Gear – Page 17 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Art’s 1911 Art

You probably remember good buddy Arthur Benjamins’ guest post on the Smith and Wesson Model 29. Arthur is an artist who recently created a beautiful painting highlighting the iconic 1911 .45 auto (a frequent topic here on ExNotes). He volunteered to do a guest column for the blog and we were quick to say yes. Enjoy, my friends.

Looks That Could Kill

The lady’s expression was thoughtful and disapproving. She stood arms crossed with a stance that parents would adopt with their young child who hadn’t properly screwed back the top on the peanut butter jar. If my junior school teacher had given me that same glare, I would have been guilty of shouting out the correct answer before raising my hand.

The subject of the lady’s gaze was my latest painting on show at the Arizona Fine Art Expo – my image graphically depicted of one of the USA’s legendary man made objects. 2.5 lbs of steel which could fit inside a coat pocket – The famous Colt .45 Automatic Pistol.

When Colt started production in 1911, no one would have guessed the impact it would have on the USA and the industrial world. It would be further immortalized in films, songs, books – and like the AR15, it would find its way into history and folklore. This was no ephemeral object. From an engineering point of view, the venerable Colt .45 pistol is a true work of art, and of the 2.7 million produced from 1911 onwards, all wartime specimens now command premium prices.

A Legend Comes to Life Again

One of the other artists offered to bring in his own for reference details, and the following morning he thrust a mint condition 1911 in a small cardboard box into my thirsty hands.

Thanking the good Lord for the USA’s freedom and Second Amendment, the mere possession of this object would have automatically produced a 5-year custodial sentence in the UK – a once-proud country in which I had lived for four decades and where I had sadly experienced firsthand the contrived and rapid deterioration of the firearms law and the victimization of the British shooting sports members.

However, I wanted to depict this highly developed, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle and convey its iconic status. The voice of action imagery contributes highly towards a visual impact, but that was not what I was looking for. I chose a harmonious and nestling triumvirate in red, white and blue along with similarly hued starred and swirling banners on a field of noble silver.

The great Andy Warhol would have smiled enigmatically at my painting, and have said something cryptic to me. He would have used three individual images himself and have colored them similarly but my own selective abstraction had steered me away from his own repetitious trademark productions.

However, I gladly accepted his spiritual input which he would have welcomed as it was not widely known that as his own portfolio grew, he was forever running out of ideas, turning to others for renewed inspiration.

Beautiful Memories

At the Expo, it was amazing just how many viewers lamented having gotten rid of their beloved Colt .45 many years ago or wished they had owned one in a time when were considered as surplus and you could barely give them away. I encountered several moist eyes and stories of proud ownership. I was one of those myself years ago, but the UK handgun legislation in 1997 ended all that.

One of the Vietnam vets at the Expo’s American Healing Arts Foundation openly carried a customized 1911 on his hip. It remains one of the ‘carry’ favorites for a great many Americans who refuse to accept anything else.

Feeling I really needed to give the lady more input, I gently approached and said that the last ten years had seen a great upswing of women who had taken up the shooting sport to become proud and responsible gun owners.

“Mm-mm,” she mused, giving me a difficult look. Her brow had furrowed when she returned to the painting. She looked back at me, “We have friends,” she spat, “And THEY have a gun!” With that, she turned on her heels and disappeared from view.

“Only ONE?” I smiled, and with that I straightened Nineteen Eleven on my easel, adjusted the label and awaited further memories from discerning visitors.

You just can’t win ‘m all.

Title: “NINETEEN ELEVEN”
Size: 29” x 32” x 2”
Medium: Acrylic paint on wood.
Value: $5950

For all inquiries, please contact Arthur directly.

The Star Powder Dispenser

I’m going at the Star resurrection slowly, methodically, and piecemeal. I suppose I could completely disassemble the thing, clean, degrease, and polish all the bits and pieces, and then reassemble it all. But I’m a little bit scared I might not remember how it all goes back together, and I don’t want to spread everything out and make my workbench unusable during this resurrection. Nope, slow and easy is the path forward for me. I’m doing it one bite at a time and I am enjoying the meal.

The Star Powder Dispenser

The first bite is the powder dispenser. It’s the deal that automatically dispenses the right amount of propellant each time the Star’s lever is pulled. It consists of a powder hopper subassembly (the upper arrow) and the dispensing mechanism (the lower arrow), as you see in the photo below.

Here’s another photo of the dispensing mechanism. It mounts to the Star’s upper plate (Star calls this upper plate the tool head).

Powder Dispenser Disassembly

Here’s the bottom of the powder hopper. It’s brass and it mounts by threading into the powder dispensing subassembly. The silo that holds the powder is plastic, and I think when it was new the plastic was probably clear. It’s occluded with age. That’s okay. So have I.

This is the powder dispensing mechanism with the powder hopper removed.

Looking inside the powder dispensing mechanism, there were still a few grains of powder left inside from the last time this reloading equipment was used. I’m guessing that was quite a while ago. My Nikon camera and Sigma macro lens do a wonderful job for this kind of photography.

Incidentally, speaking of the last time this device was used…several of our readers suggested that the number etched onto the Star reloader’s base was a social security number. Before identity theft became the problem it is today, it was common for folks to etch their social security number on things to prevent theft. One of our blog readers located the man whose social security number was located on this Star reloader. That owner was born in 1926 and died in 2009. To my surprise, there’s a social security death index where you can find this information. Who knew?

Back to the job at hand: The powder dispensing mechanism is secured to the tool head with two slotted screws. I had applied a bit of Kroil to these screws a day earlier and they unscrewed easily. Kroil is good stuff.

With the two screws removed, the photo below shows what the powder dispenser mechanism looked like. There’s a lower housing, an upper cover, a spring, the two attach screws, and the powder slide. It was all pretty funky when I disassembled it, but I took care of that.

The powder slide is what actually meters (determines the amount) of powder dropped into each cartridge. When the tool head is up (before you actuate the lever), powder drops into a cavity in the slide. When the tool head is lowered (when you actuate the lever), the powder slide is pushed to the left, the cavity containing the powder moves over the powder spout, and the powder drops through the spout into the cartridge case.

Cleaning Things Up

The tube sticking up through the tool head in the photo below is the powder spout. It’s what the left arrow points to. The right arrow points to the bullet seating and crimping die. There was a lot of crud on the die.

The spout was funky, so I ran a patch through it with a cleaning rod.

The bullet seating and crimping die is the last of the three reloading dies. It was super funky. It’s the die that seat the bullet and crimps the cartridge case.

Here’s the “after” photo. I went to work on the die with WD 40 and a toothbrush.

This is the powder dispenser lower housing. It’s funky, too, but just wait.

The photo below shows the powder slide, and it says exactly what I hoped it would say. Note the “BE” on the upper tine, and the “2.7 GR” on the lower tine. That means this powder slide is designed to throw 2.7 grains of Bullseye powder, and that’s a good thing. That powder and that charge, along with a 148-grain lead wadcutter bullet, is the accuracy load in .38 Special. I got lucky; this is exactly what I wanted to see. Note the two rollers between the tines. I’ll explain what they do a little further along in this blog. And yeah, I know, this is another funky piece. But wait; you’ll see.

More funkiness…the powder dispensing mechanism cover.

Here’s another shot of the powder slide and its spring. This is the “before” picture. And that hole in the center? It’s the feature that determines how much powder goes into each cartridge. If you want a different charge on a Star reloader, you need to buy a different power slide. Like I said, I got lucky. This one was set up for 2.7 grains of Bullseye. It’s just what I wanted.

I wiped the powder slide off and, being that it was brass, I wanted to get rid of all the oxidation and then polish it. I was thinking it would be cool if I had some Brasso, but since I’m no longer in the Army I don’t have any. Then I remembered: I have Dillon Rapid Polish brass polish that I use with my Franklin Arsenal brass tumbler, and it does the same thing. I put a little on a rag and used it to polish the powder slide.

Here’s another shot (the “after” photo) of the powder slide.

Note the rollers on the left end of the powder slide. This thing is like a Ducati: It has desmodromic valve actuation. I’ll explain that a little bit further down.

Next up would be the powder dispenser mounting screws. I went to work on them with a Scotchbrite pad and they cleaned up nicely.

Here’s the powder dispenser base and the powder on the tool head.

And here’s the powder dispenser cover, the spring, and the mounting screws reassembled. I used a Scotchbrite pad to clean up the powder dispenser housing and powder dispenser cover, too. They look good.

And finally, here’s the powder hopper reinstalled on the powder dispenser.

Desmo Dispenser Actuation

You might be wondering how the powder dispenser works. It’s really quite clever. When the Star reloader lever is actuated, the tool head moves up and down on the main shaft, bringing the powder dispenser with it. As that occurs, the powder slide translates back and forth as it moves along the curved cam you see in the photo below.

Remember those two rollers in the powder slide?

They follow the vertical cam path shown two photos up. The inner roller rolls along the cam as the tool head moves down, and the outer roller rolls along the cam as the tool head is returned to the up position. This is desmodromic actuation, just like Ducati uses on the their motorcycle intake and exhaust valves. They’re driven open by a cam, and they’re driven closed by a cam. Star could have just used pins instead of rollers, but they went with rollers (a more expensive and more reliable approach, I think). When the tool head moves down, the powder slide takes 2.7 grains of Bullseye powder, shifts it over the powder spout, and gravity does the rest. Take a look.

This is all very cool stuff, and if you get the feeling I’m having a good time bringing the Star back to life, you’re a very perceptive person. If you’re just tuning in to this adventure and you want to see our earlier blogs on the Star reloader resurrection, you can find them here.

Next up? That’s going to be the primer feed mechanism. Stay tuned!

Cleaning the Star: A First Pass

As a first step in bringing the Star progressive reloader back to life, I washed it down with WD 40 and squirted some Kroil penetrating oil on it, but before I did that, I shot a few photos with my Nikon and its macro Sigma lens. These are better photos than the ones in the previous blog shot with my cell phone. With apologies in advance for this bit of redundancy, I’ll start with the “before” photos.

The Star Reloading Machine

Here’s the Star label. They were originally manufactured in San Diego. I didn’t know that.

Star Reloader Parts and Subassemblies

This is a side view of the Star showing the powder container and the powder dispensing mechanism. There’s a lot of dust and dirt on the Star. No rat poop like Gresh’s MGB GT, thankfully.

This is the base plate. It still has several cartridge cases in the baseplate shell holder.

Here’s another “before” photo of the base plate. The doodad on the left is the case feed mechanism. The mechanism on the right is the primer feed.

This is the decapping and resizing die. It’s a bit rusty. I’m thinking it’s probably a carbide die, which means the cases don’t have to be lubed for the resizing operation.

The photo above is a macro “before” shot of the powder dispensing mechanism.

The photo below is a “before” shot of the head of the reloader. It’s the piece that reciprocates up and down with each manual lever stroke.

A shot from the top of the reloader, showing the top of one of the reloading dies.

Cleaning the Star Reloader

Moving on to the cleaning operation, these are the things I’m using initially: WD 40, Kroil (a penetrating oil), a toothbrush, and an oily rag. This is the initial cleaning just to see what’s going on. A deeper scrub of each subassembly will follow in subsequent blogs.

I gave the entire press a spritz with WD 40.

Here’s a better photo of the original Star decal. I’m not going to do a full-blown concours style restoration of the Star and I don’t want to bring the reloader back to as new condition. I like the patina and my intent is to get it working again, displaying the aging that has naturally occurred on an old piece of equipment like this. It’s a resurrection, not a restoration.

The bottom of the press is starting to look better already.

The powder container unscrews from the powder dispensing mechanism.

Here’s a photo of the powder container’s aluminum lid.

Here’s one of the lid’s underside. Note the breather hole. There won’t be any vapor lock on this puppy.

This is the powder dispensing mechanism after the powder container has been removed.

I have a new good buddy named Bruce Williams who restores and sells parts for these vintage Star reloading machines, and I asked him if he could tell me the date this Star reloader was manufactured based on the serial number I found etched into the machine’s base (see the photo below).

Bruce explained that Star never put a serial number on their reloaders, but many police departments, schools, commercial reloaders, clubs, and other organizations who owned Star reloaders applied a property tag number. I wonder who this machine belonged to. It has a history and I’d sure love to know it.

The .38 Special

As I was cleaning the Star, I found I could rotate the shell plate into position so that I could remove one of the several cartridge cases it held. The shell plate rotation is sticky, but I’ll clear that up when I do a detailed cleaning of the shell plate area (a topic for another blog, to be sure). The case was a .38 Special, which told me that’s what this machine had been set up to reload. That’s good. I shoot .38 Special ammo in a couple of guns.

Before 9mm handguns became the rage in the 1980s, the .38 Special revolver was used by most police agencies and pistol competitors. As you can imagine, a lot of departments, schools, and clubs went through a bunch of .38 Special ammo back in the day. In those days, the .38 Special was probably second only to the .22 Long Rifle cartridge in terms of quantity sold, and the .38 Special used to be the most commonly reloaded cartridge in the world. It’s been eclipsed by the 9mm, but it’s still a great cartridge and there are still a lot of folks shooting .38 Special. I’m one of them.

The Model 60 Smith and Wesson

As I explained in our first blog on the Star, a friend of mine gave it to me when I started the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia transfer process for a snubnosed .38 Special revolver I recently scored (I got a killer deal). It’s a stainless steel Model 60 Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special, and it’s a honey. We’ll have a blog on the Model 60 sometime in the near future, and if all goes well, I’ll use reloaded .38 Special ammunition crafted on the resurrected Star.

The Powder Dispenser

The Star’s powder dispenser looked pretty funky, and I could see it still held a few grains of powder when I peeked into the cavity that throws the charge. I applied a few drops of Kroil to the screw heads so it could soak in overnight. The powder dispenser will be one of the first subassemblies I disassemble and clean. Kroil is a penetrating oil; it will creep into the threads so that the screws can be removed without burring the slots. The powder dispenser will be the topic for our next Star blog.

I didn’t recognize what this was (in the photo below) when I first saw it, and it was thoroughly coated in crud. Then I realized…it’s the bullet seating and crimping die. I’ll explain more about this in a subsequent blog, too.

Here’s a close look at the brass slider in the powder dispenser. It’s marked “2.7 GR.” I’m hoping that’s for 2.7 brains of Bullseye propellant, which is the go to accuracy load (along with a 148 grain wadcutter bullet) in the .38 Special cartridge. I’ll learn more when I disassemble the powder dispenser. I’m itching to get into it.

Here’s one last look at the powder dispenser, with the powder chamber mounted above it. In the next blog, I’ll explain how this subassembly works to dispense powder.

That’s it for now, my friends. More to follow, so stay tuned.

You can follow the entire Star progressive reloader story on our Resurrections page.

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Hasty Conclusions: 2020 Go-Bowen Fit Right DB003 40cc Mini Bike

I keep hearing a complaints about Globalism. People are talking. Some folks don’t like the idea of making the world’s population one homogenous group of consumer/aphids to be milked by evil corporations. I get that and it bothers me that a mini bike that cost $250 dollars in 1970 now costs only $44 adjusted for dollar devaluation. That’s right, this Fit Right Chinese-built mini bike costs less in real dollars than a really long, long-distance telephone call did in 1970.

In some ways that old 1970 mini bike was better. It had a couple more horses than the DB003’s 1 horsepower. It was made in the USA, which helped support local businesses. I think the fit and finish on the Fit Right DB003 is at least as good or better than an average vintage mini, maybe not as good as a Rupp but then nothing was as good as a Rupp. As far as reliability goes, those flathead, loop framed, scrub-braked minis were not a vehicle you could ever assume you’d get back home on. Time will tell if the Fit Right holds up.

I’m in the middle of a back porch remodel so I only have time to do a short review on what I’ve found unboxing the Fit Right. A more thorough road test and video will be forthcoming.

The Fit Right DB003 comes fairly well packed in bubble wrap and then molded Styrofoam all stuffed inside a heavy cardboard box. The cardboard is thick and strong, it’s too good to throw away. I’ll be using it for a working pad to cover the dirt and ants while tinkering under the MBG-GT. Even though the mini was packaged well a ragged hole was punched into the side and parts were rattling around.

Once out of the packaging the Fit Right mini comes fully assembled except for the handlebars. It only took a few minutes to install the bars after a few hours searching for a 10mm socket. The bars are held on by four bolts/nuts and one of the nuts had gone missing. It probably fell out of the hole. Luckily I had a spare 8mm locknut left over from a roof rack installation.

The fit and finish on this $299 (shipping included!) Fit Right mini bike are pretty good. The graphics on the plastic gas tank cover are molded in so you won’t have any cheap, stick-on labels peeling off. The real gas tank under the plastic is made of steel. One odd thing is that there are no steering stops: the forks bang into the gas tank at full lock. This mini bike is smaller than usual; I’ll need to rig some bar-risers to clear my knees.

The Fit Right Model 139F, 40cc, overhead valve engine is jewel-like. Its castings look smooth and there is no rough mold flashing at the edges. The frame is fairly complex design with a lot of tubes and angles that don’t seem to make any sense. I suspect the stylists threw a couple extra pipes in the mix to make the mini look cool. Welds are pretty good, much better than I can do. The Fit Right even has folding foot pegs, a rare feature on the old mini bikes.

Unusual for such an economy mini motorcycle the Fit Right came with a flimsy but usable tool kit, something lacking on a $40,000 Harley-Davidson. For $299 you can’t expect Japanese-level quality, however I’m satisfied with the DB003’s presentation and the easy assumption of owner-provided care.

There are some interesting things on this bike that I need to look into later. For instance the fuel tank has a return line and a feed line but no fuel shut off. The engine has a fuel pump because in stationary-engine uses the fuel tank mounts below the carburetor. The carb itself is odd looking. It may be a diaphragm type carb like on a chain saw. The drive train is double reduction and I’ve just got to know what is under the nifty cast aluminum primary cover. The rear brake is a mechanical disc, which is a huge improvement over the old-fashioned scrub brake that simply rubbed on the tire. I don’t like that the hot exhaust exits directly onto the brake cable. I need to turn the exhaust tip more downwards.

The Fit Right DB003 is quite a bit more sophisticated than your traditional double-loop mini of days gone by. Whether this added sophistication equates to better performance remains to be seen. As soon as I get time I’ll get the mini running and ExhaustNotes.us will have performance numbers and a riding impression.

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Twinkle, twinkle, little Star…

Sometimes you just get lucky. That’s what happened to me. I’m buying a used snubnosed .38 Special (there will be a blog on it in a few weeks), and I used a different federal firearms license dealer for the transfer (I always buy through an FFL dealer to keep things legal). The seller had an FFL dealer he wanted to use, and much to my surprise it happened to be one of the rangemasters at the West End Gun Club (a guy I already knew). We all had a nice visit, and while I was there, I was looking around the shop and my eye turned to an old progressive reloader. I love old stuff, and if you’re reading this, you probably do, too.

Now when I say progressive, I don’t mean the reloader leans left or votes democrat. Nope, progressive in the reloading world means each pull of the lever results in a finished round coming off the machine. With each stroke, a cartridge case is resized and deprimed, another is flared, another is charged with powder, another has a bullet seated in the brass case and crimped, and a new one is spit out. Then, on the lever upstroke, the base plate rotates (it progresses, hence the name), and the sequence continues. The output on a progressive is impressive. You can reload north of 500 rounds an hour on these things.

This particular progressive is one of the first ones and it was made by a company called the Star Machine Works. They first came out in the 1930s. I don’t know exactly when mine was made, but it had my attention this morning and I guess that was obvious. My rangemaster buddy told I could take it home with me if I wanted.

“How much?” I asked. I think he could see that the hook was already set. I wanted it. And I guess it showed.

“You could take it home with you.”

“I think I will,” I said, “but tell me how much.”

“No,” he said, “you can take it home. It’s yours.”

You can’t beat a deal like that. The pictures you see here are of my new-to-me (but probably older than me) Star progressive reloader on my reloading bench. It’s going to go through a Joe Gresh-style resurrection, and we’ll tell the story here on ExNotes. There won’t be any cosmetics (I love the patina on this thing), and I want to keep the look as you see it here. The Star will only undergo the stuff that’s needed to make it functional. And you’ll be able to follow the Star’s resurrection here on the blog.

This Star is set up for .38 Special and .357 Magnum (both cartridges take the same dies), and there are still a few cases in the machine from who knows when. You can see how they index into the plate, and it’s that plate that advances with each stroke of the lever.

The photo above shows the case feeding mechanism. I haven’t attempted to clean it up or actuate the press yet. What you see is exactly how it came home with me.

The big tube behind the lever and head is the powder container, and the narrow tube to the right is (I think) the primer dispenser.

I’ll start cleaning the Star this week, and once I’ve got it cleaned and lubed I’ll do my best to understand how it operates. I’m not nearly as mechanically talented as Joe Gresh, so this resurrection will probably take a while. But I’m going to enjoy the ride, and I think you will, too. Like we always say: Stay tuned.

Boy oh boy, we’ve got cool stuff to link to, like our Resurrections page and our Tales of the Gun page. And hey, if you don’t want to miss any of it, be sure to subscribe to the ExNotes blog. We’re running a special this month, and if you sign up now, it’s free!

A Tale of Two Leupolds

About 10 years ago, maybe more, I had a gig in Houston to teach an FMEA course to a consulting company. This particular consulting outfit had a contract to teach Failure Modes and Effects Analysis to their customer, and they had taken the assignment without knowing anything about the topic. It happens more often than you might imagine. It was no big deal for me as I’d been teaching FMEA for years, I had a class ready to go, and I was in and out in a couple of days. There was a nice paycheck at the end, and it was all easy peasy.

While I was in Houston, I found a local gunstore. I stopped in to check out what they had. I do that pretty much every place I go and I’ve been doing it for nearly 50 years. You never know what you’re going to find. The Houston gunstore was a disappointment (like most have been in the last 20 years) because all they offered (rifles, handguns, and shotguns) were these black plastic abominations. Like the cannibals say, there’s no accounting for some people’s taste.

Anyway, the Houston gunshop had a junkbox/discount container holding all the gunshop detritus they were blowing out. You’ve seen that sort of bargain bin before, I’m sure…things that are one step away from the dumpster. In that box was a beat-up old Leupold 4X scope that was so severely worn there was almost no anodizing left, the lenses at both ends were scratched and chipped, and there were dents and dings along the scope’s length.

But, it was a Leupold. In the scope world, that’s as good as it gets. Leupold scopes are the best. I bought that scope for $20, figuring maybe I’d use it if Bass Pro ever ran another scope sale where they give you $40 on any trade-in scope. They used to run sales like that, and I’ve used decrepit scopes as trading fodder, but my trade-ins were always cheapie scopes that had failed and didn’t cost much more than $40 when new. That wasn’t the main reason I pulled the trigger, though. That scope was a Leupold. Even though it was trashed, it was still a Leupold.

The hoped-for future scope sale at Bass Pro never materialized (I guess they learned their lesson from guys like me on past sales). The Leupold went under a shelf on my reloading bench and I kept it for when I had to mount scopes with twist-in rings, figuring the clapped-out old Leupold 4X was good for that kind of abuse. With all the damage on the lenses you couldn’t hardly see through the thing. It became my scope mount installation assembly aid. Now it was in my junkpile instead of the one at that gunstore in Houston.

About a month ago good buddy Greg and I were on the range and a different Leupold scope (a 3×9) that I had on a .22 250 Ruger No. 1 wouldn’t adjust (it’s the scope on the No. 1 in the large photo above). That surprised me, as a Leupold scope had never failed on me before. The elevation dial was stuck. I wasn’t worried, though. Leupold scopes have a lifetime warranty, as mentioned in the video below:

When I got home I took the 3×9 scope off the No. 1 and sent a note to Leupold’s customer service. Then, just for grins, I told Leupold about the old 4X (the one I described above), and I asked if they could refurbish it. I didn’t know if Leupold offered that kind of service for old scopes. Within a day, I had an email from Leupold with a return material authorization for both scopes, and off they went. I didn’t think they’d be able to do anything with the 4X scope, and they didn’t tell me what they would charge to refurbish it. But I sent it in anyway.

The Leupold 3×9 came back a couple of weeks ago and it’s fixed, cleaned, and it looks great. Leupold somehow managed to refinish the minor marks in the anodizing (you know, what you get from the scope rings), and the scope could almost pass for new. I’m very satisfied with it.

And then, a week or two later, the 4X scope (the one I paid $20 for) arrived. Except it wasn’t the scope I had sent to Leupold. It was instead a brand new Leupold FXII 4×33 (they don’t even sell these anymore), but there it was, brand new and in a new shrink wrapped Leupold box. As a point of reference, when this scope was last offered by Leupold (I’m not sure when that was), they went for $389.

My charge? $0.

Yep, Leupold replaced that beat-up old scope with a brand new one at no charge. I wish I had taken a photo of the original scope. Trust me, it looked like a $20 bargain bin item with one leg in the trash and the other on a banana peel. In its place, I now have a brand new Leupold.

You might wonder: Why a straight 4X scope? Even though many scope companies don’t offer fixed power scopes in 4X these days, I think that a simple 4-power magnification is the best there is for hunting. The higher mags have too narrow a field of view, it takes too long to find the target, and the whole variable power thing, to me, is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Nope, I’m perfectly happy with a straight 4X scope.

Leupold doesn’t offer the straight 4-power scope any more, but they have a wide variety of variable scopes. The most frequently seen variant is the 3×9 Leupold. This is the Leupold you see on that beautiful Ruger No. 1 you see at the top of this blog. I have the 3×9 Leupold on my Model 70, too…the same one I used on a successful wild pig hunt a couple of years ago.

Folks, trust me on this: When people say Leupold has fantastic customer service, they speak the truth. I can’t imagine ever buying another scope from any other company.

More Tales of the Gun!

Resurrections: 1974 MGB-GT Part 2

This MGB-GT is really a mess. Opening the door of the MGB is like opening a Hollywood style Egyptian tomb: a puff of cursed air escapes as soon as the handle button is pushed then all your relatives start dying under unusual circumstances. It’s ominous inside there, man. Great drifts of rat guano lie still on the floor. Seats, wiring, and vinyl panels: everything is chewed to bits. There’s cardboard and tinfoil, door gaskets hang from their sills and the cabin is littered with parts. It’s a frigging crime scene, man. What have I got myself into?

After clearing the needle bushes that had closed in on the MGB-GT, I poured a batch of 50/50 water and bleach into the Ryobi sprayer and doused the engine bay taking care to hit the voids between the inner fenders and bodywork. The rats have been nesting in there so I’ll have to dismantle the front clip to thoroughly clean it out. But that will come later, if the engine proves to be ok.

Working my way aft I sprayed the front seats, floors, dash, behind the dash, under the seats and the hatchback luggage area. The roof and windshield area was blasted. I even sprayed the exterior of the car with bleach. I’m not sure what is inside that steel ammunition box but it feels sort of heavy. One positive cleaning note is that I don’t have to worry about the bleach hurting anything, as the entire interior must go. Maybe I’ll strap a lawn chair to the floor when I drive the thing.

The extra cylinder head I found under a wheel in the trunk area is both frightening and reassuring. On the one hand it’s always nice to have a spare cylinder head. On the other hand it’s never a good thing to need an extra cylinder head. Hopefully the head in the trunk is the bad one because why else would you have two? I suppose we will find out which one is which soon enough.

Besides the junk inside the car my MGB came with scattered parts. Some parts were in the bushes and some were in boxes. I haven’t inventoried them yet but an un-chewed rear seat is a huge score. I bet the mandarin orange seats really spiced up the interior of the blue MGB. There’s a Weber carburetor in a bucket that may have been destined for the MGB. I’ll get the standard SU’s working before I attempt any carburation trickery. Besides, with 5000-foot elevation changes around here it might be better to run the constant velocity SU’s.

My MGB looks like it had air-conditioning at some point in its storied past. There’s a disconnected condenser in front of the radiator. My new best friends on the MGB owners Facebook page suggested it may be a gigantic oil cooler but I guess not because there is another small cooler (also disconnected) mounted in front of the condenser that looks more oil-ish.

Lending more credence to the air conditioner theory are two empty holes low on the passenger side firewall that may have been put there for liquid and low(er) pressure refrigerant lines. There are unconnected lines near those firewall holes that look a lot like air conditioning stuff. In addition there is an unused V-belt sheave between the fan blade and the alternator/water pump pulley. There is no compressor or smog pump. I see no evaporator or blower inside the cabin but I haven’t really cleared out the junk so it may be knocking around in there. These clues and the crudeness of the condenser installation make me think the MGB-GT had an aftermarket air conditioner before it came under my tutelage. Since my resurrections are done on a tight budget I won’t attempt to get the air conditioner back online. There’s not much of the system left anyway.

As we blog I’m letting the first bleaching soak in. The rat guano will need a second dose of bleach before I start scooping it out. I’ll be buying a Dupont protective suit to wear along with a N100 mask to filter out the smallest particles. Wetness is key to this mouse-capade. You don’t want to stir small bits into the air and if the poop is wet it won’t atomize. Hantavirus is a real thing in New Mexico and while Hanta is much harder to contract, (you have to breathe in contaminated rodent urine/feces and of course not all rodents have it) it’s much more deadly than Covid-19. How does a 36% death rate sound to you? You read that right: 1 out of 3 hanta cases results in death. At 36% there are no whiny, academic, constitutional mask-wearing debates. If you’re cleaning rat poop out west you wear the mask.

Cleaning this MGB-GT is going to be the hardest part of the whole project. Once I can move about the car without the threat of puss-filled-lung death lurking around every corner we will be able to make progress. To that end I’ve ordered a gas powered pressure washer. I know I always say electric is the way to go for infrequently used tools but the electric pressure washer draws so much juice long extension cords don’t work. For jobs far from power outlets I’d have to run a big generator to supply the electric washer and at that point you haven’t really gained anything. Here at ExhaustNotes we look for any excuse to buy new tools. Besides, it was so cheap!

Hopefully Part 3 of the MGB-GT resurrection will see the car fairly cleaned out but there are no guarantees in life so try to enjoy each day as it unfolds.

A new rock group? Joe Gresh and the Resurrections!

A good Citizen: The Blue Angels watch

My first-edition Citizen Blue Angels watch, the one you see above, is one of my favorites. There’s a lot going on in what the watch displays, including the time of day in three time zones (local, any other location in the world, and Greenwich Mean Time). The Citizen has a stop watch, a countdown timer, a calendar, and the ability to set up to three alarms. It also has a 24-hour clock. Those two LCD displays at the bottom of the watch face? I haven’t figured those out yet. I guess I could read the Owner’s Manual. Some day, maybe. And that complicated bezel? That’s a slide rule. I’ll explain it in a bit.

I travel overseas frequently (or at least I used to, before this Covid 19 business hit), and knowing what time it is wherever I am and what time it is at home is a feature I like. The watch has a digital display for every time zone and the analog hands display the local time. Or, you can reverse the displays. Press two buttons simultaneously, and the displays switch (what was displayed digitally displays on the analog hands, and vice versa). It’s a cool feature and it’s fun watching the hour hand sweep around to a new time zone.

One feature I use a lot is the stop watch. It’s handy when I’m cooking, which I like to do.

Ravioli alfredo, with mushrooms, timed to perfection by the Blue Angels. Three minutes on the boil for the ravioli provides the al dente texture I prefer.

The slide rule is cool, too. It’s the complex blue bezel with all the numbers and graduations. Go back 50 years and every engineer on the planet had and used a slide rule (we had pocket protectors, too, but that’s a story for another blog). My engineering class was the last one that used slide rules. Calculators had just been invented, and in the early 1970s a basic Hewlett Packard or Texas Instruments calculator sold for something north of $600. That was a lot of money, and I remember thinking that calculators would never catch on. Who needs a $600 calculator when you have a slide rule?

A few years ago we road tested the early CSC 150 Mustangs, and we hired a couple of my Cal Poly engineering students (guys who weighed 130 pounds soaking wet) to ride the things. We wanted to check fuel economy, and flyweight riders would register the best possible miles per gallon. At our first fuel stop we noted miles and fuel. I used my Citizen’s slide rule bezel and calculated the fuel economy while our young engineers were still fumbling with their cell phone calculators. One of them asked how I knew so quickly, and when I told them I used a slide rule, I had their attention. These two young engineers had never seen a slide rule, much less one built into a watch bezel. I showed them how the slide rule worked, and they had a lesson right there at the gas pump from their old engineering professor.

Steve (CSC’s CEO), Peter, and Joel by a historic bridge in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills. The verdict was in and my Citizen watch made it official: 98.3 miles per gallon.

Citizen Blue Angels styling themes have been applied to several iterations and styles of their Blue Angels series since I bought my watch. There have been titanium versions, solar powered versions, leather strap versions, GMT versions, radio-synched-time versions, and more. I checked the Citizen official US website as I wrote this blog and they show nine different models in the Blue Angels watch collection. That’s not counting models that have been discontinued (like mine).

Citizen Blue Angels

I don’t need or want one of the newer Blue Angels watches. Mine is the original version and I like it. Like most quartz-movement watches, it’s scary accurate. Yeah, it takes a battery, but a battery seems to last about three years and I can live with that (spending $3.25 every thousand days for a new battery is doable). I think I spent about $275 for my Blue Angels watch when I bought it 20 years ago. That was in the pre-Amazonic era (which came after the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods), when dinosaurs like me ruled the planet. New Blue Angels Citizen watches today range from the high $300s to just under a thousand bucks. They seem to last forever, so your money will be well spent.

The funny part, I guess, is that the real Blue Angels, the guys (and gals) who fly F-18s for the US Navy and the US Marines, don’t wear Citizen Blue Angel watches, and I don’t know if they ever did. In researching this topic, I found that the Blue Angels’ official watch is an IWC (they go for a cool $10,900), but I don’t care. I like my Citizen.

The IWC Blue Angels watch. Got a spare $10,900? And just look at it: For that kind of money, you’re not even getting a slide rule.

I’m not sure what the relationship is between the Blue Angels and the Citizen company these days. I tried to find out with several search phrases on Google, but I came up empty. My guess is that the Navy allows Citizen to use the name for a fee, but that’s just a guess on my part.

Citizen also offered a Thunderbirds version of my watch, something they no longer do (the Thunderbirds are the US Air Force flight demonstration team). The Thunderbirds watch is an even rarer animal. I don’t think the colors work as well as the Blue Angels watch (they look better on an F-16), but hey, different strokes for different folks.

A used Citizen Thunderbirds watch that sold in Singapore a couple of years ago for 50 Singaporean dollars (about $40 US). Nice, but not as nice as the Blue Angels version.

I used to have a bunch of cool Blue Angels photos I shot at the Reno Air Races (photos of the real Blue Angels flight team in action), but I guess I deleted them (I looked, but I could not find any). I had posted the photos way back when on the old MotoFoto site, and a law firm sent me a registered letter reminding me that my ticket to the Reno Air Races included a prohibition against displaying any photos from the event. It must have been a slow day for the lawyers. I imagine with Instagram and Facebook that would never fly today. If you ever had an opportunity to see a Blue Angels or Thunderbirds flight demonstration, you should go. I’ve seen both, and they are impressive.

More product reviews are here on the ExNotes Reviews page.

Click on the Citizen Blue Angels link to see more Citizen Blue Angels.

Watch this…

My name is Joe and I’m a watchaholic.

It started for me when I was a kid and my parents bought me a Timex, and it’s never subsided. I can’t walk by a watch store or jewelry counter without stopping. Watch technology has jumped through several advances in my lifetime, and I’ve enjoyed them all. I like digital and I like analog watches, and I like that different watches work best for different applications (it gives me an excuse for buying one that, you know, I might need). I like the idea that I can order a watch from overseas that’s not marketed here in the US, and I like a lot of the watches that are marketed here. I travel overseas on a fairly regular basis, so I’m a sucker for a good-looking GMT watch (they’re the ones that allow you to see the time in two or three different places in the world simultaneously). I’ll do another blog about the GMTs at a later date. The focus of today’s blog is ride-specific watches. I tend to think of watches by major motorcycle adventures, and there are three I want to mention today.

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The first one I’ll mention is the green-faced, military-styled Seiko I wore on the Western America Adventure Ride. It’s a quartz watch and it’s not a model that was imported by Seiko’s US distributor (which doesn’t mean much these days; I ordered it new from a Hong Kong-based Ebay store and it was here in two days). But I like the fact that I’ve never seen anybody else wearing this model.

I bought the Seiko on an Ebay auction about 15 years ago, and I think I got it for something like $52 brand new. I like the style, I like its relative light weight, and I like the size (it’s the right size, not ridiculously-large like many watches today). The Seiko is impervious to wet weather and it has served me well. Just for grins, I tried to find it again on the Internet, and I only found one that was used in an Ebay auction, and it had already been bid up to over double what I paid for mine new. You might be wondering about the compass directions on the Seiko’s bezel. There’s a method of using those, the watch hands, and the sun to identify which way is north. I don’t need that feature, I don’t use it, and I’d have to read the directions to learn it again, but it’s cool to know it’s there. It’s kind of an Indiana Jones thing, I guess.

Next up is the safety-fluorescent-green Timex Ironman I wore on the ride across China. I’d seen one at a Target department store and for reasons it would probably take a behavioral psychologist to explain, I decided it was one I had to have on the China ride. Gresh arrived in California a few days before we left for the China adventure, and we spent a good chunk of our pre-departure time running around to several different stores trying to find that watch. Maybe I thought it would match my riding jacket. Maybe I thought it would be good because you can light up the face at night (a feature that is very useful for finding your way to the latrine at night). Like I said…who knows? The Timex did a good job for me. It was bitter cold up on the Tibetan Plateau, hot in the Gobi Desert, hot and humid everywhere else, and it rained so hard at times I swore I saw a guy leading animals two-by-two into a Chinese ark. My Ironman is still going strong on the original battery. Those Ironman watch batteries seem to last forever.

The last one is a Casio Marlin diver’s watch. It has to be one of the best watch deals ever. I’m not a diver, and there are really no features (beyond telling time, luminescent hands, a rotating bezel, and a waterproof case) that I need, but I just like the thing. You can get a brand new Casio Marlin for a scosh under $50, and folks, that’s a smoking good deal.

It rained like hell half the time we rode in Colombia, and the Casio never let me down. I vividly remember waiting for the ferry to arrive in Magangué for our cruise down the Magdelana River to Mompos when a Colombian boy came over to see what we were all about. He fixated on my Casio as we waited in sweltering heat under the shade of a very small tree. He finally touched the watch and simply said “good.” You know, I needed that watch on the trip (it was the only one I had with me), but if I had a spare, I would have given it to him. I still wear the Casio regularly. It’s just a good, basic, comfortable, and easy to read watch. It’s a favorite.

Watches, saws, generators, and more…it’s all on our ExhaustNotes Reviews page!

It’s not a BSA!

I saw this YouTube video a few days ago on the Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor, and I’ve been meaning to post it here on the ExNotes blog. I think YouTube motorcycle reviews are generally a time suck, but I enjoyed this one. The dude who made it (MotoSlug, a guy I never heard of before) nailed it, I think, with his description of the Enfield, its capabilities, and the riding experience. It’s no BSA, Senator, but it’s still a fun ride. Actually, it’s way better than any BSA I ever rode.

I’m inspired. It’s late afternoon here in So Cal, which is to say it’s hot. When things cool off in a couple of hours, I’m going to fire up my Enfield (that’s it in the photo above) and go for a ride.

Read our story about riding Enfields in Baja here.