But that’s not going to happen. The Brat builder’s bad taste will only grow progressively worse, going from butchering Japanese bikes to big wheel baggers constructed entirely of Bondo to huge, jacked-up diesel pickup trucks with those 28-inch rims. Regardless, I will never comment on the Brat’s topic from this day forward.
Social Media Resolution Number 3: I will stop blocking people who answer, “Google is your friend” or “use the search function” in response to questions on a brand-specific motorcycle owner’s forum. Unlike these paragons of efficiency, you and I understand that owner’s groups exist for more than the just the facts. The owner’s group fosters camaraderie, and a sort of gallows humor develops regarding your particular motorcycle’s consistent failures. It’s reassuring to know that you’re not alone when your swing arm breaks. The search bar does not provide real-time condolences. After sufficient time any owner’s group will have covered all known problems and these issues will have been exhaustively discussed. At that advanced state of know-how answering a query with conventional wisdom becomes almost like a chant. Chanting is good for the soul; it wipes the mind clean, if only for a moment. I approach a Zen-like state when I repeat, “remove the sway bars” to a Jeep YJ owner for the 1000th time.
Social Media Resolution Number 4: I will stop trying to figure out Facebook. My Facebook account is slowly losing functionality. One by one, little features disappear. Facebook Messenger went away a few years ago. I can’t access the messages, but Messenger still sends me notices that a friend has left a message. I can no longer post videos unless I download them to YouTube first then paste a link on my page. YouTube uploads slowly with my weak Internet connection. A 5-minute video might take 8 hours to upload. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I’m no longer in control of some Facebook pages I created. Group settings are changing and I didn’t change them. I used to shake my fist at Facebook and rail against the Face-less algorithms that keep eroding my online presence. For 2022 I’m going to let the anger go. I’m going to stop bitching about Facebook and let its perverse tentacles unwind themselves from my life at whatever pace their little robot-minds care to proceed. I have found that my opinion of humanity varies in an inverse proportion to how much I use the service: lots of time on Facebook depresses me, less time on Facebook and my outlook improves. Maybe human beings were never meant to know so much intimate detail about each other’s lives. In the past it took active agency to find out who was a jerk. Now people tell you they are jerks 10 or 15 times a day. In writing.
I now know jerks in every country of the world. I know jerks in India, I know jerks in Saudi Arabia, I know jerks in China, and I know jerks in every state of these United States and its territories. Before the Internet was created there was no way I could I dislike so many people. It’s a little overwhelming. I don’t believe we have evolved enough to cope with so many jerks all at once. Handing us a phone and an Internet connection is like taking a pre-contact tribesman from the Amazon jungle and dropping him off in the middle of the Las Vegas strip with a bag of halcyon-days meth and 7500 dollars cash. It’s too much, too soon and I’m going to stop trying to sort it all out.
These four social media resolutions seem eminently keepable to me. They seem like actions that will improve my life at absolutely no cost in time or effort on my part. I like that. What are your social media New Year’s resolutions?
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I’m an old fart. I pretty much have everything I ever wanted, and that creates a problem for my family when birthdays and Christmas roll around. But they know I’m a reader, they buy books for me, and they have my preferences dialed. A recent gift was Ben MacIntyre’s The Spy and the Traitor. I could say it was great, but that would be a massive understatement. The Spy and the Traitor is riveting. It is a book I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. reading. It is that good. And it’s a true story.
Oleg Gordievsky is a former Russian KGB colonel who was Britain’s highest placed espionage asset for 30 years. I can’t say which parts of the story were more exciting…his espionage activities or his MI6 exfiltration from Soviet Russia when the KGB found out about him. You might wonder how the KGB finally tumbled to him; the answer would be Aldrich Ames, the CIA traitor currently rotting out the rest of his days in an Indiana federal penintentiary (properly so, in my opinion).
Trust me on this: If you want a page turner, pick up a copy of The Spy and the Traitor. You won’t be disappointed.
More product reviews (including great reads) are here.
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Good buddy Ren Doughty of Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters asked me what kind of coffee I like. Hmmm. Let me think about that.
I’ve ridden through the Andes in Colombia and I thought the coffee there was mediocre. Thanks to Juan Valdez (remember him?) all the good stuff goes to the U.S., my Colombian compadres Juan and Carlos told me.
Other than in big city five star hotels that cater to foreigners, the Chinese don’t drink coffee. Gresh and I really struggled with that riding across China and we made do with Gresh’s Nescafe stash on our entire 6,000-mile ride. Joe would get up early and make it for both of us, boiling the water twice and then sprinkling in the Nescafe. Nescafe is a last resort if you need coffee. Halitosis is better than no breath at all, I guess.
Singapore and Thailand had good coffee, about like we do. I enjoyed my coffee in those spots.
Italy had okay coffee. Espressos may have been born there. The Italians in Vatican City enjoy a good cup of coffee. I’ll get to that in a second.
Turkey had better than average coffee. They can tell your future by reading the coffee grounds left in your cup. (Turkey, by the way, is one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever visited.)
Baja has surprisingly good coffee, especially on a motorcycle ride. But then everything is better on a motorcycle ride in Baja.
When I was in Puerto Rico for the first time 30 years ago, the waiter asked if I wanted coffee with my breakfast. Nah, I said. He looked at me strangely. First time in Puerto Rico? Yeah, I said. You have to try the coffee, he said. It is the best in the world. Okay, I’ll play. He brought a cup over. It was quite good. Told you, he said, and then he asked when I flew in. Last night, I answered. Did you see the jet at the Mayaguez aeropuerto with funny markings? That’s a Vatican jet, he explained. Comes in twice a month for coffee. For the Pope. Up until a few days ago, I thought Puerto Rico had the best coffee in the world. I mean, who’s going to argue with the Pope?
But all that changed with my introduction this morning to Batdorf and Bronson coffee. It’s fitting. Today is my birthday.
My first taste of Batdorf and Bronson coffee came about in a most interesting way. Gresh has a lot of friends and one of them is cool guy, motojournalist, and coffee expert extraordinaire Ren Doughty. I knew the name from Cycle World magazine and Gobi Gresh’s Facebook posts.
Ren reached out and offered to send me a sample. You see, he’s with Batdorf and Bronson, and the man knows coffee. And motorcycles, too. That’s Ren and his wife you see above on their recent BMW-borne moto trip across America.
Ren asked what kind of coffee I preferred, how I prepared my coffee, and in which country I had most enjoyed coffee (hence the soliloquy above). He was dialing in my preferences, and two days later this arrived at my front door.
You might be wondering what the dancing goats thing is all about. Ren explained that, too. It seems coffee was discovered by an ancient shepherd who observed his goats eating berries and then excitedly jumping about (the berries were from a coffee plant). Dancing goats…get it? That’s how it all started. And that was a good thing. For now (and to close this blog) this old goat is going to have another cup of Batdorf and Bronson coffee and enjoy his birthday. Maybe I’ll dance about a bit, too.
One of the things that always got a laugh when I worked in the motorcycle business were comments you’d hear from looky-loos who you knew weren’t going to buy (but they liked to act as if they were). These folks wanted to wax eloquent and sound like they knew what they were talking about. “If only they would (insert motorcycle feature here), I’d buy one in a heartbeat.” If only, indeed. They never did. My disdain for the above notwithstanding, I thought I’d play. You know: If only they would…and this time I’ll fill in the blanks. And with that as a starting point, here’s my specification for the perfect motorcycle.
1. Tank You Very Much
For me it would have to have a teardrop gas tank that actually is a gas tank (no underseat gas tank silliness on the perfect motorcycle). Something like the Bonneville or maybe the Enfield 650. Guzzi had the right idea, and maybe the new CSC 400 twin is righteous, too. Here a few perfect gas tanks:
Wow.Wow again.Wow selfified.
2. Wire Wheels, Please
I like wire wheels. I know that cast wheels have advantages, but I don’t care. I like spokes. Wire wheels are what my perfect motorcycle needs.
It’s the spokes, folks. Nothing else works for me.Can you picture this ivory classic BMW with cast wheels? Yeah, me neither. Notice the seat height, too. We’ll get to that shortly (pardon that pun).
3. Show Me The Motor!
I know fairings have advantages and I’ve owned a lot of motorcycles with fairings, but you need to be able to see the motor on a motorcycle. There’s something blatantly weird about faired motorcycles when you take the fairings off: They look like washing machines. I want to see the engine and I want to see fins. Lots of fins. And cables and chrome, too. If you want a sterile, all-the-ugly-stuff-hidden vehicle, buy a Prius.
The ancestor of all Facebook posters…get it? The Knucklehead?Fins. Tubes. Polished metal. It all works.Early excess…a Honda straight six CBX. I owned one of these for awhile. It was glorious. In a stroke of marketing genius, Honda didn’t hide the motor.Jay Leno’s 1936 Henderson. He bought it from a 92-year-old who was getting a divorce and needed to raise cash, or at least that’s what he told me.Perfection.
And while we’re talking about motors, let’s move on to the elephant in the perfect motorcycle conversation: Displacement.
4. Displacement: Less is More
114 cubic inches? 2300 cubic centimeters? That’s automobile territory and then some. As you-know-who would say in one of his rare lucid moments: C’mon, man.
BMW? Harley? KTM? Honda?
If you need something to give expression to your masculinity, buy a pickup truck or a Model 29. Or maybe a 458 Win Mag. For me, something up to maybe 650cc is good. Less would be better, provided it can meet all the other things in this dreamsheet spec.
5. The Paint
The paint has to be world class. Harley gets that right. Triumph had it right back in the day. Chome and paint works. So does pinstriping. Thank God that silly flat black fad passed. Nope, I like paint that looks good. Ever seen a jellybean Ducati?
Nobody will ever outstyle the Italians. This one is in the Doffo collection.
6. We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ LCDs or TFTs!
I don’t need to sit behind a NORAD computer display. I like two big analog dials; one for the speedometer and the other for the tach. The ’65 Triumph Bonneville had the right idea; the 750 Honda enlarged both and that was even better. Seeing those two big cans sitting just ahead of the handlebars works for me.
Speed and RPM: Is anything else really necessary?
7. Getting Gassed
I’d like a 250-mile range. I stop more frequently, but I’d like the bike to be able to go that far without the fuel light coming on, which I guess means the range needs to be even more than 250 miles. It drives me nuts when the fuel light starts blinking at just over 100 miles and I know there’s still another 50 miles or so left in the tank.
You meet fun people in Baja Pemex stops.
8. Southern Comfort
A comfortable seat is a must, but truth be told, if you spend all day, day after day on a motorcycle, I’ve never found any that are what I would call comfortable. If a motorcycle seat can just make the “not uncomfortable” threshold, I’m good. And although I almost never take a passenger on my bike, I’d like to have a bike that seats two.
Casual elegance in Xi’an 35 years ago. The right spot at the right time…what photography is all about.
9. Down and Dirty
You know, I don’t need a GS to go offroad. Neither do you. They’re too big, too heavy, and too tall. They look good at a Starbuck’s, but I’m not going to spend $5 for a cup of coffee. I remember back in the day (for me, that would be the 1960s) when we took Hondas and Triumphs and BSAs off road all the time and thought nothing of it. We didn’t call it “adventure” riding, either…we just called it riding. We didn’t need a marketing guy and a decal to make our bikes off road capable. I’ve even gone off road with a Harley Softail, although maybe that was taking things a bit far. I guess what I’m saying is I’d like a bike to be light enough and the seat height to be reasonable, and I’m good to go for any off road requirements that bubble up in my travels.
The FLH-AS in the salt fields of Guerrero Negro, B.C.S. “AS” stands for Adventure Scrambler.
10. Just Say No To Stratospheric Seat Heights
The seat height should not be higher than about 30 inches. An inch or two lower would be even better. I understand that mucho suspension travel is muey macho for some, but a lot of motorcycles have gone crazy. I don’t know anyone with a 37-inch inseam. I don’t know if there are enough basketball players to justify a motorcycle that most of us would need a step ladder to mount.
It’s on the AutoCad screens somewhere in Bavaria, you know.
11. Fat City
Weight should be under 400 pounds. It’s doable, guys. Some of today’s bikes are approaching a thousand pounds. That’s nuts. Under 400 pounds works for me; less would be ever better. If my motorcycle drops, I want to be able to pick it up by myself. The 1966 Triumph Bonneville my Dad rode weighed 363 pounds. If you’ve gotta have the Gold Wing, why not just go for the RV?
Yup.
12. Freeway Capable
We live in the age of the Interstate. Two-lane country roads are nice and they make for good advertising photography, but it’s not the 1950s anymore. Yeah, I try to enjoy back roads, but like everybody else, I get on the freeway when I want to cover big miles. A bike that can cruise comfortably at 75 or 80 mph has to be part of the spec. The funny thing is, you don’t need a monster bike to do that. Gresh and I rode across China on CSC 250cc motorcycles, and about a third of that was freeway driving.
Riding the freeways across the Gobi Desert. Note the two-abreast Chinese car carriers.Gobi Gresh on a Chinese interstate (or should that be interprovince?) highway.
13. What’s In A Name?
I’d be okay with some kind of alphanumeric quasi-military designation or a cool sounding noun, like Bonneville or Electra-Glide or MT06. The weird noun “INT” adorns my Enfield only because the Mumbai boys didn’t want to take on Honda (they should; Royal Enfield had an Interceptor way before Honda did). I’m okay with a Chinese motorcycle, but it would have to have a good name (Cool Boy won’t cut it here). The first RX3s in America had a tank panel emblazoned with Speed (hey, I can’t make this stuff up); I caught some online flak about that. I countered it by telling the keyboard commandos we wanted Methamphetamine, but the font became too small when we tried to fit it on the tank. BSA used to have great names, like Spitfire and Thunderbolt. Those could work. Here are a few others I thought you might like to see.
Nah. That won’t work.Nah, that won’t work, either.Yeah, maybe…The Docker. You could buy matching slacks. You know. Dockers.Like the candy bar. Sweet!Zarang me, Zarang me, they ought to take a rope and hang me…
14. Pipe Up!
A motorcycle has to be visually and aurally balanced. To me, that includes chrome exhaust pipes on both sides of the motorcycle (like you see on that gorgeous Norton in the big photo above, and in the Beezer below). Low pipes or high, either are okay by me. Back in the 1960s Yamaha had the Big Bear (now there’s a great name) with upswept chrome exhausts on either side of the bike and I thought that was perfect. Any of the ’60s British street twins were perfect, especially Triumphs and BSAs. Flat black stamped steel with flanged welds on only one side of the bike (like my KLR 650) are an abomination.
British chrome symmetry. We could learn a thing or two from that era.
And, of course, the ExhaustNote: The perfect motorcycle has to sound like the perfect motorcycle. That means a low rumble, but not something so lopey it sounds like a Harley, and certainly not something that sounds like a sewing machine or (worse yet) a small car. Think mid-60’s Triumph Bonneville. That is a motorcycle that sounds like a motorcycle.
So there you have it. Got comments? Let’s hear them. Post them here on the blog, and you’ll have a friend for life. And do a friend a favor: Click on the ads in this blog!
One of the best books I read recently is Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood.
You know Danny Trejo: He the mean-looking guy who’s been in zillions of movies. But there’s way more to the man than just that. Trejo is a native Los Angeleno who has been through the mill. He’s done hard time in prison, he’s been a heroin addict, he’s been a gang member, he turned his life around, he’s a shaker and a mover in the addiction recovery movement, and he’s a movie star. And an author. This is more than just a feel good book, although it is that and more. I couldn’t put Trejo down once I started reading it.
Trust me on this: If you want a good book, Trejo is a story you won’t regret purchasing. You can thank me later.
A couple of years ago good buddy Joe Gresh told me he was going to do a listicle for the blog. My first thoughts were that a listicle was somehow gonad related, and if he was going to do one for the blog, he was really into the whole ExNotes thing. Nope, it had nothing to do with parts south, Gresh explained. Listicle is a mashup of “list” and “article.” It’s an article that contains a list, and Gresh had it on good authority from a magazine industry contact that listicles get lots of hits on the Internet. So Gresh wrote one and it did. Wow, I should do listicles, too, I thought. And I did.
Now, truth be told, hits are nice but what we really like is when you, our readers, click on the popup ads in our blogs. That’s how we get paid. Every time you click on an ad, we get paid. If the popup ads annoy you, click on them and the advertiser has to pay. And some of that money goes to us. See how cool this is?
Anyway, back to the listicle topic. We’ve done a bunch and we’re going to do more. I tried to capture them all (maybe I missed one or two), but here’s the list. Of listicles, that is. Yes, we are offering on the blog today a listicle of listicles.
So there you have it. Our list of listicles. We hope you enjoy them. And don’t forget to click on the popup advertisements wherever they appear. You’ll be slimmer and more attractive, you’ll shoot straighter, and it will make you a better rider.
Happy New Year from the staff at ExhaustNotes.us! Our best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year to you.
The last time I had the Compact 1911 on the range, I shot worse than usual. At 25 yards (with me resting my arms on the bench), I can typically keep my shots in the black with the Rock Compact. This is how I shot last week:
Maybe adequate for defense purposes and probably close enough for government work, but terrible shooting.
That’s pitiful (there’s a few 9mm holes on that target above; ignore those). Then I noticed the slide was not going fully back into battery, which was something new to me. It wasn’t jammed, it just needed a slight nudge to finish the trip home.
The slide sitting about a tenth of an inch from returning to battery.
Another view of the slide not returning to battery. “Battery” means fully forward, ready to fire the next round.I knew that Compact 1911 recoil springs fatigue earlier than the springs in full-sized 1911s, but this one snuck up on me. Armscor (the Rock Island Armory folks who manufactured my Compact 1911) were out of stock, so I ordered a new spring from Wilson Combat. Wilson Combat is a recognized “go to” shop in the 1911 world. I received my new recoil spring a few days later.
A brand-new Wilson Combat 24-pound recoil spring.
Online research said the life of these springs in a Compact 1911 is only about 2000 rounds, tops. That surprised me. The literature from Wilson surprised me even more:
The Wildon Combat bubble-pack literature.
1000 rounds. That’s 10 boxes of ammo. Wow. I probably had several times that many rounds through my Rock. Small wonder the slide wasn’t returning to battery.
When the spring arrived, I was eager to put it in my 1911. I dropped the magazine and cleared the weapon:
The TJ-customized and polished feed ramp and chamber entrance on the Rock Island Armory Compact 1911. Yep, it’s empty.
Then it was time to turn to my custom, German tool steel, carefully configured to exacting tolerances, Rock Island Armory Compact 1911 disassembly tool. It’s a bent paper clip:
A bent paper clip 1911 disassembly aid.
The drill is to lock the slide back, put the paper clip in the guide rod hole, and ease the slide gently forward to engage the paper clip.
The 1911 guide rod hole that accepts the paper clip disassembly aid.With the slide forward on the guide rod, held in place by the paper clip You bend the paper clip so that the guide rod, recoil plug, and recoil spring can be pushed rearward in the slide to remove these three components as a subassembly).
Once I had the slide forward, with the paper clip disassembly aid in place like you see above, I withdrew the slide release from the left side of the pistol. At that point, the entire slide assembly can slide forward off the receiver.
Another view from underneath the slide.
The next step was to extract the recoil spring, the guide rod, and the recoil plug out of the slide. It’s best to leave the paper clip in the guide rod (i.e., with the recoil spring still compressed), and then slide the entire recoil plug/recoil spring/guide rod rearward as a unit out of the slide. After that, I pushed down on the recoil plug, withdrew the paper clip from the guide rod, and released the compression on the spring. I was careful when I did this; parts could go flying if I just let them go. Don’t ask me how I know this.
The recoil plug, the guide rod, and the recoil spring removed from the slide with the paper clip removed.
Here’s what the guide rod, the original recoil spring, and the new Wilson Combat recoil spring look like. The new spring is on the bottom:
Quite a difference, huh? In case you were wondering, both springs have 14 coils.
I think the new spring wire diameter is larger than the original spring wire diameter. I didn’t think to measure it before I installed it; I will do so the next time I have the gun apart. And there’s a huge difference in free length, as you can see in the above photo.
Installing the new spring on the guide rod with its recoil plug was a challenge. I had make to a tool to compress the spring and the recoil plug enough to get a paper clip on the guide rod to hold everything together so I could install it in the slide. Again, I was super careful. I didn’t want to release these parts, and I always wear eye protection when I do this sort of thing. A lot of people get hurt by being careless with springs.
The reassembled recoil plug, recoil spring, and guide rod, ready for insertion in the slide.
At this point, I reinstalled the subassembly in the slide, I slid the slide onto the receiver, and then I reinstalled the slide stop.
Once the gun was back together, the first time I tried to rack the slide I was shocked. I couldn’t pull the slide all the way back. I muscled it and then did so several times, and it seems to be okay now, but wow, it is stiff. The 24-pound recoil spring is way stronger than what the Compact 1911 had in it. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the problem with the slide not returning to battery is gone.
The Compact with the slide in battery.
You know, I was playing around with the Compact 45 when I was cleaning it before the above spring replacement and I noticed that because the slide only went limply into battery there was a lot more play between the receiver and the slide. I thought maybe it was me, but I noticed the accuracy was really falling off the last couple of times I shot it. I’ll bet when the recoil spring holds the slide firmly in battery keeps the slide in the same spot each time. With a weak spring, it stands to reason that the slide would swim around a bit more and accuracy would suffer. I shook the gun in my hand with the old spring in it, and it rattled just like the 1911s I carried in the Army. I’ll bet they all had worn recoil springs, too.
When testing a recoil spring to see if it’s the right one, the drill is to load one round in the magazine, fire it, and if the slide locks back after that round (as it is supposed to do), the spring is good. I tried that with seven rounds of factory hardball and the new Wilson Combat 24-pound recoil spring, and it worked each time. Then I tried my 230-grain cast hardball load with 5.6 grains of Unique (my reloads are less potent but way more accurate than factory ammo), and it worked great. Then I tried my 185-grain cast semi-wadcutter load (with 5.0 grains of Bullseye; my Compact 1911 accuracy load), and it worked great. It’s a little easier to rack the slide now, but it’s still way stiffer than it was before.
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More stories on the Rock Island Armory Compact? Yes, indeed!
Good buddy Peter and I go back about 40 years now. That’s hard to believe when I think about it….he must be pretty old now. We grew up together in the So Cal aerospace industry, chasing each other across companies that made bombs, aerial refueling equipment, helicopter blades, and more. We’re both retired now, and we’re both enjoying life. Peter and I have a lot in common (you might remember him as Python Pete), including an interest in guns, motorcycles (Peter bought one of the first RX3 motorcycles to arrive in America), photography, and travel. Peter and his wife recently wrapped up an epic road trip in the starship Wingnutz (it’s the roadburner you see above), and he wrote a guest blog for us showing just a few of the highlights. Here you go, folks…it’s a great read. Enjoy!
My wife, Sasi, and I went on an epic road trip a couple of months ago. The impetus for this trip was our nephew’s wedding in Massachusetts. We figured this was the perfect opportunity to camp our way across America (and get the hell out of California for a while). The vehicle for this journey was a 2019 Ford Transit van that we had converted into a 4×4 camper van. This van is pretty much self-contained and we can live off the grid for three or four days before we have to resupply the water tank. With this setup we can choose not to stay in campgrounds thereby avoiding other cranky people.
Map showing the general route we took.
Starting in So Cal we drove north through Nevada. At our first campsite in Nevada at Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, we watched in utter amazement one evening as a hawk used its talons to snatch a bat right out of the air mid-flight no more than 15 feet directly in front of us. Never saw that before.
We continued north into Idaho and Montana enjoying the spectacular scenery of the Sawtooth and Bitterroot Mountains. One day we drove a measly 50 miles because we just kept finding fantastic sights and places to camp. Our campsites in this area were usually way up dirt roads next to streams (with very cold, invigorating water…like 44 °F cold.) and a couple of times at altitudes exceeding 8,000 feet. We thought we were gonna see and smell a lot of smoke from all the fires in the Pacific Northwest, but nada. This is definitely an area we are going back to in order to explore more extensively. We spent too much time in this area jeopardizing an on time arrival to the wedding.
So, we quickly made up time heading east across the Northern Plains to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. You don’t wanna see people? The UP is one place to do that as it’s pretty sparsely populated and very heavily forested. The few locals we encountered were extremely friendly and helpful. Sasi was excited to be able to pick wild blackberries at our campsite which was just off a snowmobile trail. There was no snow as it was late August and nobody else was crazy enough to drive something other than a snowmobile on this trail. Solitude is great as it gives you the opportunity to observe and listen to the wildlife (the forest kind of wildlife as opposed to the city kind).
The Mackinac Bridge, five miles long connecting the UP to the rest of Michigan
Next significant stop was Niagara Falls which was one of the highlights for Sasi. It was her first visit and she was absolutely overwhelmed as was I even though I’ve visited before. We walked to all the scenic overlooks and did the Maid of the Mist boat tour (worth it). Joe spoke previously of these electric motor driven boats. They are indeed quite quiet; however, the falling water is not. Our campsite in this area was on Lake Ontario and in the evening, we could see the sparkling lights of Toronto across the lake. Unfortunately, we could not visit the Canucks because of crazy COVID-related border rules.
Sunset over Lake Ontario
Off to the wedding in the Boston area. It was nice.
The next highpoint of the trip was to eat live Maine lobster in Bar Harbor, Maine. This is a beautiful island and although there were way too many tourists visiting, we managed to get a table in an otherwise deserted restaurant overlooking the water. The lobster has a better, fresher taste in Maine than the so-called live Maine lobster we get in California. The food was amazing and so was the scenery as we drove around the island after lunch.
Sasi’s live Maine lobster, finally!
I wanted to go see the northern parts of Maine because the maps show hardly any roads in that area. Hell, we have a 4×4 so who needs roads, right? “Wrong!” said the boss/copilot/navigator/cook/wife. Never piss off any of those people or you will regret it many times over (I keep learning). So, we headed west into New Hampshire and Vermont and bought copious amounts of locally sourced maple syrup.
We followed the Appalachian Mountains south all the way to the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. We did not see Dolly Parton but did find great places to camp including one place where we met a couple from Spain who are five years into traversing a good part of the world in their custom RV that looks more like a military vehicle than an RV. See www.erg-adventure.com.
One beast of an RV Carlos and Magy are using to see the world
We then meandered kind of Northwest and finally just west across the very flat Great Plains stopping for a few days in Colorado to visit family we had not seen in two years. A few more incredible campsites came our way in the Rockies. The Forest Rangers here were super nice in guiding us to the out of the way camping spots we prefer.
Hell yes, lets go!Aspen trees changing color on our type of road
We finally made it home after five weeks, 30 states and 9,000 spectacular miles. Don’t ask about fuel economy because a 4×4 van does not understand economy. However, you can’t put a price on the sights and experiences we enjoyed on this trip!
That’s an awesome story, Peter, and it looks like you and Sasi had an amazing adventure. Thanks very much for sharing it with us!
