Gear – Page 11 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Bill’s Old Bike Barn…a first peek

Stop what you’re doing. Get off the Internet (and for sure, get off Facebook and the other moronic “social media” time wasters). Start planning a trip to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. You need to see Bill’s Old Bike Barn. The riding is fabulous in rural Pennsylvania and with Bill’s as a destination, the ride is even better. You can thank me now or you can thank me later, but you will thank me.

Any motorcycle museum that includes in its directions “turn where you see the dinosaurs” should grab your attention. In the case of Bill’s Old Bike Barn, your undivided attention is warranted. To say I was blown away would be an understatement of immense proportions. To cut to the chase, I’ve never seen anything like Bill’s, and I know for damn sure I’ve never met a man like Bill. That’s Bill artistically framed by Milwaukee iron in the photo above, and yeah, I shot that picture. I’m proud of it. It hints at the dimensions of the man and what he’s created out there in Pennsylvania.

During our interview I asked Bill his last name and he told me: Morris, just like the cigarettes. I didn’t get it until later, and then I couldn’t stop laughing. If you don’t get it immediately, you will. Bill has that kind of slingshot wit. I love the guy and his collection. You will, too.

Above all else, Bill is two things: A collector, and a people person. The extent if his collection…well, I can’t describe it. You need to see it. You’ll get just a hint here in the ExNotes series of blogs we’re doing. When you visit the place, you’ll feel like you owe me. When you meet Bill, you’ll know you’ve made a friend. A most interesting friend.

Up above, that’s the building that houses Bill’s collection. You can’t really see it from the highway. You have to look for the dinosaurs (just like the directions say), turn, and then head uphill. You’ll go by the bison, some other cool items, and more. The building looks deceptively small from the outside. Inside…you could spend weeks and not see all of what’s in there.

You can learn about Bill’s Old Bike Barn on his website, but we’re going to give you more here on ExNotes. We’re going to do it over the span of several blogs over the next few weeks, and in an upcoming article in a major moto mag. Ever watched and enjoyed American Pickers? Trust me on this (and trust me on everything else, for that matter): Bill Morris puts American Pickers to shame. You and I have never seen anything like what’s in Bill’s Old Bike Barn.

I’m excited about what I’ve seen and what I’m going to be sharing with you. I’ll do my best to bring it to life in print and in the photos, but it won’t be enough. You really need to visit Bill’s Old Bike Barn.

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Ho-Made Tools I Don’t Use

I’ve been cleaning out the shed on and off for about four years now. When we first moved here we stuffed everything into the shed. There was no time to sort through the junk. We had to return the Penske truck. After the junk sat there a few years the mice made a lot of decisions for us: if it was chewed up we tossed it.

I had tools at my work, tools at the house, tools at The Love Shack, three of everything. I just can’t bring myself to toss out tools. I have some home-built tools that no longer serve a purpose but I hang on to them. Because you never know when you’ll need to remove the centrifugal oil filter on a Honda 305.

This wrench was made from a cut down socket and a rear fender support from a Sportster. It fits the output flange nut on a boat V-drive. The output flange sits pretty low in the bilge and after a while the salt water splashing around in the bottom of the boat corrodes the seal. To remove the seal you have to separate the prop shaft from the V-drive. The problem is the prop shaft will only slide back a few inches before the prop-shaft flange hits the stuffing box. With this set up I could change a v-drive seal without pulling the engine. It was a stupid move on my part because at the time I was paid by the hour. The faster I went the less I earned. I still keep the wrench; maybe it will fit something else someday.

I mentioned the stuffing box and here’s the cut down pipe wrench I used to remove the packing nut and loosen the lock nut. Stuffing boxes are used where the prop shaft goes through the boat hull, a bronze casting called a shaft log. The stuffing box is a large nut that has several rows of flax packing, also called cat gut. These rows of packing are fitted into the packing nut or the shaft log depending on the design of the shaft log.

The flax packing seals the shaft log where the shaft enters so that water won’t leak into the boat…almost. In practice you want to leave a small drip, maybe a drop every 30 seconds, for a water supply to cool the stuffing box. If you crank down on the packing too much you can burn up the flax and the shaft log will leak. The pipe wrench is short because the stuffing box nut is large and it’s always hard to access between the stringers of the boat. You can buy a store bought stuffing box wrench but they are made like a flimsy adjustable wrench with a cheesy wing nut to lock the jaws into position. Trust me: the pipe wrench works better. A hammer also works but tends to damage the bronze stuffing box.

I didn’t make the dial indicator, just the Z-shaped bracket. This tool is used to set the timing on a 1971 360 Yamaha Enduro. The ’71 Enduro (and other years) has an angled sparkplug hole. The angled hole precludes measuring the piston stroke through the plug hole. With the cylinder head removed this tool bolts up and can measure the stroke. You have to know the piston position to accurately set the ignition timing. Once you’ve set the correct fire position there is a little tab inside the flywheel area that lines up with a flywheel mark. Bending the tab to line everything up will save you from measuring the piston stroke every time you want to adjust the points. It’s a use-it-once type of tool unless you disturb the timing marks. Godzilla runs so good I may never need it again.

This tool is made from Monel, a metal found around boat yards, which isn’t important to its function. There are a few other holes in the tool but I’ve forgotten what they do. The two holes marked by the red arrows will fit a Norton Lockheed front disc brake caliper. In operation you insert a couple drill bits into the tool; the bits line up with two holes drilled into the Lockheed caliper. The caliper plug this tool fits unscrews and allows removal of the caliper piston. You need this long lever because the plug gets pretty tight after 35 years. I’m hanging on to the tool because I may own another Norton one day.

At one time my dad and I owned BMW motorcycles. He had the 600cc and I had the 750. These were early 1970s models with the new, suitcase engine. In building the suitcase engine BMW relocated the cam below the crankshaft so the pushrod tubes were below the cylinder rather than above like on earlier engines. This was done to raise the cylinders higher in the bike allowing steeper lean angles in the corners. The problem was the pushrod tubes leaked oil where they contacted the crankcase. This tool slips over the pushrod tube and by tapping the base of the pushrod tube you could tighten up the seal area. It sounds crude but it was easier than pulling the heads to install new pushrod tube seals. I think you can buy a factory tool that looks much better than mine but does the same thing. I’m not adverse to owning the early GS 800cc, the ones that are clean and light and don’t have all the useless garbage BMW loads onto new motorcycles.

This tool is used to remove the nut from a Honda 305 centrifugal oil filter. I had two 305 Hondas. Those bikes had beautiful engines that were made extremely well. Early Hondas had a spinning cup type filter that oil circulated through. In the spinning motion heavy particles suspended in the oil were slung outward, clean oil flowed through the center. It was a good oil filter and if you wanted to take the engine apart like I did you needed this tool. After thousands of miles you would remove the right side cover to gain access to the filter. A wire clip held the o-ringed lid on the filter and I’d pull the thing off for cleaning. It wasn’t unusual to find 1/8-inch of compacted swarf stuck to the walls of the filter.

Back to boats. This tool is used to remove the macerator from Raritan Crown marine toilets. Working on boats isn’t the glamorous job that you see in the movies. Sometimes you had to fix toilets. The Crown was a very popular toilet back in the day. It used a large starter motor to spin a macerator and two rubber impeller pumps. One pump supplied seawater to the bowl then a macerator chewed up the poo and finally another impeller pumped the mash to a holding tank or overboard depending on how far offshore you were. After much use the seals would start leaking and the stuff leaking out wasn’t peppermint.

You had to disconnect hoses and the bowl then turn the motor (usually) to get to the end plate. Small straight slot screws held on the plastic end plate, removing the end plate allowed access to the macerator and the poo. The macerator had two pivoting chopper arms; removing these arms allowed you to screw the puller tool onto the macerator and a center bolt would pull the macerator. It was not a fun job. I wish I never made the puller tool. I could have told customers, “Sorry I don’t have the tools to fix your toilet.”

I have more homemade, or as we say in the south “ho-made” tools that I may write about on a day like today, a day when I’m sifting through the accumulated junk of my life.

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ExhaustNotes Road Test: Shoei RF SR Helmet

I finally managed to put some miles on my new Shoei RF SR helmet. I took the RD350 out for a loop of the mountains and Tularosa’s TulieFreeze Ice cream shop. I had a Sundae with hot fudge, nuts and whipped cream. TulieFreeze always puts a cherry on top.

Oh yeah…the helmet. The Shoei was quiet at highway speeds, none of my bikes have windshields so I get the air full blast and I like it that way. Turning my head side to side was comfortable and the wind didn’t over-rotate my head side on. All in all the Shoei RS cuts a pretty clean swath through the air. There was no shaking or turbulence.

The fit is perfect on the top parts of my head (your head may vary) but the cheeks are still too tight as the pads press in on my jowly visage more than is appropriate for two people who just met. Luckily the cheek pads are made to be easily removable in case you have crashed. Hopefully the EMT will know to remove the pads before trying to force the helmet off and severing your spinal cord.

I’ll probably wait a bit longer before shaving down the cheek pads. I still have hopes it will break in. I need to stop and remove my helmet to relieve the face-pressure after 50 miles. It gives me a chance to admire the RD’s metallic purple paint. The tight-ish flip shield has loosened up a bit, I gave it a squirt of Shoei oil and after 10-20 flips it’s ok.

Speaking of the shield I have Shoei’s auto-darkening face shield. That sucker cost more than any helmet I’ve ever bought. Since I now have had both cataracts removed from my eyes I can see much better at night. I’m planning to step up the after hours summer riding and the auto-tint works fabulously. From the outside it appears super dark but from inside the helmet it’s not so dark. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if it got darker. As it is I can ride in bright sunlight without squinting. It seems to keep the inside of the helmet cooler.

When the sun goes down it’s as clear as a clear shield. On thing that worries me is how resistant the coating is to gas station squeegees and bug guts. I’m going to put a heavy coat of paste wax on the shield and even that makes me nervous. What if the wax screws it up?

It was cool but not cold on my ride and I totally forgot to open the vents to see if they had any effect of the interior airflow. At 70 degrees with the vents closed it was comfortable. I’ll test the vents after the doctor gives my new eye the ok to thrash around on a motorcycle.

Another week or two and my eye should be back to full strength. That means I can lift concrete bags and ride around without a care. I’ve already planned a trip to Tina’s Mexican food in Carlsbad; they have reopened after Covid shut them down for a year. It’s good to see things returning to normal after such a trying two years.

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New Boot Day

Life is full of tiny, traumatic incidents. Each day we are met with hundreds of micro-decisions that demand little of our attention yet matter enough to require a few seconds of our time. New Boot Day is not one of these decisions.

I was going to the Harbor Freight in Alamogordo to pick up one of their welding carts that was on sale for $34. Or maybe was it a closeout? Inventory reduction? Anyway, I try not to leave the house in my bathrobe and slippers so I put on my day clothes and boots for the excursion. That’s when it hit me. My boots were looking pretty bad.

I’ve been wearing Rossi boots for about 8 years now. They are super comfortable right out of the box. Style-wise the Rossi boots are no great shakes but who wears boots for style? If the Rossi’s can be said to have a flaw that flaw is that they last forever. The damn things simply never wear out. Since they still work as boots you never know when to call them done.

Today though, the Rossi’s looked pretty tattered. The soles were still firmly attached and the uppers were all in one piece, it’s just that the overall boot looked like something you’d see worn by the unfortunate men in one of those grainy photos of a depression-era food line. I began to be self-conscious about my foot wear: will the clerk at Harbor Freight take a look at my beat up boots and decide to call security?

I’m hard on boots. My shuffling pace, the lazy-feet constantly tripping over rocks and thresholds and my need to crawl around on the ground to do the things I like to do all tend to shorten the life of boots qua Gresh. Popular, well-known brands of leather work-boots will last about 6 months on me.

Conversely, I hate to get rid of a pair of boots unless they are utterly destroyed. Part of it is my natural thriftiness and part of is my deep-seated feeling that I don’t really deserve a new pair of boots. What have I done to warrant new boots? There are many, many people who work much harder than me and these people do not get new boots…ever. I feel like such a fraud wearing new boots. Who do I think I’m fooling?

Then there’s the distress caused by having to witness my brand new boots get scuffed up. One time I had new boots on and the first day I tripped over a sharp piece of rebar, the rebar put a 1-inch long slice on the toe of my new boot. It nearly killed me. Not the trip: the slice. I find my movements inhibited with new boots on. I can’t do my thing and worry about the finish on my boots at the same time.

After much anxiety and teeth gnashing new boots become old boots and my world can settle down. Everything is in order, I can pull on my boots and go about my daily business, be it motorcycle riding or concrete placement, without a second thought. I’m free and loose with old boots.

But not today. Today I have on new boots and every step I take in them is a toxic cocktail of fear and self-loathing. I will step high, always watching for obstacles that could mar the beautiful ebony leather of my new boots. I will bend at the knees. I will stand soles down and I will wish I could leave my new boots safe in their shoebox forever.

Product Review: Casio GD400 G-Shock Watch

I own a bunch of watches. They’re not rich man watches; they are the indulgence of a guy with practical tastes and a flair for useful and inexpensive tools. My all-time favorite watch, hands down, is the Casio G-Shock GD400 series, with a personal preference for the olive green one. I’ll get to that in a second (hahahaha…a time pun).

I first bought a similar Casio in turquoise and orange, almost as an impulse buy. I had purchased a set of shoes from Nike or Adidas or somebody in turquoise and orange, and then (probably because I had searched for them online) I started seeing pop up ads for the Casio.

I know it’s weird. I mean, what kind of a motorcycle guy buys a watch to match his shoes? (You don’t need to answer that.) The watch arrived a few days later and I liked it. I was in and out of CSC a lot when I bought the watch and the shoes (we were getting ready for a CSC Baja ride), and I caught a bit of flack for being a fashion plate. That’s how it goes sometimes when you’re a famous and well-dressed blogger.

I liked the watch, and I loved its phenomenal accuracy. I went to www.Time.gov (that’s the official US government time), and the Casio was running exactly even with the government website over the span of a month. That’s really good.

The Casio has a bunch of features I never really use and some I use a lot. It’s got a stopwatch, a timer, and an alarm. It’s got a calendar and it shows the day of the week. You can have it show regular time or military time. You can set it so that if you flick your wrist, the backlight comes on. And you can press the G button and the thing lights up. I use the Casio as a flashlight three or four times every night…you older guys will know what that’s all about. And by pressing the buttons mounted on the case side you can find the time in just about any time zone in the world. That comes in handy on many of my overseas secret missions.

I wore the watch for several years, and then on another CSC Baja trip the battery went south on me. The battery had the good manners to do this in Guerrero Negro, where there are a few stores. I asked the guy who took us to see the whales on that trip which store would have a battery and he pointed one out on our way to the docks. After seeing the whales and having a couple of fish tacos at Tony’s, I rode my RX3 to the place the guide had mentioned. Nope, they didn’t sell watch batteries, but the farmacia two doors down did. Okay, so I went to the farmacia two doors down. Nope, they didn’t have watch batteries, but another farmacia two doors on the other side of the first store did.

Then things got interesting. They had the battery, but the lady behind the counter told me I had to open the watch and change the battery myself. The watch has these tiny little screws and I was wearing my contact lenses, which gives me great far field vision but lousy near field vision. She gave me a little box of tiny screwdrivers, but I couldn’t see the screws very well and I tried to explain my predicament to the very nice lady, but she didn’t speak English. So, I took my right contact out (they’re one-day disposables, so it wasn’t a big deal) and I basically did a roadside repair.

The watch lit up as soon as the battery went in, but the rear cover is orientation sensitive and I got it wrong. The watch crystal fogged within an hour, and by the end of the day, the watch called time out (hahahaha …another time pun). The time out, unfortunately, was permanent. When I returned to So Cal, I took it to the guy who normally sells (and installs) watch batteries for me, but it was too late. The watch was toast.

I missed having that watch on my wrist, and I tried to buy it again. But it turns out that Casio changes the colors frequently on this particular model. Not only had the turquoise and orange version been discontinued, but now it was collectible. I had paid $72 for mine, but by this time used ones were going for close to $400 on Ebay.

A week or two later, another secret mission, and I found myself killing time (wow, a third time pun!) in a mall in New Jersey, and I saw the OD green version of the GD400 Casio. The sales guy and I went back and forth a little, and $92 later (tax included), the watch you see in the big photo at the top of this blog left with me. Like I said, it’s just about the perfect watch and I wear it nearly all the time.

More good news? I liked that turquoise and orange G-Shock watch, too, so I called Casio’s US importer and asked them if they could repair it. I had to spend another $60, but that’s okay. There’s only one thing that’s better than one Casio GD-400 G-Shock, and that’s two of them. The GD400 model comes in a variety of other colors, too, and they typically go for around $100 on the Internet. Trust me on this…if you want a good watch for every day bouncing around, you can’t go wrong with a G-Shock Casio.

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ExhaustNotes Hasty Conclusions: First look At Shoei’s RF-SR Helmet

My nephew Anthony has been bugging me for years to buy a new motorcycle helmet. He was in the business as manager at Cycle Gear in Albuquerque, so he knew his helmets. Even I had to admit my tattered lids were getting old. I have a HJC from New Zealand bought in 2014 and a Speed and Strength from The Helmet House that dates all the way back to Motorcyclist magazine’s paper era.

Most brand name helmets have gotten pretty expensive. Since I’m so cheap I don’t like to give up old helmets until they kill me, or ideally, give them up a week before they kill me. But from a fiscal standpoint who can say which day that will be? Over the years I’ve bobbed and weaved around the topic so much that Anthony offered to send me a new helmet, any helmet I wanted. I mean, the guy is tying to support a family; I can’t have him buying helmets for me. That’s what wives are for.

My A-number-one, favorite helmet of all time is the Speed and Strength. That helmet fit my head better than any other and it felt lightweight. The aerodynamics are great on the thing also: no buffeting in the wind and fairly quiet to boot. Naturally, the same model is no longer made. CT and Anthony got together and always keeping a weather eye on my thrifty nature, decided a Shoei RF-SR would be a quality helmet without costing much more than the motorcycles I habituate.

The Shoei RF-SR model must be on its way out because finding one was not an easy task. CT ordered one from Dennis Kirk and after a few weeks she checked on the order status. The helmet was out of stock and on back order. It would have been a polite thing for DK to mention this at the checkout page. As usual Amazon had the helmet but only in silly teen-age Moto GP colors, white or flat black. I chose flat black to make myself less conspicuous. Kind of a, if-they-can’t-see-you-they-can’t-hit-you, loud pipes save lives type of reasoning.

The Shoei came with a fat owner’s manual that consisted of page after page of responsibility disclaimers, warnings not to use anything but mild soap and water to clean the helmet and descriptions of all the ways the helmet could be made unsafe. I flipped through the manual and didn’t find much useful information but then I’m not a tort lawyer.

I was mostly concerned with fit, as the best helmet in the world won’t protect you if it is bouncing down the road without your head inside. Helmet brands are sized differently and with Internet purchases you can never be size-sure. Amazon’s easy return policy made the proposition a little less risky. My pea brain suits a medium helmet and the Shoei medium is a snug fit. Not painfully tight but you won’t forget you’re wearing a helmet. I think a large would be too loose.

I like a snug helmet. There’s nothing more annoying than a helmet wiggling around on your head causing double vision. I haven’t worn the helmet much but I think it will conform to my head shape after a few long rides. Or as they say on the British situation comedy Are You Being Served “It will ride up with wear.”

The Amazon shipping box felt very light and when I took the helmet out I commented how light it felt. I felt the urge to get all Cycle Magazine-y and put the thing on the scales. I was surprised to see the Shoei was heavier than both the HJC and my battered Speed And Strength.

The Shoei weighed 6 ounces more than the Speed And Strength, which seemed like a lot to me. The HJC, which always felt sort of heavy to me, split the difference. Oddly, the Shoei feels lighter when you pick it up and wear the thing. Maybe the hole it knocks in your wallet makes it seem lighter. This goes to show you I cannot be trusted when describing weights or measures.

There is a large, closeable front vent on the chin bar of the Shoei. I hit the opening with my Ryobi grass blower and the vent passed a decent quantity of air. The plastic latching bits seem fairly secure.

On the forehead area there are two small vents that also open and close. The Ryobi grass blower passed less air through these small vents but really the only way to see how all these holes work is to ride the bike.

Two back vents take advantage of a low-pressure area directly behind the helmet’s spoiler thingy to help draw cool air through the Shoei. These are fixed and cannot be closed but you really need some air exchange inside the lid to keep from falling asleep and crashing. Okay, I made that last part up. No one has fallen asleep from motorcycle helmet oxygen starvation. That I know of.

Also included inside the Shoei box was a nose guard and a chin cover. The nose guard helps direct your hot, steamy exhalations downward away from the face shield. This might help with fogging but I can’t say for sure as it rubs on my awesome beak so I leave it out. The chin cover fits along the front-bottom of the chin bar and seals that area off for cold weather riding. I don’t like the feel of the chin cover chafing against my waddle so I left that bit out also.

A pinlock anti-fog insert came in the Shoei box too, you get a lot of extras with a Shoei helmet. The pinlock fits inside your face shield creating a double pane window effect that is supposed to stop condensation and related fogging. It might do this but I’ll have to wait for conditions to worsen here in sunny, dry, New Mexico to test it out. Shoei included a couple of easily lost, pinlock posts in case your shield isn’t Pinlock ready. You’ll have to drill your shield and insert the little posts in the correct location. Right, that’s not gonna happen. Luckily for me the RF came with the posts already fitted.

Lastly, a helmet bag and a tiny jar of Shoei oil were included in the box. I’m guessing the oil is for the face shield ratchet mechanism. I should put a little oil on there because the shield is kind of hard to open. I’m hoping it will ride up with wear.

Construction projects at Tinfiny ranch have been keeping me busy so I haven’t had a chance to test the Shoei beyond wearing it to bed for a couple Star Wars nights: “I’m your father, Luke!” I’ll try to get out in the next day or so with an ExhaustNotes follow up report with an additional surprise helmet widget review.

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Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

In a previous life I managed operations that sold aircraft components to Boeing. And I’ve taught related courses to Boeing companies and Boeing suppliers. Boeing’s emphasis on quality assurance, safety, and reliability was extreme and Boeing went far beyond what any other organization required. That’s why I was so surprised a few years ago when facts began to emerge detailing how Boeing concealed flight control augmentation systems information on their new 737 Max aircraft.

When I returned home from another secret mission a couple of nights ago and we tuned into Netflix, a documentary on Boeing’s 737 Max failures popped up when Netflix opened. Downfall: The Case Against Boeing had just been released that day.

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing is an inside look at the events surrounding the two crashes that occurred shortly after the 737 Max began flying. It’s about the 737 Max, its two crashes, Boeing’s resistance to revealing MCAS (that’s Boeing’s acronym for Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), the aircraft’s susceptibility to a single-point failure, Boeing’s prioritizing sales over safety, the Federal Aviation Agency’s inadequate response, and more.

I thought Downfall: The Case Against Boeing was extremely well done. If you get a chance, this is a show worth viewing.

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Hasty Conclusions: First Look At The Harbor Freight Tire Changer

I usually change my own motorcycle tires. I’ve been doing it since I was a small child and the job has never been all that easy. In fact, I dread changing tires but there is no other way. The thought of taking a motorcycle in for new tires was as alien and hoity-toity to me as having a live-in maid. The Husqvarna changed all that. The Husky’s wide, 17-inch rims combined with even wider tires really stymied me. I would pinch the tube nearly every time I put a tire on that bike.

One time after pinching the tube four times trying to get the last bit of bead over the rim I stuck the only tube I had in the 150/60-17 back wheel: a 21-inch dirt bike tube. That tube lasted for the duration of the tread life and when it came time for a new tire I folded my cards. I took the rim to our local independent motorcycle shop, Holiday Cycles.

Holiday Cycles charged me $25 to install whichever tire I supplied. Size did not matter. I didn’t need to buy the tire from them, as they don’t stock sizes to fit the Husky. What a relief to drop the new tire and wheel off at Holiday and pick it up a few hours later shiny and new. And there were no holes: the tire held air. This was a wonderful relationship. Holiday gradually raised the price of a tire change to $40 but it was still worth it to me. Avoiding hours of struggle only to have the tire leak was not the sort of thing I wanted to go back to.

Unfortunately, Holiday Cycles closed up recently and I’ve been lucky not to need a new tire on the Husky. There is a Yamaha and a Kawasaki dealer in town that change tires. I’ve never used them; I kind of liked Holiday Cycles.

My buddy Mike from the Carrizozo Mud Chucker’s bought a Harbor Freight motorcycle tire changer and said it was okay. Better than a 5-gallon bucket, I think were his words. Naturally anything Mike gets I have to copy.

Harbor Freight spammed my Facebook page with the motorcycle tire adaptor part for $32. This seemed like a good deal. My first thought was to just get the adaptor and make my own base. When I got to Harbor Freight I saw the base was only $44 and it was made for changing car tires. I looked at the bright red, powder-coated base and thought, no way can I make a base this nice for only $44. I bought the car-tire changer base. I was all in for $76, a little less than two tire changes at the old bike shop. You get a lot of steel for your money with Harbor Freight and I loaded up the weighty boxes of metal and drove home.

Like most of Harbor Freight’s shop equipment, you have to modify the things to make them work a little better or at all. One of the first things I did was take the motorcycle adaptor to Roy’s Welding to weld the three legs of the adaptor to the adaptor hub. The factory setup is a couple bolts on each leg. This does not work well as the bolts are squeezing on square tubing. No matter how tight you torque the bolts, right down to crushing the square tubing, the arms won’t stay flat and move up and down easily.

The whole purpose of the motorcycle adaptor is to secure the rim so that you can work on the beads without the whole assembly skidding across the shed floor. You don’t want the three legs flopping around. Roy had a hard time welding the legs because the powder coating was very thick. “Man, they put a ton on there.” I thanked Roy, paid my $15 and the welded legs are very secure now.

The way the motorcycle adaptor works is two of the legs have adjustable, pinned rim-grabbers. You adjust those to suit your rim size. The third leg has a screw-driven rim-grabber that tightens onto the rim like a vise. Initially I thought the grabbers worked from the inside out. Turns out they grab the outside of the rim.

Since the grabbers are flat-faced when you tighten them onto the rim it doesn’t hold well: the tire slips upward and out of the adaptor. Mike simply heated the grabber tips and bent them inward so that the rim can’t slip out. My other brother, Deet, who also has a Harbor Freight tire machine, made some nice, plastic rim protectors to grip the rim. I copied Deet’s system. We will see if it works or just snaps off the first time I use the motorcycle adaptor.

I had an old bead breaker but the Harbor Freight tire machine comes with a pretty good bead breaker built right into the base. You use the (included) long tire iron as a lever. The base unit for car tires looks like it should work well. I might try changing a few MGB-GT tires on the thing. I think it needs a sturdier center cone to hold automobile rims but maybe not.

Bolting the base unit to the concrete floor was fairly easy. A hammer drill does the job faster than a plain old rotary drill. I used 5/8” expansion studs on three of the base legs and a 3/8” expansion stud on the bead-breaker leg to keep the bolt size down in that area. I also added a few angle pieces to join the three base feet together. Harbor Freight should have welded the foot pieces but that would make the package larger. Shipping stuff from China isn’t cheap.

Adding it up, I have about $100 in the Harbor Freight tire machine with the motorcycle adaptor, anchor bolts and plastic. I had to clean out a section of the shed to make room for it but it looks the business sitting there doing nothing. The long tire iron that came with the base is sort of fat for motorcycle tires so I may look around or make something different, maybe something with plastic tips to keep from scratching chrome wheels. I’ll do an update when I get around to using the thing. I figure with the money I’ll save using the Harbor Freight motorcycle tire changer I can start interviewing for that live-in maid.

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ExNotes Review: KooBee Fit-All Dirt Bike Headlight

My 2008 Husqvarna 510 came equipped from the factory with the worse headlight I’ve ever had on a motorcycle. What am I saying? It’s the worse headlight I’ve ever had on anything and that includes those old HO scale slot cars that had headlights actuated by the motor controller thingy.

Not only is the headlight dim: the most annoying thing is the way the Husky eats incandescent bulbs. I go through one bulb every 500 miles. The bulbs themselves are oddball scooter type and 35 watts barely casts a glow on the road. The lens is melting from the little bit of heat generated and the separate, small parking light bulb will no longer stay attached because the hole it fits into has melted into a large egg shape.

In an attempt to slow the destruction I installed a weak, low wattage LED bulb and that unit has managed to stay lit for 5000 miles. “Lit” is a relative term: the LED struggles to illuminate the leading edge of the Husky’s front fender. But it does stay on. It gets dark pretty early his time of year so I decided to take another shot at the headlight situation by buying an entirely new headlight.

The KooBee universal fit headlight comes with a halo-type parking light, a low beam and a high beam. The plastic lens is fitted into a plastic number plate faring that resembles the original Husky part. Included with the light were four of the rubber headlight mounts, the kind that go around the fork tube just like the originals the Husky came with. All in all the setup looks fairly well made for cheap plastic junk.

Fitting the light was a bit of an issue because the original headlight bucket was shallower and the whole unit fit closer to the fork tubes. The KooBee light fixture stuck out further and the mounting arms were too short. The light would have fit if I removed all the wiring, the horn, the speedometer and the anodizing on the fork tubes. Instead I made three aluminum extension arms to move the headlight a couple inches forward allowing the rat’s nest of wiring a little room to breathe. As it is I had to relocate the horn and rearrange the wiring to fit it all in.

The next problem was connecting the KooBee to the Husky’s headlight plug. The KooBee came with 4 loose wires in a pigtail with no plug or socket at all. Naturally, the Husky uses a strange 4-pin socket and plug, unlike the normal 3-pin type you see on most older motorcycles and cars. I lopped off the Husky plug and soldered the KooBee headlight wires to the Husky pigtail. I can unplug the headlight when it catches fire pretty fast now.

When it came time to fit the rubber mounts to the Husky forks the nice looking kit rubbers fell apart. The rubber looked ok and was molded well but it seemed like it was already partially decomposed. You could pull the things apart like Playdough Fun Factory clay. The kit rubbers were tossed into the trash bin and I used the original Husky rubbers, which still had life after 14 years.

With everything put back together I turned on the ignition and the halo/rim light was already brighter than my old LED on high beam. Firing the bike off lit the low beam and it was a huge improvement. I flicked the high beam on and got a nice bit of light. When I’m describing the light output you must take into consideration where I was starting from: near total darkness. The KooBee has an up-down adjuster screw but no side to side. For side adjustment you move the rubber bands that hold the light onto the forks. I haven’t tested the light at night because it’s too damn cold for that stuff right now. It almost doesn’t matter because it is what it is, there’s no putting a bigger bulb in the KooBee. If it goes out you replace the entire headlight. The KooBee was $45 on Amazon and if it stays on for a few thousand miles I’ll be happy.

I suspect the KooBee’s black plastic is sort of soft. I tried to wax the faring part so that bugs won’t stick but the wax seemed to take the gloss off. The stock Husky stuff dulled fast also. Maybe that’s just the way plastic body parts are. After it warms up a bit I’ll take a night ride to see how the KooBee works. I might need to adjust the thing but I know it’s much brighter than the stock light. Look for a mid-March KooBee follow up report here on ExhaustNotes.us.

A 6.5 Creedmoor Browning X-Bolt

Yeah, I’ve become a 6.5 Creedmoor believer. This is a superior cartridge and accuracy seems to just come naturally with it.

The rifle you see above is a maple-stocked Browning X-Bolt. It’s from a limited run and it sure is good looking. I bought it from a small shop in in Lamar, Colorado, when I was there on a recent secret mission. The dealer wouldn’t ship it to California so it had to go the long way around: Lamar, Colorado, to Raleigh, North Carolina, to Riverside, California, and then finally to me after I waited the obligatory 10-day cooling off period (I have to be the coolest guy in California; I’ve cooled off so many times). California has extra requirements for shipping guns to FFL holders here and the dealer in Colorado didn’t want to mess with our nutty requirements. The reshipper guy in North Carolina makes a living doing this (who says government can’t stimulate trade?). It’s crazy, but that’s our leftist Utopia here in the Golden State. I sometimes wonder if our firearms regs have ever actually prevented a crime.

Anyway, to leave the politics behind, a couple of weeks ago when I was on the range a good friend gave me a box of once-fired 6.5 Creedmoor brass another shooter had left behind. That was a sign, and I figured I’d reload it for the first range session with the new Browning.

Speer, Hornady, and Nosler 6.5mm bullets.

I already had stocked up on 6.5 Creedmoor bullets. I am probably on every reloading retailer’s email list and I get a dozen advertising emails every day. With components being in short supply nationally, if I see anything I might use I pick it up. Like the maple Browning you see above, the time to buy something that’s hard to get is when you see it (to quote Mike Wolfe).

That’s the Speer 140-grain jacketed softpoint on the left, the Hornady 140-grain jacketed boattail hollowpoint in the middle, and the Nosler 140-grain jacketed boattail hollowpoint on the right. The Nosler has a longer boattail than the Hornady, and the ogive is blunter.

From everything I’ve read and my limited experience loading for a Ruger 6.5 Creedmoor No. 1 (see my recent blog on the 6.5 Creedmoor Ruger No. 1), IMR 4350 propellant is the secret sauce for accuracy with this cartridge. I had some under the reloading bench and it got the nod for this load session.

That’s how I keep track of what I’m loading at the bench. I’ll transfer that information to a reloading label that goes on the rifle ammo container.

IMR 4350 is an extruded stick powder, and it doesn’t meter consistently through the powder dispenser. I use an RCBS trickler I’ve had for 50 years. The idea is that you drop a charge into a loading pan, it goes on the scale, and then you trickle in extra powder (a particle or two) at a time with the trickler to arrive at the exact weight.

An old and well worn RCBS powder trickler. It works well and although it sounds slow, it goes pretty quickly.

I have a set of Lee dies I use for the 6.5 Creedmoor. It’s Lee’s “ultimate” four-die set, which includes a full length resizing die and decapper, a neck-size-only die and decapper, the bullet seating die (which includes a roll crimping feature), and a factory crimp die. Lee dies are inexpensive and they work well. Their customer service is superb, too. I full length resized this batch and I didn’t crimp. I’ll experiment with that later. For this load, I just wanted to get pointed in the right direction. The refinements will come later (if they are needed).

The Lee 6.5 Creedmoor die set. Lee dies include the shell holder; most other manufacturers’ die sets do not. Lee makes good gear.

After charging the primed cases with IMR 4350, I seated the bullets. The long, heavy-for-caliber bullets and the relatively short 6.5 Creedmoor brass make for cartridges that look like hypodermic needles. It’s good looking ammo.

So how did the new 6.5 Creedmoor do? It was very cold and very windy when I went to the range. I had hoped for more pictures of the Browning in the daylight but it was so windy I didn’t want to chance the photos (I was afraid the wind would knock the rifle out of its Caldwell rest). There was only one other shooter out there; most folks were probably staying warm at home. I shot at 100 yards and the wind notwithstanding, this puppy can shoot. Here are the results from my first box of reloaded ammo…there are a few erratic groups, but they were due to me and the wind.

Here’s what the best groups looked like:

The Browning likes the 140 grain Hornady jacketed hollowpoint boattail bullets, which is good because I have a couple of boxes of those. Going up to 40.7 grains of IMR 4350 helped a bit. After I fired these rounds, I could chamber a fired case without it sticking, so I am going to load another 20 cartridges that I will neck size only.

The scope I bought for this rifle is a Vortex 4×12 (it’s made in China). This was the first time I used a Vortex. The optics are very clear. Because of the wind and the cold temperatures I didn’t try to adjust the parallax; I just set the parallax adjustment at 100 yards and shot (I’ll adjust the parallax next time, assuming the weather cooperates). The Vortex click adjustments for windage and elevation are not as tactilely distinct as they are on a Leupold or a Weaver. The clicks are squishy and I had to look at the turret graduations to keep track. Eh, it’s a $170 scope. You get what you pay for. Sometimes.

The recoil on the 6.5 Creedmore is moderate; maybe a little less than a .308. The Browning has a removable muzzle brake, and that helps.

The maple Browning (especially this one) really stands out. There were three rangemasters and one other shooter on the range the day I shot it. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at the rifle. They thought it was a custom gun. This Browning X-Bolt is a beautiful firearm. And it shoots, too.

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