Category: Feel Good Stuff

More likes and dislikes…

The good news is that it looks like we have this email thing fixed!  Whew, we’re software geniuses!  Who knew?

Okay, back to our likes and dislikes:  We like giving stuff away, and we need to get our email list updated again, so here’s what we’re going to do.   Whether you’re on the email list or not, sign up for our automatic email updates.   For every 50 signups, even if you are already signed up, we’re going to give away a copy of Destinations, our latest book, to one person drawn randomly from each group of 50.  Hey, that gives you a 2% chance of winning, and that’s damn near a sure thing!

Likes and dislikes…

I needed to do a blog to see if this nutty automatic email program is working again, and even though Joe G. and I have a rich repertoire to draw from as far as blog topics go, I thought I’d briefly hit a few likes and dislikes to check out the email notification system. We usually try to limit ourselves to one blog a day to keep your email inbox from getting overwhelmed, so bear with me while I test this system.

I’ll do two or three blogs today to see if I can get this thing sorted. Patience, my friends.

The first is a dislike. I dislike mindless software updates, as apparently occurred with the Icegram software (that’s the plug-in we use for the auto email update feature). Something updated, it stopped working, and then it dumped half the names on our list. I could tell you if you haven’t received an email from us and you should have to let us know, but that would be like asking all the kids who aren’t in class to raise their hands, and that would be about as mindless as a software update when everything was working fine before the update. Ah, here we go.

Hey, if you want to be on the list for automatic email updates, please add your email here:

Stand by, there’s more to follow in a subsequent blog or two.

Mini Motor Madness: 6

I managed to get all the cables routed and connected. The electrical wiring is concealed inside the large diameter front down tube along with the clutch and throttle. Mini Motor Madness was looking sharp but there were still a few more details to attend.

The cute little gas tank has studs spot-welded onto the underside of the tank. Thin brackets fit onto these studs and clamp the tank to the top frame tube. Except that the brackets are so thin they distort when tightened. The studs needed a few spacers to give the nuts something to tighten against.

From there it was a simple matter to connect the supplied fuel line and filter. The fuel line feels like silicone, it’s very soft and flexible, I don’t think it will need clamps. The kit came with a rubber gasket for the fuel petcock but it looked like the gasket would squirt out the side when the petcock was tightened. I used Teflon tape instead. It hasn’t leaked so far. So many little pieces came with this kit. It really is complete.

The Wal-Mart fender supports were made from ultra thin sheet metal. Just by looking at them I created a fracture. I cut some scrap L angle aluminum into braces and made a backing plate to spread the load a bit. Hopefully the fender won’t tangle in the wheel.

Long time Mini Moto Madness readers will recall the chain alignment issue I was having in an earlier episode. I meant to get back to the problem but the bike was nearly complete. I had to hear it run, man. I turned on the gas, pedaled down Tinfiny’s steep, rutted driveway, popped the clutch and the little motor fired right up. For about a second.

There was a loud grinding noise from aft and the rear wheel locked up. The chain, never really happy with the set up, was tangled in the rear wheel. It was so bad a 3-link section was missing! Luckily, the kit chain was extra long to suit many different bicycles and I was able to splice in a section, making sure to peen the pins after fitting.

To ride this puppy I’d have to bite the bullet and take that damn rear sprocket off (again!) and fit spacers. Like I said earlier, this kit is complete. It had everything needed to shim the sprocket, although the shims were a little harder to access.

After butchering the sprocket for shim stock I reinstalled the rear sprocket. Now on their 3rd round trip the elastic stop nuts were losing elasticity but I was all in, I had to ride the beast. The sprocket was a tad wobblier than I remember but my patented sprocket-tuning tool allowed me to true up the mess to a reasonable level.

And it worked! The little beast fired up and settled into a retro idle, the smoke poured from the recommended 16:1 fuel mix ratio. I live in a steep, hilly area and the bike is geared too tall. I don’t know how fast it goes (that will have to wait for the full exhaustnotes.us road test) but it’s faster than any coaster brake bicycle should be going. The gearing would be ok in Florida but at 6000 feet elevation with 1st gear hills all around it’s Light Pedal Assist all the way.

I’ve ordered a 48-tooth sprocket to replace the stock 44 and my front brake should be here any day now. I’m calling this a win! The kit project is complete in my mind. So there! I finished one. The next phase will be modifications to make the rig suitable for my situation.

A Harley wake-up call…

So I had my new Harley, a gorgeous blue ’92 Heritage Softail, and it was a shockingly beautiful motorcycle.  Yeah, some of the styling touches were a little hokey, but in a good way.  I never even knew what a concho was before I bought the Softail, but I knew after I owned it.  I became a Harley-riding cowboy.  The conchos made the bike complete. How I ever made it to 40 without conchos I’ll never know. I had them now, though, and they just looked right. My Softail was a fashion statement. It made me look good and it made me feel good.   I loved that bike.

My ’92 Softail on a Baja ride to San Felipe. Good buddies Baja John and Marty rode with me on that one.   Those gangster whitewalls?   That’s a story for another blog.

There was only one problem, and it was a big one:  The Softail was a dawg. It was a 700-lb lump that couldn’t get out of its own way. I’ve already spoken about how unreliable my ’79 Electra-Glide was, but that old clunker would get up and choogy, and it would have walked away from my new ’92 Softail in a drag race.  I mean, the thing was slow. When I gave it more throttle going up a hill, it seemed like the only result was a deeper moan. It sure didn’t go any faster.

I worked in El Monte in those days and the nearby dealer was a famous one in southern California, Laidlaw’s, and I felt comfortable with them.  I knew Bob Laidlaw, their founder, and I knew his son Jerry, and I knew both to be straight shooters. When it was time for the Softail’s first service at 500 miles, that’s where I went. Laidlaw’s has since moved to a larger, more modern facility in a better neighborhood, I’m guessing at Harley-Davidson’s insistence, and it’s still a great place. But I liked the old location better. Like I described for Dale’s in the last blog about buying my ’92, the old Laidlaw’s facility had that crusty old motorcycle shop schtick, and I liked that.  You know, grease on the floor, a funky shop area, and guys who looked like their lives revolved around motorcycles and tattoos. Guys with calibrated arms who knew how much torque to apply to a 9/16 by feel alone.

I went to Laidlaw’s on an overcast Saturday morning for that first service, and Jerry wrote the service order. After completing it, he looked at me and asked: Anything else?

“Yeah,” I said. “The thing’s a dog.”

Jerry smiled. He knew. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

“They lean them out pretty good from the factory,” he said.

“So what do guys do?” I asked.

Another Jerry smile. “Well, most guys get a new cam, punch out the pipes, rejet the carb, and put the Screaming Eagle air filter in.”

“How much is that?” I asked. I could see this smoking past another $1500 without stopping to look back.

“It’s about $500,” Jerry answered. Hmmm, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

“So how much would everything be,” I said. “You know, the 500-mile service and the cam and carb and pipes and all the rest?”

“It’s $500 for everything,” Jerry answered, “including the 500-mile service.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

“Let’s do it,” I said. I mean, I know a good deal when I see one. I hung around, as Jerry told me the whole thing would be a couple of hours. In the meantime, it had started raining, and I had no raingear. I walked across the street to some sort of an Army-Navy-99-cent store and bought a $3 rain suit.

In those days, it was no big deal to hang around in the service area and watch the techs work on your bike. The guy who was working on mine was a long-haired dude with lots of tattoos and a friendly smile. He held this giant steel toothpick-looking sort of tool that was essentially a ¾-inch-diameter rod sharpened to a point in one hand, and in his other hand he had a sledge hammer. He stuck the persuader into the end of one of my fishtail mufflers and whacked it with the sledge hammer. Then he repeated the process on the other fishtail.  With a big grin, he said, “Adios, baffles!”

Then it was the carb work and the air cleaner replacement. And then it was the Screaming Eagle cam, which actually was pretty easy to install in the chrome cone on the right side of the engine. Then he buttoned it all up.

I finished my cup of coffee, donned my el cheapo raingear, paid my bill, and fired up the Harley.

Good Lord!

It was a completely different motorcycle. It sounded way better than it had before the Screaming Eagle cam work and exhaustectomy. It had been transformed from a smothered, anemic, pathetic, wheezing sort of thing into living, breathing, fire-snorting, spirited motorcycle. It reeked raw power and it had attitude. The idle was lopey and assertive, like a small block Chevy with an Isky cam and Hooker headers. My Harley rocked back and forth on its axles with each engine rotation. It was telling me:  Let’s go!  I think I’m pretty good at turning a phrase and I’m doing my best here, folks, but trust me on this: It’s hard to put into words how complete and total my Harley’s transformation was. It kind of reminded me of the first time I ever threw a leg over a Triumph Bonneville (I was 14 when that happened, and when Laidlaw’s tuned my Softail I was 14 all over again).

So I rolled out into the rain for my 30-mile ride home and I was afraid to whack the throttle open. I thought the rear wheel would break loose on the wet pavement; it felt that powerful.  The rain and the clouds, I think, made the Harley’s Exhaust Notes (love that phrase) sound way mo better. I was there, man.

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Bonneville Speed Week

Berk and I have a busy ExhaustNotes.us August planned. You’ve already read about his Three Flags tour on the new, untested RX4 Zongshen and I’m finalizing plans for an assault on the Bonneville speed trials. No, I won’t be racing Mini Moto Madness but seeing as how I’ve never been to the salt for Speed Week and I’m not getting any younger I figured this is the year.

It wasn’t really my idea. It was Mike’s. Mike lives on a ranch in Carrizozo, New Mexico. I met Mike a hundred miles north at a little restaurant in Willard. I wanted shredded beef tacos but the restaurant was out of beef. I didn’t want to use up my private stash so I went back to the menu. That’s when Mike piped up and told me to try the pork tacos. I had three pork tacos with beans and rice. I recommend them highly.

Willard is kind of a slow place. The intersection of Highways 60 and 42 is the main topic of conversation in town. Mike and I got to shooting the breeze like all motorcyclists do and it turns out Mike likes to ride dirt trails on his BMW thumper 650. I mean you had me at dirt, you know? We started doing a few rides and then the Bonneville thing came up. We’re going to try and hit a few dirt roads on our way north.

We need to make pretty good time on this trip so Godzilla, while reliable, is too stressed out at 70 mph leaving The Wedge, my Husqvarna 510. The Husky’s fork seals are leaking badly. I’ve bought new seals to install. That should be interesting as I’ve never worked on upside down forks. The clutch lever is broken from a spill I took in Big Bend Park. I’m going to cut the end off a donor lever and weld it to the stub remaining from the original lever. It should make a nice, Frankenstein looking part when I’m through. I know I can buy a new lever. I just feel more at home doing things the hard way. The drive chain is still in fair shape but with 11,000 miles on the thing I’m going to change it as a prophylactic measure.

The tires are new-ish on the Husky but slanted towards street riding and not so good for dirt. Mike’s heavy BMW 650 has decent dirt tires. I’m hoping my bike being 200 pounds lighter will even us up on the trails. I’ll also bring along a leaking plastic jug of fuel so that all my camping gear and clothing will be soaked with gas after 15 miles.

Motorcycle camping is not my idea of fun. Either you carry no gear and enjoy the motorcycle ride only to suffer as you roll around in the dirt trying to sleep at night or you bring enough equipment to camp comfortably and have a miserable ride on your overloaded bike stopping every few miles to repack.

Mike and I will be at the KOA in West Wendover from August 12th to the 14th. If you’re around town stop by and visit us. Bring beer if you want us to be happy to see you. Our campsite is good for up to six people. I’ll have coffee. There will be fire.  It’ll be fun. You’ll see.

3FC19: The Route!

I am getting thoroughly pumped up about riding the 2019 Three Flags Classic this year on the RX4.   There’s just something about the Three Flags Classic that’s magic, and I haven’t been this excited about getting out on the road in quite a while.  It’s going to be grand and it’s going to be a blast, and you’ll be able to follow my personal ride from Mexico through the western United States on up into Canada right here on the ExNotes blog.  I’ll have tons of great photos and the writing will be as good as I can make it.   You’ll be able to follow first hand my further impressions of the CSC RX4, too.  This won’t be a silly superficial set of impressions like you’d read in a half-baked one-page magazine article, either.  Nope, this will be thousands of miles of international riding across three countries on the newest motorcycle to hit these shores.   I’m not worried.  I’ve never been let down by a CSC motorcycle, and I feel comfortable that the RX4 is going to be another home run for CSC and Zongshen.   Whatever happens, you’ll get the straight skinny right here on ExhaustNotes!

In poking around on the Southern California Motorcycle Association site last night, I found this description of the route…

I think it’s going to be great.  If you want to read more about the 2019 Three Flags Classic, take a look at the SCMA site here!  If you’d like to read about our 2005 Three Flags Classic ride, you can do so here.

Make sure you never miss an ExNotes blog with fresh Gresh and yours truly, and get a free decal!  Hey, sign up right here:

Dan, your decals are in the mail!

Dream Bikes: Ossa Pioneer

I must have been around 15 years old the first time I saw an Ossa Pioneer. It was at Haines City motocross track. Mike Mills’ mom was divorced and her boyfriend gave us a ride way out to Chrome Avenue in his boat tail Buick Riviera . What a car! The Riviera smelled great inside not only because it was new, but because the boyfriend wore cologne. This was the first time I had been around a grown man that used cologne. All the other adult men I had known up to that point smelled like dirty socks. I smell like dirty socks right now.

You know what to do:  Click on the popup ads!

“Burn the tires, c’mon!” we pleaded. It was a strange experience sitting in the plush, perfumed Riviera as the big V-8 engine effortlessly spun the tires into clouds of cotton candy. “Want to stop at the hobby store to pick up some sniffing glue, boys?” Damn we laughed and had fun with that guy. He treated us like equals, like he cared what we had to say. I wish I could remember his name. It was like going to the motocross races with Hugh Heffner.

He drove 90 miles per hour every chance he got and it wasn’t long before he was dropping us at the motocross track. He spun the Buick around and said, “I’ll be back at five.” And then lit the tires up again on Chrome Avenue. He was exactly what we wanted to be when we grew up.

Mostly Bultacos and Maicos were racing in Haines City back then but one guy had an Ossa Pioneer with the lights removed. The rider was good. He would get crossed up over the jumps and finished in the top 5 against real race bikes. I loved how the rear fender blended into the bike. That fiberglass rear section had a small storage area inside. One of the bike magazines of the era tossed a loose spark plug in the storage and went scrambling. The plug beat a hole in the rear fender and they had the nerve to bitch about it. Hell, I knew at 10 that you have to wrap stuff in rags on a motorcycle.

It rains most everyday in Florida and it started pouring. The races kept going for a while but finally had to be called because it was a deluge. You could hardly see to walk. There was no cover so we huddled in the leeward side of the ticket stand out by the entrance. It rained harder, the wind was howling. Wearing only shorts and T-shirts we were getting colder and colder. My lips were turning blue, man.

It was like Niagara Falls, a solid sheet of water that the Riviera emerged from. Man, I was so glad to see that car. “How were the races, boys?” Soaking wet and shivering we piled into the Riviera’s soft leather seats. I thought he’d get mad but boyfriend just laughed. You got the feeling he could go buy another Riviera if he wanted to.

Want to read more Dreambikes?  They’re right here!

Mini Motor Madness

There is a universe of product testers who thrive on YouTube. The oddest bit of kit has at least three reviews and the information is almost always valuable. I never buy anything without checking YouTube first. I’ve had my eye on these little motorized bicycle kits for years and after watching several videos showing the kits as fairly good quality I finally pulled the trigger.

The amount of equipment you get for $108 and free shipping from Amazon is amazing. The kit is complete, no need to go to the hardware store for an extra widget or a bolt. Some of the U-Tubers replaced the nuts and bolts with higher spec stuff but it’s not necessary.

The kit comes with a zillion parts bagged by function. On the carburetor, behind the idle screw old school motorcyclists will recognize the tickler, a plunger device that drowns the carb float causing fuel to spill into the engine. The function of the tickler is to enrich the fuel/air ratio for cold starting. Kind of like a choke except more flammable.

Amazon has pages and pages of bicycle motors and most of them look like the one I bought. Prices range from $90 to $200 for what looks like the same exact thing. There are 50cc kits and 80cc kits so I opted for the 80cc. YouTubers will tell you the 80cc engine measures out to around 60cc, which is a good thing because the engine fins don’t look large enough to cool a bigger bore. You can also buy 4-stroke kits but then you’d be no friend of mine. The main reason I sprung for this one was because it came with a chrome exhaust pipe.

The transmission is a one speed, manual clutch set up and you’ll get the throttle, throttle cable with a matching grip for the left side. A clutch lever with a push button latch allows you to disengage and lock the clutch for pedaling the bike as normal. Included on the throttle housing is a kill button that plugs into the ignition coil. Wiring couldn’t be easier as there are only two wires and I’m guessing it doesn’t matter how they connect.

The hokiest part of the conversion is attaching the rear sprocket. Your average bicycle has no way to connect a rear sprocket so you have to use two rubber discs, three steel plates and the sprocket to sandwich the spokes. This seems like a bad idea from many angles but YouTubers say it works ok. Centering the sprocket is critical along with adjusting run-out. A flimsy looking chain idler pulley is included to keep the included chain from sawing through the lower frame rail but again, the Tubers say it ends up working well. Careful adjustment of the motor in the frame may eliminate the need for an idler. That’s what I’ll be shooting for.

When I say complete I mean complete. You’ll get a chain guard, a petcock, a sparkplug and even fuel hose. Unless you want upgraded components there is really nothing else to buy.

The kit comes with a cool teardrop gas tank that bolts to the top frame tube. The tank comes glossy black and would look great sitting atop an 80 cubic-inch Indian flathead drag bike. Handwrite “The Jewel” on the side of the tank in that yellow junkyard paint and you will win all the bike nights.

The sheer quantity of parts for $108 makes me happy (a fringed T-shirt for a Harley costs $100). For me, it almost doesn’t matter it the thing works or not. I like looking at all the new pieces. My next step is to find an older, one speed, balloon-tired 26-inch bicycle for a host. One with curving frame tubes and chrome fenders. I’ll let you know when I find it and I’ll do a story on the install and road test of the little motor.

Motorcyclist magazine: What happened?

A few weeks ago, blogmeister Joe Gresh vented on Bonnier and Motorcyclist magazine.  It was a great piece of writing (not a surprise, seeing as it was coming from Gresh) and it garnered more than a few comments.

I thought that Motorcyclist had already gone belly up.   I used to subscribe, and I thought my subscription had already ended, so I was more than a little surprised when I received the final issue in the mail last week.   We checked our records and whaddaya know, we had renewed for a year, so now I’m annoyed that I’m apparently going to get stiffed for the last two issues (Motorcyclist didn’t say anything about reimbursing folks like me who are owed another issue or two).   I guess the reason I was surprised was that with Motorcyclist’s recently-adopted quarterly print schedule, it had been so long since I received the last issue I assumed the subscription had already expired.  Truth be told, the last few issues of Motorcyclist were terrible, I hadn’t read most of their articles after glancing at them initially, and I’m not missing Motorcyclist at all.  It had become a collection of snowflake fluff.

Anyway, I looked through the last issue (the one I received last week) to see if they were making this a special issue (you know, because it was the last).  Nope, not really.  There was a brief article (less than a page) near the beginning that explained this was the last issue and it stated what I believe to be not more than a couple of half-assed excuses:  The motorcycle industry has been in a permanent funk since the recession and nobody with any brains advertises in print media.  It’s a digital world, Motorcyclist said, and motorcycling (as an interest, an endeavor, and an industry) is on life support (my words, but that’s essentially the Motorcyclist message).   My take?  These guys are good at making excuses.  They’re right up there with that world-class, place-the-blame-anywhere-but-on-me hack who wrote What Happened.  Blame it on the Russians, I guess.

The rest of the articles in the final Motorcyclist made no mention that this was the last issue, so my take on the whole affair is that it was a decision made suddenly.   It’s a pity, as Motorcyclist used to be good.   Really good.  They had superb writing (including a regular column by a guy named Joe Gresh).   But they failed to adapt.  The market was changing and the coffee-table format and fluffy content Motorcyclist switched to a few years ago missed the mark by a mile.  To their credit, they realized they had a problem, but their diagnosis and prescribed course of treatment was wrong.  It’s that old joke:  What do you call the student who graduates at the bottom of their medical school class?  The answer, of course, is Doctor.  Just having the title, though, doesn’t mean you know the right answers.

In the final analysis, I don’t buy what Motorcyclist said for the most obvious of reasons:  There are good motorcycle magazines out there that are thriving.  They’ve done a far better job of picking the right content, format, and market niche, and they are serving it well.  One is Motorcycle Classics, with a focus on classic motorcycles.  Another is RoadRUNNER, with a focus on touring.   Rider may be in that category, too (I haven’t looked at them lately).   And there’s Buzz Kanter’s American Iron magazine, with a focus on custom and vintage mostly-made-in-America motorcycles.   I believe there are several things that inoculate these publications to the double whammies of a depressed motorcycle market and the brave new digital world.  The first is that each is led by passionate riders.   Think Landon Hall at Motorcycle Classics, the Neuhausers at RoadRUNNER, and Buzz Kanter at AIM.  These are folks who ride, who tour, who love motorcycles, and who live in our world (and that comes across in their magazines).  The second huge factor is that each of these magazines found a niche that doesn’t need to scoop the competition.   If you’re in the printed magazine business and you need to be the first to publish breaking news, you’ll never beat the Internet.  Nope, each of these magazines went a different route.  Vintage bikes aren’t bold new graphics or the latest race results (let the Internet break that kind of baloney).   Touring is not breaking news and that’s why RoadRUNNER does well.  And custom, or vintage, Harleys and Indians…well, that’s the same deal:  American Iron has what is essentially a timeless topic.  And then there’s one last factor, I think, and it is that each of these magazines has superior editorial direction.  The articles are profoundly interesting, well-written, error-free, and skillfully presented.  Landon, Florian, and Steve are gifted editors who take their life’s work seriously, and if you didn’t know, they are the editors of Motorcycle Classics, RoadRUNNER, and American Iron.

Nope, the demise of Motorcyclist is unfortunate, but it’s of their own doing. Cream always rises to the top, flawed strategies ultimately fail, and the Russians had nothing to do with it.