Category: Joe Gresh

RD350 Yamaha Update

The 1974 RD350 has been faultlessly buzzing around south-central New Mexico these last few months without any attention. The old girl was dribbling oil and banging around on her front suspension and the tires that came on the bike were old and cracked. In addition, the rear 4.00×18 tire was too large and rubbed the fender over bumps. The bike kind of bobbed in turns and I didn’t want to take a long ride on those rotten tires. I needed to give the old bike some love.

What held me back was the Harbor Freight tire changer. I was in the middle of modifying the tire machine and I just lost interest. The monsoon rains have precluded any concrete work so I decided to finish the tire machine.

One of the issues with the HF tire machine is that the center shaft is too big for older motorcycles. The center shaft is a pivot point for your duck bar or tire levers. Most new bikes come with big axles and the stock part will work fine on those. I cut a piece of ½” rod 12-inches long and turned out a spacer to go between the factory center bar and the new ½-inch piece. My welding is atrocious but you have to cut me some slack as I can’t see the puddle and weld by sound. Now I can center-post smaller diameter axles without anyone crying about it.

The HF tire machine has three rim-grabber things. Two of the grabbers are pinned into place and one is screw driven. When it works right it really locks the wheel in place, essentially giving you a second set of hands. The grabbers were a sloppy fit on their square-tube arms and it’s hard enough getting all the fingers lined up at one time without stuff moving around. Shimming the grabbers with thin aluminum tightened up the machine and made fitting the rim to the grabbers easier.

While not required for the skinny RD350 tires, I made a duck-bar to assist with bead removal. The duck is a plastic piece that fits over the rim. You use a lever to pull the bead up over the duck’s head and then slide the duck along the rim with the duck bar. The plastic helps prevent scarring your nice chrome or aluminum rims. Needless to say, use lots of tire lube as the first ¼-way around the rim is a hard pull. The duck is actually a part from commercial tire changing machines and it works great on wider rims like you’d find on a sport bike or cars.

I made a steel piece to fit the bolt holes of the duck and welded a 4-foot long, 1” square tube to the duck mount. It’s also an ugly weld but thanks to the miracle of grinders and thick paint it doesn’t look so bad. I messed up by welding the bar to the duck foot square, or at 90 degrees to the bolt axis if that makes any sense to you. This meant that it didn’t sit flush to the curve of the rim when using the center pivot. The pivot point was right where the bar wanted to be.

A quick bending session tweaked the duck-bar enough to be functional. I’ll get it right next time. The duck-bar worked well on the back wheel of the RD350 but the front rim was too skinny. There wasn’t enough room for the duck so I did it the old fashioned way with tire levers.

I bought two Shinko SR712P tires for the RD350, a 3.00×18 for the front and a 3.50×18 for the rear. These are the stock sizes and they don’t rub the fender. The rear looks pretty skinny, I’d like to get a 3.75×18 but I can’t find one. I’ll need new brake shoes for the rear drum but that will have to wait for another maintenance session.

The fork seal replacement was pretty straightforward and so I managed to screw it up. The RD350 has a chrome cover over the brake hose manifold. This cover makes loosening the lower triple clamp pinch bolts impossible unless you remove the top triple clamp and the headlight fork ears. Then the chrome cover can slide up allowing access to the pinch bolts. That was way too much work for me so I decided to pull the sliders off and leave the rest of the fork on the motorcycle.

The RD350 fork slider has a very thin seal retaining area and when I gave the seal a gentle exploratory pry a tiny piece of the damn fork tube cracked by the snap ring groove. I was so upset I didn’t take a photo. Anyway, I worked the cracked piece off and filed the area smooth to make it look like it was made that way. I was temped to do the other side to make them match.

I ended up clamping a big, galvanized carriage bolt into the vice; the head fit behind the seal nicely. Then I cut a piece of PVC pipe that fit over the thin area and contacted the solid part of the fork tube where the dust cover stops. After that a rubber hammer knocked the seal out. It was clear sailing from then on; I reassembled the fork sliders onto the tubes and dumped 5 ounces of 10/30 synthetic motor oil into each fork leg.

For the little amount of work I did the difference was amazing. The RD350 falls into turns with the greatest of ease and holds the line like a supermarket customer getting cash back from a personal check. It feels like power steering. The bounciness is gone and the bike feels much calmer. Now that I can push the bike a little harder those cheap, aftermarket rear shocks are showing a lack of damping. I didn’t notice it before because the front was bouncing so much. The tires are skinny but feel like they grip well. I don’t road race on the street but if I did I could hustle the purple RD350 through the mountains pretty fast.

There’s more to do on the RD350 but I like riding the bike so much I don’t want to disable the thing. I have to fix a leaking oil tank sight glass, re-grease the steering head bearings, replace the rear brake shoes, clean the carbs, and on and on. All that can wait because the sun is out (in the morning before the monsoon rains) and I’ve got to ride this bike.

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Dream Bike: Honda MT250 Elsinore

The first motorcycle that I couldn’t hold the throttle wide open through the gears was a CR250 Honda Elsinore. I was around 16 years old and had ridden other 250s: Suzukis, Yamahas, 4-stroke Hondas. They were enduro bikes with heavy flywheels and mild porting. The Elsinore was a full-on motocross bike and I had never experienced a real, racing motorcycle.

When I left the line Wide-eFfin’-Open like I normally did the front wheel was climbing into the sky and at the same time the rear tire was shooting rocks and dirt 50 feet behind. The only thing that kept it from flipping over was lack of traction. Each time I shifted gears the front wheel came off the ground and a fresh torrent of debris issued forth from the squirming back tire. It was a breathtakingly fast motorcycle.

It was so light, so powerful, the engine ran clean throughout the rev range, and the suspension was the best I had ever ridden. The steering was telepathic and the bike could fly through the air like Superman. By the time I was topped out in 4th gear the bike was starting a slow, gentle weave and the two-track dirt trail I was on had grown very narrow. I had to lift. I never even made it to top gear. What a motorcycle!

The MT250 was not like that. It was a mild-mannered bike and Honda’s first modern two-stroke street bike. In the mid 1970s street legal, 250 two-stroke enduro bikes were wildly popular. Honda made a decent but heavy 4-stroke enduro.  To compete with the other guys Honda had to lose the valve train and build one of those confounded “Thinking Man’s” engines. Honda building a two stroke street bike was earthshaking news in the 1970’s motorcycle world.  It stirred up passionate opinions, like when Bob Dylan went electric.

The MT250 looked a lot like a real Elsinore except it had gauges, lights and blinkers. The gas tank was steel instead of artificially aged aluminum. The frame was regular steel not chrome-moly like the race bike. It even mixed the oil and gasoline automatically like Yamaha’s Autolube. All these changes added weight but you could get a plate for the thing and ride it to high school.

If my memory has not failed completely I remember the motorcycle magazines of that era being slightly disappointed with the new two-stroke Honda. How could such a milquetoast motorcycle come from the fire-breathing CR250 Elsinore? I guess they were expecting a motocross bike with lights. Eventually one of the magazines did just that. Here again, I may be imagining this but I seem to remember one of the magazines putting a CR250 top end on a MT250. And that was all it took. The heavy flywheel with the CR porting made for a fast, powerful 250 that wasn’t so abrupt that it would spit you off.

I loved the style of the first CR250s and there hasn’t been a better-looking dirt bike built. I’ll go even further: the early CR250 is one of the all-time best-looking motorcycles of any category since forever. The MT inherited a lot of the CR’s style and it flat looks great. The engine was a strange-but-cool, dark brown color and the exhaust pipe swooped banana-like along the right side of the bike.

“If you like the CR250 so much why don’t you just get one?” you may ask. Here’s the reason: the CR250 is a race bike, it’s an old race bike, but it’s still a race bike and fast as hell. I don’t need that kind of pressure at this stage of my life. The MT250 has all the style with none of the fear. I can ride the MT on the street to get to the trails; no need to load it into a truck. Hell, you could ride the MT across country if you wanted to.

Honda’s MT250 never really took off and their low-ish used prices reflect that milquetoast reputation. You can pick up a perfect one for $2500 and a decent daily rider for under $1500. Not counting the very first bikes they built, Honda didn’t make many two-stroke street bikes. There was the MT125 and the NSR 400cc three-cylinder pocket rocket; no others come to mind. Were there any others?

My dream garage would not be complete without an MT250. It’s a bike I could ride around back country trails without fear of breaking down or flipping over backwards. The thing is as reliable as a Honda. While I’m dreaming I’ll think of the CR250’s incredible acceleration and just green-screen that vivid memory onto the background as I putt-putt down to the ice cream store for a fudge sundae.

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Rain Delay

There are three paved routes across the Sacramento Mountains in southern New Mexico. To the north, highway 380 crosses from Hondo all the way to the small town of San Antonio on the Rio Grande River. Thirty miles south is the central road, Highway 70, running from Roswell to Tularosa. Highway 70 is 4-lane all the way and is the main east/west route over the mountains. Another thirty miles further south is Highway 82. Highway 82 twists and turns its way from oil rich Artesia to Cloudcroft at 9000-feet elevation and then runs downhill to the valley floor at Alamogordo. There is another route, unpaved, called 506. Yet another thirty miles south from 82, Route 506 takes you from Queen in the east to the border patrol checkpoint on Highway 54. Not really a highway, 506 is a fairly good dirt road but in the wet it can be tough going. 506 is the lowest-elevation passage as it crosses the southern tailings of the Sacramento Mountains, which flatten out towards El Paso, Texas.

I’m telling you this geographical information because of the tacos. I took the RD350 on a lunch run with the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers the other day. We did a great circle route that brought us to a taco stand in Ruidoso, on Highway 70. This particular taco place was one I had not been to yet.  It was rundown-looking and at first I thought it was closed. The front had an enclosed porch area that had 2X6 beams roofed with plywood. One end of the porch was open. The ceiling was low and I could touch the 2X6 beams if I jumped a little. Inside this patio were three wooden picnic tables thickly coated with a gummy white paint.

Dozens of coats of paint left the texture sort of soft, like skin, but more like dried skin. If you stood up fast enough you could just catch the fading impression of denim on the bench seat. To the far right was an entry door. Through this glass entry door I could see an indoor dining room with six, orange, Formica-topped booths but the door to this room was locked.

“Can I help you?” a small plexiglass window swung out into the patio. Inside was the one guy running the taco place. It was my turn to buy so Mike ordered nachos with cheese and a Mexican Coke in the tall, glass bottle except they were out of nacho cheese. I ordered a Pepsi and 3 beef tacos with rice and refried beans but had to order the items individually since there was no meal option. Eddie ordered a single tamale with rice and beans and a Sprite. The order was scribbled on one of those light green paper pads with a piece of carbon paper between the pages for a copy. Our taco man tallied up our stuff in his head and it came to 31 dollars, which shocked me a little. I gave the window guy 2 dollars as a tip. The guy in the window said, “Let me have your name, I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

It’s monsoon season in New Mexico and dark clouds were encircling the taco place. Any direction you looked had rain curtains slanting across the sky. I heard my name called, no mean feat with the thunder, and picked up the order. Eddie carried the drinks. My food came in a styrofoam, 3-compartment box. The main, triangle-shaped compartment held three disintegrating tacos. In the little square area to the upper left was a spoonful of rice, in the right compartment was a squirt of liquefied, refried beans. My tacos fell apart on contact. Mike’s nachos were like tiny burned triangles of cardboard. The nacho cheese would have really helped those chips more than I can say. Mike looked at the chips and said, “I’m not really hungry.” and he shoved the festive, red tub of ashes over to Eddie and me.

The guy in the window leaned out and asked us how the food was. I gave him a thumbs up hand signal. I don’t know why I did that. I guess I should have complained. I figured why spoil the taco guy’s day. If he hasn’t learned how to cook by now he never will make better food and telling him how truly awful the stuff was would change nothing on the ground. We finished up and decided we better make a run for home before it started raining on the taco place. I didn’t like our odds staying under that roof.

By sheer luck I had a rain jacket in the Yamaha’s tank bag. Eddie had a t-shirt and Mike had a semi-water-resistant jacket. To understand how unprepared we were you have to understand the optimism all motorcycle rides start with. We split up, Mike and Eddie turned north towards Highway 380 and I headed directly west on Highway 70. Within a mile it was pouring rain.

Great, horizontal bolts of lightning lit up the dark grey skies. The Yamaha ploughed through deep pools of water hydroplaning slightly and I dropped my speed to allow more time for water to squeeze out from under the tires. At 7600 feet elevation my wet jeans were starting to get cold. The raindrops were huge and felt like pea gravel hitting my hands.

Water trickled in from my ungloved wrists and pooled in the rain jacket elbows. My boots began to fill with water. Past the fire station, Highway 70 begins its descent into Tularosa. Each mile downward raised the air temperature a fraction of a degree. I entered the Mescalero Indian Reservation. Weather-wise, it was still raining but the skies were looking lighter further ahead and I was no longer shivering in my wet clothes.

Both lanes of traffic on Highway 70 came to a stand still. I could see flashing blue police lights reflecting off the wet pavement. It was still raining pretty hard and on a motorcycle you don’t want to be stuck in a line of stopped traffic. The head of the stoppage wasn’t far away so I lane-split between parked cars and the smell of brake linings until I found a gap in front of a late-model, white Chevy pickup. I turned right into the gap at walking speed. The truck driver got on his horn for 10 or 15 seconds to scold me. Here I was, soaking wet, trying to get off the road, while he was sitting snug and dry in his $70,000 pickup. Yet he begrudged me because I got 35 feet ahead of him. What kind of perpetually-miserable person does that? How much better would things need to be for him before he let go of the anger?

I parked the Yamaha at a cut that led up to a wide parking area. Water ran through an earthen ditch, pooled for a moment, and then crossed an asphalt swale before dropping off a tiny waterfall where the undermined asphalt had broken away in chunks, like calving icebergs. There was a guy standing in the rain smoking a cigarette, I asked him if there was an accident. “No, a mud slide has blocked the road.” He said. “The cops say it will be about 30 minutes before the road is cleared.” The man finished his cigarette and flicked it into the ditch where the current swept it down to the pool. The butt eddied several times then floated over the asphalt swale, plunging down the falls and drifted with the current until it was out of sight. The man walked back to his car and got inside out of the rain.

My boots were full of water and my feet needed to dry out a bit so I pulled off each boot and then poured out as much water as I could. Standing barefooted I rung out my socks, then pulled each sock back on followed by the side-specific boot that corresponded with the foot I was working on. Should I turn around and climb 9000 feet to Cloudcroft and home? It would take about an hour of cold, wet, riding. The rain clouds looked heavier in the direction of Cloudcroft and there is no guarantee that route won’t have a mudslide. The rain picked up strength and the blue skies ahead were closing in.

I could go north to Highway 380 and home but that’s back into the main part of the storm and two more hours of cold feet.  I‘m nearly home, maybe 40 miles to go. Another cop pulled up and spoke to the one blocking the highway. The first cop started his SUV Ford. It looked like we were getting ready to go. I started the Yamaha; it’s a cold-blooded engine and cools off fast when not running. Steam rose up from the warming engine, fogging my face shield. I could hear cars starting in the line of stopped traffic. The first cop drove down Highway 70 towards the mudslide and the second cop took up his position blocking the highway. And then he shut off his car. I let the Yamaha run a few more minutes then turned it off. A big cab-over box truck turned around and drove away in the opposite direction followed by a new Jeep Wrangler pickup truck. Then some more cars gave up and headed back. I walked over to the new cop and asked him what was happening. “They had the road cleared but another mudslide came across and buried the road.” Across the highway a yellow Case backhoe drove down the wrong side of the road.

“Any idea how much longer?” The new cop said maybe 30 minutes. Things were getting complicated and my calculations began to factor in the road not opening for quite a while. Going over Cloudcroft at night in the rain would not be fun so if this thing went really long I planned on going north to 380 to go south back home, a distance of 110 miles or so. If we could just get a mile or two down the highway I could get on reservation roads and work my way around the stoppage. The rain fell steadily and in my wet clothes I was starting to get a bit chilled so I took a walk to get my blood circulating.

The longer I waited the more I had invested in Highway 70 home. If I had made a decisive move back when we were first stopped I could have been home by now. I was well over an hour stopped and the blue sky ahead was gone, replace by dark clouds. I guess I could go back to Ruidoso and get a motel room for the night. I could dry out my clothes and try again in the morning. Another cop pulled up and spoke to the second cop who looked over to me and said “We’re getting ready to go.”  I ran back to the Yamaha and started the engine.

The police cars formed a rolling blockade and the miles long line of traffic followed behind slowly. The mudslide section was still pretty slippery and there were small branches and stones to dodge. Further on we came to another mudslide area but kept driving through the inch-deep goo. A few miles outside of the Indian reservation the road was just wet and the cop cars pulled off the highway. I was at the head of the line, or P1, and no way was I going to let all those cars pass me and kick up a wet fog of water. I spun the Yamaha up to 7000 RPM and the run into Tularosa was fast and violent but I got there first.

It was warm and dry in Tularosa. I backed off the throttle and puttered along at the speed limit. The honking guy in the white truck passed me and then got in front of me. He just had to, you know? I made it home several hours after the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers. They got hammered by the rain also but didn’t have to stop for blocked highways. In retrospect, if I had taken their route I would have been home much earlier but then if I did that I wouldn’t have had anything to write about.

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ExNotes Rally Review: 2022 VJMC 45th Annual Meet In Eureka Springs, Arkansas

I have a hard time in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The place is cursed, man. I either drink too much and get sick or don’t drink enough and make semi-lucid promises to people I only recognize by their colored lights, shouted conversations and loud music. By one o’clock in the morning Eureka Springs feels like I am wearing those flippers skin-divers wear on their feet. I look back fondly to my post Eureka Springs restroom sessions over a white porcelain toilet. It’s a refuge from the tourist anarchy. As long as I stay hunched over watching the better part of my gastrointestinal system swing lazily before my eyes I can’t possibly get into any more trouble.

Eureka Springs is situated in a steep, narrow gully filled with hippies, old buildings, artists, bars, restaurants, and music. Known for its healing mineral springs the town has always been a tourist spot that gives an buttoned down guy like me the impression he can hang out with the cool cats, if only for a day. It was a false impression.

Regardless of how it happens, I end up with my comically large feet awkwardly slapping the ground unsteadily and in a dead run. It’s my traditional way to leave Eureka Springs. So when Hunter sent me a link about the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club holding their 45th annual rally in Eureka Springs the first thought that popped into my head was “Oh no, not again.”

Hunter and I don’t have a lot of time to ride motorcycles lately, you know? Life is speeding by and eventually only one of us can end up owning Godzilla. There’s this whole, cats-in-the-cradle vibe going on. Losing a few years to the pandemic and chasing the American Dream doesn’t help much. What the hell, I’m old and expendable; I’ll try Eureka Springs one more time.

The plan was to meet at Hunter’s place in Oklahoma and ride our vintage Yamaha enduros to Eureka Springs, A distance of 200 miles or so. I tossed Godzilla into the truck and headed east. When I got to Oklahoma Hunter’s bike needed work and it was about 150 degrees outside. We decided to keep on going in my truck as Hunter stores another old Yamaha at his beat up shack in Eureka Springs.

The VJMC event was held in a gigantic Best Western located just outside of downtown Eureka Springs. It was the biggest Best Western I’ve ever seen, the place had three or four buildings, one of which was taken up by the VJMC. We came in on the Saturday and the greater part of the vintage bikes were not there yet. I asked some official-looking VJMC dudes, “Can we wander around and look at the bikes?”

“No, the show is only for VJMC members, if it was outdoors the public could see the bikes but for insurance reasons we can’t let you. You have to sign up for the rally.” There were maybe 20 bikes in the show, mostly Hondas. Hunter tried to explain to them I was a famous moto-journalist but none of the crew at the sign-in desk had heard of Motorcyclist magazine. It’s amazing how fast a star can burn out. The entry fee for the rally was pretty steep. The wizened old codger behind the desk decided to cut us a break. “Now, if you were VJMC members we can let you look around but you can’t participate in rally events.”

I bit, “How much to join the VJMC?” Turns out $35 for a year’s membership and with that you get a subscription to the VJMC magazine, an actual paper magazine. In this manner Hunter and I became part of the VJMC people. It was getting late and the taco truck across from the Best Western was calling our name so we beat it of of there vowing to return the next day when the vintage bike show would be at full strength.

Oark, Arkansas is a gas stop on the Trans America Trail. Oark also sells really good hamburgers. Hunter and me rode bikes down there on Sunday morning before it got too hot. Oark has changed a little since I was there so many years ago. The waitresses were younger and not so abusive. The interior had more tables and it was cleaner. It took some of the edge off the place.

By the time we finished our burgers it was getting late and the vintage bike show was waiting. Eureka Springs gets a lot of Harley-type bikers day tripping on the weekend and we managed to get stuck behind a slow moving train of the stuttering, popping, fart-bikes. They were weaving back and forth in the lane like they saw actor-bikers do in those 1970s Hell’s Angels movies. Hunter peeled off the main road and we blitzed through a small state park. At the other end of the park/short cut we came out just ahead of the fart-bikes. Hunter made it into the lead and I followed up on Godzilla passing the first farter in the train. One of the tattooed ladies riding pillion flipped us the bird as we pulled out in front of them. Just like in the movies. Godzilla laid down a fine blue fog for the fart-people to ride through.

The bike show had around 60 bikes; the majority were Hondas but there were enough Yamahas and Kawasakis to keep the big, red H honest. I didn’t see many Suzukis. The Best Western had two rooms with bikes and they spilled out into the parking lot. I parked Godzilla a discrete distance away so as to not shock the VJMC attendees. The bike show was a judged affair and as such we didn’t stick around to see who won. It doesn’t matter really. They’re all winners in my book. You know, the one I wrote called, “They’re All Winners.”

We missed the VJMC dinners, meetings and group rides because we didn’t sign up for the rally. That kind of geeky fellowship doesn’t appeal to me as much as it used to, and my old Yamaha is so ratty it wouldn’t do well in a show against new-looking bikes. If you like that sort of rally stuff there was plenty of it to do at the 45th VJMC rally.

It was a special day for me on Monday. You see, I’d made it out of Eureka Springs without any cellular level damage. Our old bikes ran fine; we rode about 180 miles over the weekend. I regulated my alcohol consumption and promised nothing to anybody. Staying away from downtown helped, although there was a hippy-dippy gathering at the big, natural amphitheater on the main drag. There was live music. People were dressed funny in purples and pinks. It started to get to me.  I wanted to take my clothes off and run around naked but that would be old Eureka Springs behavior.

There are a couple things I would do differently if I was in charge of the VJMC. Of course it’s easy for me to critique because no one will ever put me in charge. The first thing I’d do is get the word out better. I have several vintage Japanese bikes and frequent many vintage sites and social media pages, even the VJMC’s own page on Facebook. I didn’t hear about the 45th until Hunter ran across it somewhere and told me about it.

I’d make event information clearer on the VJMC website. I could never figure out if I had to join the rally to attend the bike show. As a struggling writer, the rally was out of my price range and only when I was at the registration desk did we sort out a work around that allowed me entry to the show. And that was because one of the guys working the desk came up with a nifty plan B.

Next, why not invite the general public? It could increase membership if you charged a $35 entry fee to the bike show that included a year’s membership and a subscription to the magazine. Toss in a T-shirt! Finally, get someone at the VJMC to answer emails. I sent emails to the VJMC president and the person in charge of membership asking about the 45th event: crickets. Maybe the website has outdated contact information. No one has ever got back to me yet. I’m both old and into vintage Japanese bikes so I imagine I’m the target market. Not getting back to old guys makes them cranky.

We made it safely to Hunter’s ranch in Oklahoma and I only got one speeding ticket right as I crossed from Oklahoma’s No Man’s Land into the Texas panhandle. Even that wasn’t so bad as the cop chatted me up about Godzilla. His grandpa had an old RT1-B just like it. When I told Hunter about the ticket he knew the cop. Apparently it’s a popular speed trap. It was good to see Hunter again. It was good to ride a little dirt on the RT1-B. Life is short: go to the vintage bike show, any vintage bike show, if you get a chance.

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Mentors: Woody Peebles

One of the influential people in my life was Woody Peebles. Woody worked at Admiralty Marine down on Shelter Island in San Diego, California. Woody lived on the ocean side of Point Loma in a beautiful, two story home that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. My memory is slightly faulty but I think he was one of the principals, or maybe the owner of, an electronics company called Wavetek. When I started working at Admiralty he was no longer involved with Wavetek and was essentially retired. Woody didn’t need any money; he was well off and I think he hung around boats just to be near people. He was an outgoing personality and chatted a lot.

Woody was an electronics genius, which is different from electrical wiring like the Saturn 5 is different from a bottle rocket. We didn’t work together at first. He did electronics and I worked in the mechanical side of Admiralty Marine. The shop began selling a lot of Onan generators and also installed Electroguard corrosion control systems. Woody was having a hard time keeping up with the growth in that end of the business so I’d get pulled off my mechanical duties to help Woody.

Helping Woody was about as much fun as you could have and still call it work. In the morning we would load up the truck for our day’s jobs and take off from the shop like we meant business. Within a block or two Woody would say, “I’m a little hungry. Want to stop and get breakfast?” Of course I did. We’d pull into a restaurant, settle into a booth, order coffee and shoot the breeze. That would be my second breakfast but I could eat all I wanted and never gain weight.

After an hour or so we would go to the actual job. At noon we would knock off early to beat the lunch rush and we haunted The Red Sails Inn nearly every day. They had a really good house salad with a great salad dressing that made me wheeze. Must have been the nitrates. Rosie was our waitress. We would ask which table was Rosie’s and then go sit at that table.

Besides eating, Woody would take the time to explain complex electronic circuits to me while we were supposed to be fixing some poor bastard’s boat. He was forever drawing out circuits on napkins that had nothing to do with the job at hand. It was like a free, college-level electronics course so I lapped it up. I learned about wave soldering, circuit board etching and to think of a printed circuit board as one component, a single part, instead of a collection of electronic bits.

Woody was never in a rush; his concept of time was a revelation to me. Before Woody I was always on someone else’s time, hurrying and stressing to not be late; pressing to meet some other guy’s idea of how long a job should take. I didn’t own my time. Woody had an entirely different way of marking time. He would step into or out of the workday with ease. Sometimes he would just leave the job we were on, “I’ll be back later.” and off he would go.

Working with Woody made me realize that my time was as important as the next guy’s. Jobs weren’t something you did in a fixed amount of time. In fact, time itself became irrelevant and you measured success by completing the work, not beating the clock. If we were taking too long on a particular job I’d start fretting and Woody would say, “Don’t worry about it, I won’t charge for my time.”

This fungible sort of timekeeping was a fundamental change in my concept of income. Before Woody, I was always trying to work more hours to make more money. Once I learned that I could bend time to my will I no longer needed an hourly job. I didn’t need a business to pay me by the hour. In fact, the hour, my benchmark for self worth, was nothing but a man-made denomination. Days weren’t 24-hours long any more, there was only breakfast, lunch and dinner.

My new way of thinking made it possible for me to quit Admiralty Marine and start a boat repair business. I still kept track of my time and charged by the hour but the pressure was off, I could always adjust the bill later. Customers didn’t tell me how long I had to do a job, I told them what I was going to charge them regardless of the hours involved. I may have run out of time on a job but I never fell behind again: I was always right where I should be.

Woody and I left Admiralty Marine around the same time. I started Gresh Marine and tripled my income on the very first day and I was still billing half of what Admiralty was charging for my time. Woody hooked up with Wayne and Walt, also known as the Gold Dust twins. The Gold Dust twins were independent operators who had a loose affiliation when one or the other needed a second set of hands. The three W’s formed a company called Associated Marine but it was mostly in their minds. Each W did their own thing and would bill each other if they assisted on a job.

Woody must have missed me because after a year or so the three W’s asked me to meet with them to discuss a merger. I went to the meeting. The deal was, Associated Marine was going to rent a building at a marina on Mission Bay. All four of us would split the rent, insurance and other business costs. We would still be independent operators with the added benefit of having a crew you could call upon if you needed help for a big re-wire project or a new boat build.

Wayne, a tall, gangly guy told me that I’d have to raise my rates to make them compatible with the rest of the Associated Marine members. They didn’t want me undercutting them. This meant another doubling of my income. Thus began a several year run of bliss. I loved having a shop to work out of instead of my tiny basement. I met my future wife. I bought a house and my first brand new motorcycle. I spent money as fast as I made it but I was young: that’s what young folks are supposed to do.

Bit by bit, Wayne and Walt sent Woody and I out on more of their jobs. They kept us very busy, so busy we never had time to build our own customer base. I began to realize I had switched from working for Admiralty Marine to working for the Gold Dust twins. Maybe that was their plan all along. Still, the money was good and I was having fun working with Woody so I kept at it.

We never had a receptionist at Associated Marine.   An answering machine handled incoming calls and if anyone of us were in the shop we’d answer and take notes. One day I walked in the shop and Wayne’s daughter was in the office manning the phones. We didn’t pay her much but it was another cost of doing business.

Walt wanted an outboard motor dealership so he managed to get Suzuki to make us dealers. Then we needed inventory. With the Suzuki’s came warranty work, which was paperwork intensive. I became an outboard motor mechanic even though I hated the damn things. These changes happened without my input. I was too busy working on Gold Dust jobs.

Then came Woody’s son, Woody Junior. Junior had lost his sales job and crash landed at Associated Marine. Junior was outgoing and gregarious even more so than his dad. Now when we went to breakfast there were three of us. And here I was thinking I was the son, you know? But Junior was the real son. He knew nothing about what we were doing at Associated Marine yet he was charging the same rate as the rest of us. Three men on a job was a bit much so Woody and Junior worked together just like me and Woody used to. I worked alone.

There was a bit of tension in the air. I felt Junior hadn’t paid his dues and was starting on third base so to speak, a base that had taken me many years of hard work to step on. Besides, he stole my Daddy and talked too much.

The situation gnawed at me and I became disgruntled. I mentioned to Wayne that since Junior was charging the same as the rest of us he should pay one-fifth of Associated Marine’s expenses. This blew up big time. Woody charged into a boat where Wayne and I were working and grabbed me by the shirt. “You little shit, stirring up trouble!” Woody screamed at me. Junior was behind me sheepishly saying, “C’mon dad, leave him alone.”

Woody was old and had a dicky heart. I was young and strong. It would be no contest. I was getting angry at him shoving me around by my shirt. I balled up my fist to smack him in the jaw and when he saw that he got even more enraged. “Don’t raise your fist to me!” he shouted, like he was yelling at his own son. My fist went down on its own accord. I thought it would have been nice if my fist had informed me in advance that it wasn’t taking my side. My initial anger had subsided and I was sad and worried that Woody might have a heart attack. Woody stormed off the boat with Junior staying a safe distance behind. Wayne was dazed, “What the hell was that?” He said. I didn’t understand the situation at the time but I had gotten the attention I desired.

You know how they say to be careful what you wish for? After a week or so Woody cooled off and apologized for shoving me around. He told me that he’d thought it over and that I was right. Junior became a partner in associated Marine and assumed his fifth of the expenses. Junior had breezed into the Majors without spending a day in the minor leagues.

From then on I generally stayed out of trouble and just worked but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as the old days. Woody, Junior and I did a few big boats together but Junior’s work ethic grated on my nerves. Junior became a passable electrician when he applied himself except he was always talking. I didn’t mind carrying Woody because I could do the work of two men. Junior was one body too many. I finally drifted away from Associated Marine and restarted Gresh Marine as an independent business.

I tried to find Woody online but came up with nothing. . He would be around 100 today so he’s probably not with us. Junior is still alive and living in San Diego. When I first met Woody all I could see was dollars per hour. I wanted a job, any job. I wanted to work for someone. I needed someone to tell me what to do next. After Woody and I parted ways I felt that there was nothing I couldn’t do and I feared nothing business-wise. After Woody I never had a job for the rest of my life and I managed to stay busy the entire time. Thanks, old friend.

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Hasty Conclusions: The New BSA 650 Gold Star

There’s not a lot of Internet noise on the revivified BSA motorcycle company and I don’t see any reason why ExhaustNotes.us shouldn’t try and create some buzz with wild speculation of our own. We haven’t got a test bike and if we did we’d be riding the wheels off the thing so we’ll just imagine we have a BSA to examine. If you haven’t learned by now not to trust things you read on the Internet then there’s really no hope for you and you can take everything I say in this review as gospel.

In the US market BSA is re-entering the motorcycle business at a bad time. Our customer demographic for street motorcycle riders becomes older by the minute. 1950’s-1960’s nostalgia-driven motorcycle sales simply must die off with the customers that lived that stifling, bland era. In just a few seconds I was able to gin up a statistic that said the average age for motorcyclists in America is 73 years old. That number shocked me even though I knew it was false because I was the one that made it up. Soon enough I came to believe that number because it was on the Internet in this ExhaustNotes.us story.

In the video below new-BSA’s Indian owners appear to realize the American market is awash with nostalgic motorcycle choices and don’t seem to be in any rush to lose money chasing the urine soaked, grey-haired, pony-tailed, ancient American rider even though that dried up shell of a man would appear to be the natural audience for such a bike.

The motorcycle might be built in Britain, but most likely will be made in India with a steadying British hand on the design choices. BSA has really nailed the look. The new 650 is as close to the old Gold Star style-wise as you can get without having survived the bombing of Coventry. To me, the bike looks great and is so much classier than the swoopy, exo-framed modern bike. BSA even made the engine clatter like an old British single even though it’s a liquid-cooled, double overhead cam, 4-valve engine. I looked on BSA’s website to see of it was fuel–injected but didn’t see that spec. I’m sure it is. Claimed compression ratio is 11.5:1 so hopefully the combustion chamber is shaped well enough to use regular unleaded gas. Finding high-octane gas is a problem out in the hinterlands.

The claimed 45 horsepower BSA thumper comes with all the modern conveniences like ABS, headlights, turn indicators and a hose bib for a washing machine. The bike is also equipped with a 23,000-watt inverter allowing the rider to power a typical suburban home for up to 5 days. The bike is fairly lightweight compared to your average adventure motorcycle clocking in at only 33-1/2 stone. One disc brake on each wheel should stop the light-ish BSA fairly well and with a claimed 70 miles-per-1024 dram you should be able to go roughly 210 miles on the 3240-dram tank. Of course, your mileage may vary depending of which rose-colored glasses you are wearing at the time.

BSA’s website doesn’t mention a counter balancer but one of the guys in the video says it has one so I predict a tolerable vibration level even with that big slug flying around between your legs. Traditional telescopic forks and two rear shocks are nothing earth shaking. I like simple things so I’m good with boring old suspenders. Spoke rims and what looks like tube-type tires are all well-trod design choices that leave plenty of space for improvements on subsequent model years.

As it should, my opinion means nothing to you but I like the new BSA. It looks right, and it has the bare minimum modern junk bolted on. I’ll go as far as saying it’s an honest motorcycle. The only thing wrong is the price. Even with the collapsing British pound, 10,000 British pounds is over $11,000 US dollars and that’s almost twice what Royal Enfield’s 650 twin sells for, a bike that is every bit as cool and most likely better. The Enfield even wins AFT flat track races. I won’t be buying one but don’t let that stop you from buying one.

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My Big, Fat, BMW Obsession: A Cautionary Tale

Unlike today, when I tend to mercilessly ridicule BMW motorcycles and their insufferable owners there was a time when I ended up owning several of the damn things. Only one, a 1973 R75/5, was actually bought on purpose. When I got the R75/5 it was in almost new condition and just 2 years old. I was living in Florida and traded a small-window 1957 Volkswagen van and $1300 dollars for the bike to a guy who lived in Fort Lauderdale. That van would be worth a wad of money now but who has time to wait around for the zeitgeist? Certainly not me, I’m a man on the go.

The R75/5 was a great bike. It wasn’t as fast as the Japanese 750’s but it weighed 100 pounds less than those bikes. Weight has always been important to me. The 750 was pretty good off road and I used to take it scrambling over at the Florida East Coast railway yards. The FEC had thousands of unused acres where my pals and I could ride motorcycles, set things on fire and strip down stolen cars.

The biggest problem with the Toaster Tank 750/5 was a really bad high-speed weave. I never got it past 100mph because it was so scary. BMW put a steering damper knob on the top triple clamp but you had to crank it down so tight to stop the weave you could hardly turn. This weave was somewhat cured by a 2” longer swing arm on the /6 models. The next biggest problem on the 750 was a weak charging system. If you ran the headlight too long the piss-poor alternator couldn’t keep the battery hot enough to use the electric start. I rode that BMW all over the USA in 1975 and had to kick start it most of the way.

My next BMW came along when I was living in San Diego, California. It was a R60/5 with a faded pink, 6-gallon gas tank. It was one of those cheap deals that you buy just because it’s so cheap. I think I paid around $100 for the bike because the engine didn’t run. The R60/5 model was 600cc. On R60s the final drive was re-geared to reflect the lower horsepower. The only one I ever rode was dramatically slower than the 750. It was a lot slower than the 150cc difference would have you believe and wouldn’t go fast enough to weave. I never liked the 600cc BMW because it was such a dog. I ended up with one anyway.

I unstuck the pistons and took the $100 R60/5 engine apart. It wasn’t in bad shape inside so I decided to lightly hone the cylinders and put new piston rings in the thing. My buddy Glenn and I rode my 550 Honda 4-banger up to a Los Angeles BMW dealer to get parts. That’s how it was, if you were going to LA for parts your buddy might tag along just for something to do. We didn’t have cell phones. I don’t remember if there was a BMW dealer in San Diego back then. It was kind of a one-horse town and you had to go north to LA for a lot of reasons. I’ve also forgotten the name of the dealer I went to but I think it was off the 405 somewhere, maybe Long beach.

Amazingly the BMW dealer had the rings in stock but wanted $35 per piston for each set of 3 rings or $70 plus tax. I was stunned at the cost. I was earning $3.25 an hour back then. You could get 8 pistons, 8 wristpins and 8 sets of rings for a Chevy small-block for $100. You could buy 2 brand new Volkswagen jugs and 4 pistons plus rings for $100. I owned cars that cost less than $70.

I remember getting pissed off at the BMW parts guy and yelling at him, “I’ll make my own damn rings!” and storming out of the place. Outside the dealership Glenn tried to talk some sense into me. “Where else are you going to get rings?” He said. I was kind of stubborn, “Screw it I’ll make them.” I said again, but not as loudly as before. We rode back to San Diego without any BMW parts.

Turns out, making piston rings is not so easy. I tried to find an engine that used a piston the same size as the R60 but time passed and the R60/5 just sat there in pieces. I ended up selling the R60/5 to Glenn for the same amount of money as I paid for it. Glenn rode back alone to the same BMW dealer and bought the rings. He eventually got the bike running but it was so boring to ride he sold it shortly thereafter.

I was done with BMWs for 25 years or so until my buddy Roger gave me his basket case R60/5 when I was living in the Florida Keys. Roger had taken the bike apart after another guy had crashed it and bent the frame. Roger said to me “I’m never going to get that bike running, do you want it?” And like the idiot I am I said “Yes I do.”

Those old, oval-tube BMW frames are some tough cookies. It took a lot of heat and hammering to get it fairly straight again. I discovered Bob’s mail order BMW store and finally purchased that set of rings. They were still $35 a side but I was making a bit more money so it didn’t seen so bad. Plus, I had calmed down over the years.

I freshened up the R60’s engine, cleaned the carbs, and painted the now kinda-straight-ish frame. I bought a new exhaust system to replace the smashed original ones, got new tires and tubes, took a kink out of the front wheel and had myself a roller. I pulled dents out of the 6-gallon tank and bonded it up a bit, then painted the tank and started assembling the motorcycle. I had it a few days from running when the hurricane hit.

Four feet of storm surge flooded the shed where the R60/5 was parked. The engine and gas tank were full of salt water. Our house was wrecked. Our other vehicles were submerged and ruined. It was a disaster. All I had time to do was to drain the salt water out of the Beemer’s engine and flush it with gasoline. As you can imagine, new, more urgent projects sprung up and I finally gave the BMW to another buddy, Charlie.

Charlie tinkered with the bike for a few months but the engine finally seized up and he sold it for $200 to some other poor sucker. So you can see why I’m a bit shirty when it comes to BMWs. I mock them to cover my pain. We have had a long, tortured history, BMW and I, and in that long history I nearly always come out on the losing end.

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ExNotes Review: Site Advertising

In the good old days of paper magazines a writer could break even or make a little money from a story. That money was paid upon publication. Those days are mostly gone. There are only a few motorcycle magazines left. For a reader, that’s a good thing: Only the best writers are still being published in a condensed, paper format. There is no need to buy a dozen magazines as all your favorite authors are paddling in one of three lifeboats: Rider, Roadrunner or Motorcycle Classics. For the rest of us the modern Internet format requires a scramble for revenue. It’s a battle of pennies, clicks and views.

The ExhaustNotes.us website is truly a labor of love. It began when Joe Berk and I found ourselves at loose ends. Berk retired from his job of promoting CSC Motorcycles and I was dumped (along with everyone else) from Motorcyclist magazine when they re-styled the magazine in a futile attempt to save the sinking publication. Berk still has his gig at Motorcycle Classics but the man writes zillions of words a day. He needed another outlet for his creative juices. I had given up writing and was standing around watching concrete cure. I tried to get on at Motorcycle.com and had a few stories published there, but budgets are tight in the Internet motorcycle content business. From this journalistic crossroads the ExhaustNotes.us website was born.

If you factor in our time, ExhaustNotes.us doesn’t really pay. Berk handles all the mechanics of the site and we have a web guy that does some magic behind the scenes stuff. Then there’s a cost to host the website. On the plus side, the site earns money from the advertisers and gets a fraction of a penny when you purchase an item from Amazon links in our stories. We don’t do a lot of Amazon linking as it’s such a small amount of revenue it’s hardly worth the bother.

The big bucks come from the Google ads you see sprinkled around ExhaustNotes.us stories. We have no control over these ads. Google places them according to some algorithm that uses words in the story to determine what type of ad is shown. For example, one of Berk’s gun stories will cause gun ads to appear. Jeep stories will attract Jeep ads. If I do a story on the Yamaha RD350, Asian foot-fetish ads or penis-enlargement ads will pop up. Come to think of it, maybe that’s only on my screen view. We even had to delete an ExhaustNotes.us give-away story because Google flooded the story with fake contest-entry forms. We didn’t want readers to be scammed.

This is where you, the reader, comes in. ExhaustNotes.us gets paid from Google each time you click on one of their ads. You don’t have to buy anything like Amazon links. Usually the revenue from Google ads varies from $1 to $10 on a good day. That’s not a lot but over a month it could add up, you know? Anyway, Berk has a pretty good idea of how much money comes in and ExhaustNotes.us would like you all to participate in a money-grabbing experiment.

Here’s the deal: After you read an ExhaustNotes.us story, click on the ads that are inserted in the story or above the story. It doesn’t have to be a current story; one from the archives works just as well. Each time you click on a Google ad we get a fraction of a penny or 35 Dodge coins, whichever is more. Share the ExhaustNotes.us story to your social media. You never know when something will go viral and ExhaustNotes.us will earn $25 in a single day. The more people that view a story mean more clicks and more ad revenue.

As I edit this story it sounds like I am complaining about the writing business. That’s not the impression I want to leave you with. I’m fine with not making money from writing but being fine with it is not the same as accepting it. I’m looking for a steady revenue stream, man. Berk says we have written over 1000 stories on ExhaustNotes.us and that’s a lot of writing. Even if Berk did 80% of it that’s still 200 more stories than I would have written if ExhaustNotes.us didn’t exist. When Berk first started ExhaustNotes.us I asked him why we should go through all the hassle. Berk told me:  Writers gotta write.  And so we do.

Keep on clicking those Google ads, my brothers.

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ExNotes Review: Berk’s Jeep Wrangler Review

You know you’re scraping the bottom of the content barrel when you start reviewing the reviews on your own website. It’s lame, I know, but Berk’s recent Jeep review, while mostly positive, lacked the context that a long time Jeep owner can bring to the table. In short, Berk felt the Jeep was fun but several flaws kept it from being a car he would actually buy. I use the word car on purpose because if you compare the Jeep Wrangler to a car it will lose every time.

One of Berk’s observations was that the two-door Wrangler lacked interior space for normal day-to-day operations. Specifically, that the Jeep didn’t have enough room to carry his gear to the shooting range. It’s a valid complaint but that didn’t stop those guys on TV’s Rat Patrol show from harassing Rommel’s Africa Corps. There is a 4-door Wrangler version that provides a bit more room for gear but for this review-review we will stick to the 2-door.

Berk mentioned the ride quality of the Wrangler as being less than ideal. The Jeep Wrangler, like Harley Davidson, is trapped by its own success. Jeep customers want a Wrangler to be a Wrangler regardless of modern advancements. Wrangler 4×4 protocol requires straight axles front and rear and body-on-frame construction. These rules are inviolate and will remain as long as there is a Jeep Wrangler. If Jeep came out with a unibody, independently sprung Wrangler the true believers would be jumping out of 5th story windows. Continuity is more important than comfort.

Add up the short wheelbase, heavy unsprung axle weight, relatively light sprung weight and you get a choppy, rough ride. Jeep has steadily improved the ride of the Wrangler through the years. The difference between my 1992 Wrangler and a new Wrangler is shocking. The difference between a new Wrangler and any other new car is just as shocking. My 1992 can be painful on rough roads.  Sometimes you have to stop and walk.

Berk mentioned that the Wrangler felt a bit loose at speed. He was running 80 miles per hour! That kind of speed is unbelievable to me. The brick-shape of a Wrangler is the worse aerodynamic shape you could devise. The Wrangler would be more aerodynamic if you flipped it around and made the back the front. This horrible shape causes massive separations in the laminar flow around the Jeep body. Huge sections of air break away from the body buffeting the Jeep to and fro. If you managed to get a Wrangler going fast enough its paint would peel off from cavitation. All this turbulence causes noise and vibration; the Jeep is actually much quieter when driven in a perfect vacuum.

Berk noted the poor fit and finish of his rental car. The gas cap bezel was really ill-fitting which shouldn’t happen on a car with such a long production run. I’ll give him this one. Jeeps are put together sort of sloppily but you have to realize the abuse they will be put to. Once your Jeep has been rolled over on its side you will appreciate the fact that it looks no worse than before. Underneath the Jeep, where it matters, you’ll find tough running gear that can take a fair bit of abuse. Jeep owners regularly screw up their Wranglers with huge tires and massive suspension alterations then they try to break them over rocks. The Jeep running gear stoically put up with the stupidity. You can’t do this kind of stuff with a real car.

Berk felt that 16 miles to a gallon for a 4-cylinder Jeep was not great fuel economy. Remember, he was cruising 80 miles per hour. My 4-cylinder Wrangler gets around 15 miles to a gallon at 60 miles per hour. It doesn’t take a math teacher to figure out the fuel economy on the Wrangler has been greatly improved through the years. Unfortunately I can’t give you the gas mileage for my Jeep at 80 miles per hour because my 1992 won’t do 80 miles per hour.

Like a Harley owner, a Jeep owner becomes adept at making excuses for their Jeep. Also like a Harley you don’t get a normal consumer experience in a Jeep Wrangler. The car is a throwback; a living dinosaur that you can use to ply the dirt trails of America. The Wrangler is constructed like cars were in the 1940s with only the electronics modernized.

Buying a Wrangler for commuting is silly for all the reasons Berk mentioned in his review. However, if you live on a steep dirt road that gets snow in the winter a Wrangler makes sense. In 4-wheel low you’ll be amazed at the hills you can climb and the places you can get stuck. I think Berk summed it up nicely when he said the Wrangler is a fun car to drive but he wouldn’t want to own one. I agree with that sentiment, except I own one.

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5 Things I Don’t Like About The Custom Motorcycle Scene

The Quail motorcycle show Facebook page posted up photos of the bike that won Best In Show. The bike was a Vincent V-twin engine slung into a banana style frame. The front wheel was almost all brake drum with the levers and pivots inside the polished backing plate/dust cover. The foot pegs were forward mounted and the handlebars were very low attached near the top triple clamp, the control levers were internal cable type to leave a clean tube.

To ride the bike, if it was even rideable, your body would be bent into a severe “C” shape. For me, the bike would be unusable and I don’t think anyone ever really planned on riding it more than a mile or two. I don’t want to pick on this particular machine.  There is no denying the skill that went into the build, but the bike reminded me why I’ve gone sour on custom, show bike stuff. Here’s my list of 5 reasons I don’t like custom bikes.

Reason Number One: Professional Builders

I understand that people have to make a living. If you are good at building custom bikes you should get paid for it. However, from the customer standpoint hiring others to build a custom bike for you ultimately means nothing. Well, not nothing…I guess it means you have the money to hire a builder. Yea you.

Motorcycles are tools to build your personal experience.  They are the means, not the end. The rides you take in the stinging rain, switching to reserve on a lonely highway or cold ice cream from a glass-top freezer are the true artistry of the motorcycle. Making the mundane exceptional is the reason motorcycles exist. Having a custom bike won’t make that experience better any more than a gold-plated paintbrush will make you a better artist. Throwing tons of money at a professional builder to win a bike show hollows out the win. What was it for? You didn’t paint that picture.

Reason Number Two: Regressive Engineering

I’ve built custom bikes in the past. They would be considered Tracker-Style today but back when I built them the goal was lighter weight, improved handling, better braking and more speed. I wasn’t averse to making the bikes look cool as long as it didn’t get in the way of a better motorcycle. The modern custom bike scene sees master engineers and amazing craftsmen devoted to making fantastically intricate clockwork movements that cannot tell the time of day. Look Ma, no hands! Useless quality, while nice to look at, is still useless. The custom-built bike turns out to be a worse motorcycle for all the effort. The handling is worse, the practicality is much worse, the braking is worse.

We see beautifully designed, narrow tube chrome forks that work as if they have no suspension. We see swoopy frames connected with buttery welds but poor in every factual way. They scrape the ground rounding a mild corner and flex under the slightest load. Think of the misallocation of skills: we have our best and brightest motorcycle engineers and craftsmen wasting their time building non-functional wall hangings. We are squandering talent and treasure and there isn’t that much around here to squander.

Reason Number Three: Art for Art’s Sake

I hear you. These are rolling art projects. Custom bikes aren’t supposed to be sensible. I learned a long time ago that art is defined by the artist: If you say it’s art then it’s art, dammit. My problem is that there’s nothing particularly new or innovative going on in the custom bike scene…oops… I mean art world. The motorcycles are all derivatives of each other with the few new-ish ideas getting beat to death over and over. Is it really art if we are just coloring between the same lines? Is bolting on a tiny fireman’s ladder art? How low can we set the bar?

I’m going to cause hurt feelings here but the custom bike scene is no more artistic than making a different length lanyard in your grade school arts and crafts class. In fact, it is craft, something that can be taught and through repetition honed to perfection.

Reason Number Four: Stupidity is the New Cool

Up until the 1980s most custom bikes were rideable. A little rake, a bit of extension to get the stance right, funky pipes, and maybe a cool seat, but the bike could still get around without causing too much pain. Those days are gone, replaced by the excess, the decorative, and the soulless. Now custom bikes must tick all the stupid boxes. Hubless wheels? Check. Horribly ugly bagger with giant front tire? Check. Cookie cutter, store-bought choppers that look exactly the same as every other cookie-cutter chopper? Check. If you’re going to remove the burden of function and place a motorcycle in the art world then that world demands better than what we see now. How many Mona Lisa copies does it take before someone builds a melting landscape? The custom scene is boring crap and deep in your heart you know it.

Reason Number Five: I’m Getting Too Old For This

When we were kids we used to cut up good running motorcycles thinking we were doing something worthwhile. My dad would tell us to leave it alone, that we were just going to make it worse and he was right. We did make the bikes worse. There are a million Harleys out there so go ahead and butcher them if you must, but when I see a nice classic bike tore up to make look it look like a child’s toy I say, “I’m getting too old for this.” I realize that everything I cherish will disappear eventually. I know that it’s your bike and you can do what you want to it. I know it’s none of my business, but if destroying nice bikes to make boring customs is your thing I don’t have to like it. Skill and craftsmanship do not absolve you from responsibility and I will not go quietly into the night.

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