Category: Joe Gresh

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 18

The pace has quickened here at Tinfiny Ranch. Lots of new parts from Z1 Enterprises arrived and lots of new ground was covered on Zed’s resurrection. We are going to ride like the wind soon. In Part 17 the ignition switch was giving me trouble but that’s been resolved with all new locks from Z1E. I had to dismantle the headlight area to replace the ignition and the under-seat area to install the new seat lock.  The fork lock was easy. I should have gone with new parts in the first place. Ah well, if I didn’t do stupid things no one would understand me.

The luggage rack I bought from ebay fit Zed only in the broadest sense of the word. It was made to connect to the original grab bar on this tab but I don’t have the grab bar. That’s ok because it sat way too far back on the bike for me. Like 6 inches past the taillight. I lopped that tab off and shortened the rack where it mounts to the top shock bolt.

Without the tab or grab rail there was nothing to hold the rack from flopping down onto the rear fender. Using a New Mexico hammer-and-14mm deep socket-roll forming machine I knocked up two brackets that fit into the old grab rail mounting holes. I made a 1-inch spacer out of some solid steel round stock that had lain in Tinfiny’s driveway for several years.

The rack looks much better tucked in tight but cantilevered as it is, I’m not sure the tubing will be strong enough to hold much gear. I may redesign the rack with a long gusset running on the bottom of the tube that will incorporate the mounting tabs for a rearward set of blinker tabs. Moving the blinkers aft will allow me to use those toss-over, Pony Express style saddlebags.

Zed’s lower, right-side engine mount was missing and I’m getting tired of buying parts for this bike so I made a paper template and cut a chunk out of an old motorhome bumper that had also laid in Tinfiny’s driveway for years. I hate to disturb the junk buried around Tinfiny because it stabilizes the soil. You never know which part you pull out of the ground will cause a landslide. It’s like living atop a Jenga stack.

The mount is not as nice as a stock mount but it’s way on the bottom. No one will ever know.

I also bought a new seat! Replacement foam and a new seat cover added up to nearly the same as a whole new seat so I bit the bullet. It tasted like brass with a hint of lead. The seat came complete with brackets, rubber supports and seat latch. It was missing only the pivot pins that hold the seat on. Using my New Mexico hand-lathe, I spun down a ¼-20 stainless bolt to fit through the frame brackets. A hole for a cotter pin & washer keeps the seat pins from falling out.

Besides rebuilding the caliper and master cylinder in a previous Zed installment I replaced the rubber hoses and the missing hose support down by the fender. I also had to replace the solid pipe from the caliper to the lower brake hose.

Bleeding the brakes was fairly straightforward. So far nothing has leaked out of the rebuilt parts. The lever feels a bit mushy; I’ll let it sit a bit to let the air bubbles coalesce then try a little more bleeding.

I rigged the bike with a spare battery and tested all the electrical circuits. Amazingly, everything works. The alternator works a little too well putting out 17 volts to the battery! Not to worry, another $100 has a new Z1 Enterprises regulator/rectifier on the way. The new unit is not an exact replacement. The regulator/rectifier is all in one finned casting unlike the stock Kawasaki set up where the two functions are separate parts.

The last time I ran Zed way back in Zed’s Not Dead 10 it ran and idled great. Now the bike is popping and won’t run off choke. The poor quality of gas sold today turned dark red in a very short time so I have removed the float bowls and will blast the carbs with aerosol carb cleaner. Hopefully this will get the bike running normally as I don’t want to take those damn carbs apart again.

Read our earlier Zed’s Not Dead installments for the rest of the resurrection!

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 17

Repairing old motorcycles is both fun and unnerving. After a couple weeks waiting on shims I finally finished the valve adjustment on Zed. While I was poking around under the valve cover I noticed that one of the four cam idler sprocket bolts was a non-standard bolt.

Zed’s previous mechanic must have lost a bolt or stripped the threads and the replacement bolt was too long. Stacking washers took up the clearance for the errant bolt but it looked like hell. I wanted to install the correct length bolt. The damn thing was tight. Like break-the-bolt-off tight. As I gave it a semi-gentle tug it had that springy feel. I fear that if I put any more torque on the fastener it will twist off leaving me with a mess.

It worries me that in the 45 years since the Kawasaki left the factory someone probably removed the cams in Zed. There were a lot of performance part catalogs in the same shed Zed came from. I hope the guy didn’t screw up the engine. I decided to leave the offending bolt for a later day and after checking the clearances one more time I used a new gasket and buttoned up Zed’s top cover.

I’m bumping into my self-imposed 3000-dollar budget limiter so I’ve been making some hard choices. Tach and Speedo cables aren’t very expensive but after flushing out the cable housings and cleaning the cables I couldn’t see any fraying or signs of stress. I coated the cables with grease and will be reusing them so that’s another 25 bucks saved.

The Z1 Enterprises wiring harness was very complete, all except for the instrument light harnesses. Zed’s tach and speedo have two instrument lights per side. These bulbs are illuminated whenever the headlight is on so the rubber bulb holders were sort of crystalized from heat. They fell apart when I removed them. Half the rubber fell inside the gage and half stayed stuck on the instrument light socket. Luckily for me the Z1E harness came with a new warning light harness and I was able to steal the old warning light rubbers and repurpose them for gauge illumination.

Changing the sockets and rubbers was less trouble than I thought it would be. I had to cut off the bullet connectors to pull the trick off. After threading the wire through the rubbers I uncrimped the old bullet connectors and recrimped the wires with a bit of solder to make up for any weakness inherent in a reused crimp connector. I wanted to keep the original instrument light sockets & wires so the color code would be correct but one of the sockets had chafed wiring and corrosion inside. I borrowed a warning light socket from the old harness and hopefully no one will ever see.

On a Z1 the gauges foam padding is sandwiched between the gauge and the cast aluminum bracket. This padding had deteriorated and crumbled easily. I knocked out a few round pads from some sticky refrigeration insulation and applied them wherever it seemed like the right place to apply such a thing. Next I tested all the bulbs and assembled the gauge cluster.

I had a hard time figuring out the headlight shell/blinker stalk sequence but my Internet buddies helped me get the various parts in the correct order. The blinkers ground through this ground washer/spacer type deal but mine were both broken.

Ever thrifty, I used a couple of thick washers and made an aluminum spacer to replicate the broken ground washer’s function, if not their aesthetics. The headlight ears on Zed appear to be slightly bent, giving a wall-eyed look to the blinkers. Or, if you like, swept back for speed. I don’t think I’ll try to straighten the ears because chrome does not stretch well and I don’t want hairline cracks in the lustrous finish. Sometimes effective motorcycle repair requires knowing when to quit.

At times my thriftiness ends up costing me more in the long run but not often. I never had a key for Zed so I took the seat lock, fork lock and ignition switch to our local locksmith. He made a couple keys that fit and only charged $40 for the work. Now that the instrument cluster and headlight was back together it was time to throw a battery on Zed and see if anything worked. I used a car battery and a couple jumper cables, turned the key…and nothing. Flipping the key back and forth brought flashes of light from the neutral and oil pressure warning lights. By turning the key just so, and shaking it like a Polaroid picture I could get the lights to come on steady. I’ve ordered a new ignition switch at $75.

Amazingly most everything worked. The left rear blinker bulb wasn’t making good contact so I cleaned the socket and it worked. The horn was badly rusted inside so I’ve ordered a new one but other than those two things all other circuits are fine. The starter works but I didn’t run the engine. That crappy ignition switch will just make it cut out.

Zed is getting very close. Very close, my brothers. Except now I have to take the headlight and gauge cluster back apart when my new switch shows up. And then the seat lock. And then the fork lock. It’s two steps forward, one step back kind of action. One other cost saving measure that didn’t pan out was the used front tire. It looked fine when I first installed the thing but the tire has developed deep cracks in the rubber between the treads. Yet more stuff on order.

My latest Zed parts order is around $600 but this should be the last big pile of parts. It looks like it’s time to clean out Zed’s rusty gas tank and start thinking about all the cool places I’ll ride to on this beast.

Catch up on the Zed resurrection here!

The 5 Deadly Sins Of Motorcycle Restoration

My idea of a good restoration and your idea of a good restoration may differ, but you know deep down inside that I’m always right. I am the arbiter of cool. I am the final word, I am…Omni Joe. Here are 5 common restoration mistakes that drive me crazy:

Sin #1: Gas tank liners.

That sealer crap people pour into their motorcycle gas tanks is the worse invention of all time. Guys swear by this junk but don’t listen to those lazy bastards. When I read the words, gas tank liner and/or Caswell sealer in a motorcycle description I know an amateur’s hands have been fiddling the motorcycle. Who would pour that devil’s goop into a nice motorcycle gas tank? It makes me wonder what else they screwed up. The way to fix a leaking, rusty gas tank is to get rid of the rust and weld/braze any holes. Any other method is destined to fail. There’s no excuse for using devil’s goop, YouTube is lousy with videos explaining how to clean out a rusty gas tank and how to stop it from re-rusting.

Sin #2: Repainting serviceable original finishes.

Nothing annoys me like a guy posting up a 90% perfect, original-paint motorcycle and asking where he can get it repainted. Stop! If the paint has a few chips or is faded a tiny bit leave the damn thing alone. One of the most underused old-sayings is, “It’s only original once.” No matter how shiny and beautiful you think your topcoat turned out its still vandalism. There are many phony re-pop’s running around, don’t make your motorcycle one. By painting over your once desirable survivor you lower its historic value. Listen, I’m not against repainting really bad original body parts, lord knows my Z1 needs it but I know anything I do that covers over the factory work erases a story, and vintage motorcycles are commodities without a story.

Sin #3: Over restoration.

When the Japanese bikes that are considered classic today were first sold they had acceptable build quality. For some strange reason many motorcycle restoration experts go way overboard making the motorcycle a show bike that bears little resemblance to real motorcycles. Chrome back in the day was thin and yours should be too. Nothing depresses me as much as these tarted-up travesties. The nerve of some Johnny-Come-Lately with a fat wallet and no soul thinking he can render a better motorcycle than the factory. Keep it simple and try to match the level of finish that you remember. Otherwise, what’s the point? It’s already worth less because you damaged the original build by trying to improve the bike. Why pour money into the thing making it something it never was?

Sin #4: Giving a damn about numbers.

As people get deeper into the vintage bike hobby they grow ever more insane. It’s not enough to have the correct parts anymore: Now you must have the exact build date on the part to suit your motorcycle’s VIN number. This is madness. Nobody except lunatics and bike show judges will care that your sprocket cover was made a year or two after your bike left the factory. The only part number that matters is the one that can get your bike registered for the road. I’ve seen people on vintage groups debating a slight casting change or a vestigial nub as if it were the most important thing in the world. People like that have no business owning a motorcycle; they should go into accounting or better yet, prison.

Sin #5: Parking it.

The final and biggest sin of all is to restore a motorcycle and then park it. I can over look all the other sins, even tank sealer, if the owner rides his vintage motorcycle. Get the thing muddy. Do a burn out. Ride it to shows in the rain. Honor the motorcycle by using it. A show motorcycle that is too valuable or too clean to ride is nothing, less than worthless. The machine was built for you. It has a seat and controls for you. The engine wants to pull. Do the right thing by your motorcycle and your sins will be washed away, my brothers.

Keep up with the Zed restoration!

Meow Wolf

West of downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico towards the strip malls, chain stores, and old neon-lit motels, is a thing called Meow Wolf. I call it a thing because I’m not quite sure what it is and that’s after crawling through refrigerators, blue time tunnels, and playing musical mastodons. The amount of ingenuity per square foot is astounding.

There’s a detective story loosely connected to Meow Wolf. Immerse-ants will find private correspondence referring to all kinds of mysterious events. Feel free to open drawers or snoop in cabinets, cues are scattered everywhere but with so many people wandering around gaping at the strangeness it’s hard to get a look at them all. I sort of tried to follow the story but it will take several visits to figure it out. If you want to solve the story go to Meow Wolf when nobody is blocking your progress.

Besides the back story, Meow Wolf can stand alone if you don’t want to tax your brain trying to slot Lex’s school reprimand letter into the narrative. Nothing is what it seems to be so just wander around opening portals and being amazed at the way normal life can be altered by slight shifts in reality. It reminds me of that Monkees movie, Head.

Be prepared to crawl around on your hands and knees and push or pull on everything. At least half the stuff leads to somewhere else. One second you’re in a traditional living room, the next a spacecraft. If you can fit inside it goes somewhere cool. I loved the place and it’s given me many ideas on how to make our house forever un-sellable with a few modifications.

The closest things to Meow Wolf in the real world are those McDonald land playhouses found at suburban McDonald’s restaurants, except that Meow Wolf is not as sticky. They must have a crack janitorial crew. After two and a half hours I had use one of the many exits to make sure I wasn’t stuck in there. It’s artwork that you enter and sign in please, then try to imagine why it exists.

Next time you visit Santa Fe, New Mexico, visit Meow Wolf. There is talk of replicating Meow Wolf in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m sure the Vegas one will be overdone and flashy but I like the little mom and pop alternate realities better.

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 16

The Rustoration of Zed, my 1975 Kawasaki Z1 900, has once again hove into view. After several months of pouring concrete in Bay 2 of the big metal shed then building a retaining wall to level the back yard and pouring a side patio to slow erosion, the time has come to push Zed a little further down the road.

I left Zed somewhat assembled as far as the running gear was concerned. Today we will tackle adjusting the eight valves. You really can’t get an easier engine to work on than the Z1. After measuring the valve gaps and determining which valves need attention (four in my case), the first things you’ll need are a few old 29mm shims to stand in for the shims you are about to remove. These placeholders keep the cam from contacting the valves in an unfriendly way when the engine is rotated to access other valves. I don’t have any extra 29mm shims so I cut some out of a 1/16 bit of aluminum flat stock. These temporary shims can be a much looser fit (thus easier to remove), as you will not be running the engine with them installed.

I bought the correct Kawasaki brand valve shim remover tool online for around $40. There are other style shim tools but this one works well enough and leaves both hands free for the fiddly task of extracting the shim from its holder. I had to grind a little clearance into the tool where it straddles the cast-in tool boss on the Kawasaki’s cylinder head. The tool boss castings were slightly different thicknesses so after grinding it to fit the largest one I had to shim it with a plastic tie-wrap on the smaller castings.

Now that you have measured all the valve clearances and removed the shims on the out-of-spec valves it’s time to play shuffle-shim. The shims are marked in millimeters and if the last guy who set the valves was not an asshole the markings will be readable on the side facing away from the cam. It’s a good idea to measure the shims with a micrometer but I don’t have a metric micrometer and it’s too much math to convert from inches. With my clearances I was able to relocate two shims leaving only two valves to go.

Holiday Cycles is our local Old School cycle shop. There are no dealerships; Holiday is an independent, pan-brand shop. The place looks like its been in business since 1939. I love it. You can see by the credit card sign that these guys don’t put up with bullshit. Holiday Cycles had one of the shims I needed and swapped me for mine. I’m not sure how they are going to make any money like that but I’m cheap so it really tugged at my heartstrings.

Next I went to Dave at the local Kawasaki dealership. Dave had shims but the Z1 is so old the shims were in his storage shed. I had to wait a day to pick up the next shim. I installed the new shims but the 3.00 mm one was too tight. That valve had a 2.95 shim and the gap was at .013 so I couldn’t understand why the 3.00 didn’t bring it down to .008. This is where measuring the shims comes into play. Dave told me that shims can vary a couple thousandths. Add in a bit of wear and it’s a crapshoot as to which replacement shim to get.

Trial and error has been my normal MO since forever so I ordered another 2.95 from Dave except he doesn’t want to go back to the storage unit right now so I am waiting on a call back. Once I get the valves set I’ll run the engine again to flush the carbs with fresh gasoline. Then I can get to work on the gauges and headlight area and try out the new electrical system. I really want to ride this bike before I die.

Read Parts 1 through 15 of the Zed’s Not Dead series!

Dream Bike: Triumph T160

The mid-1970’s Triumph T160 is one of the best looking motorcycles ever. The swoopy tank, the perfect stance, the soft-edged thrum of its exhaust. I’ve wanted a T160 since I first saw one. They weren’t popular where I grew up so I didn’t get to see a real live 750 until they were already out of production.

The T160’s engine is actually a BSA engine. But then again the BSA engine was a 500cc Triumph engine with an extra cylinder grafted on so who stole what? Not that it matters because the only real difference between BSA and Triumph’s versions of the 750cc three-banger was a slight forward slope to the BSA cylinder bank.

The older BSA triples are cool in a Jetsons kind of way. The square tank and the ray gun silencers didn’t sell well in the USA so BSA chromed the heck out of the thing and made it into a fire breathing hot rod. I’ve never seen one on the road, only in museums.

Triumph had the same problem with its modern-looking but slow selling triple. If I understand history correctly Triumph sent bodywork beauty kits to the USA to fix slow sales. These kits made the Triumph Trident look pretty much like any other Triumph made in the last 60 years.

The triple engine design consisted of typical British engineering: Why use one part when 32 parts will do the job just as well? The top deck of the crankcase had a gaping opening that the cylinder spigots fitted into. It looks weak to me. I’m surprised the crankcase doesn’t oil can at high compression levels. The center main bearing bolted in from the top, which is pretty strange. The sum of the triple’s complicated, ancient collection of parts worked amazingly well together, winning many road races against more advanced designs.

I would take any of the triples if you gave me one but the only one I would buy is the final Triumph T160 version. The T160 has an electric starter and the thing actually works on the few I’ve seen. Disc brakes front and rear means you don’t have to sacrifice stopping power to revel in the past. The styling of the T160 looks fresh 45 years after it rolled off of the assembly line. I like it better than the Vetter version.

Beginning with the 1970’s Japanese Superbikes steamrolled everything in their path. When it comes to big bike, high horsepower nostalgia most American motorcyclists of a certain age go for a Kawasaki or Honda. Today, the relatively cheap price of a T160 reflects the lower esteem British bikes were held in at the time. If you want one like I do, Triumph/BSA triples are within reach of the average person. $5000 should get one in ridable condition with not-embarrassing cosmetics. $10,000 will buy a show bike. The T160 pushes all the right buttons for me and if I didn’t already have 47 projects lined up I would have grabbed this recent listing. Let me know if you need me to go pick it up for you.

What’s On Your Shelf?

Before the Internet I used to read books. Not just motorcycle magazines, although they were a great source of ideas, but real books. I shot a close-up photo of our bookshelf the other day for a Wastebook post. It was just for fun but looking at the photo I realized the impact some of the titles had on my typing. I never started out to write. I never dreamed of writing the Great American Novel. I fell into typing by osmosis and now I can’t stop. Once I was roped in I mostly tried to emulate my favorites. Find a writer you like and think like them. I don’t try to copy or mimic my favorites, I channel them as I type.

First up is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Mr. Toole killed himself long before ACOD was published. It pisses me off that he chose that path for strictly selfish reasons: I wanted to read more of his stuff. ACOD is a huge, rambling thing full of recognizable personalities, disgusting situations and incredibly funny passages. The Levy pants story will be pleasing to anyone who has held a job (no matter how briefly) and the hot dog cart bit is familiar to anyone who ever tried to sell Christmas cards door to door.

The Best of S. J. Perelman is a collection of essays from The New Yorker. This is a guy you will want to steal from after the first verb. People will look at you like you’re crazy when reading this book on an airplane because you really will be laughing out loud. (Not to be confused with the nearly meaningless LOL, which is often used on the web for things that aren’t actually all that funny.) Perelman’s short bits cover a wide range of topics but always end up absurd. If I could write as well as him in today’s media environment I still wouldn’t be making any money but at least I’d have cigarettes.

The Portable Dorothy Parker is another collection of stories written for The New Yorker. That mag must have been something. At a time when women were routinely named Dorothy she did play reviews, poems, screenwriting and managed to get herself blacklisted. Less bitter than H. L. Mencken, Dorothy’s stories can be safely read both by people with suicidal tendencies and regular folks.

It seems like there are a lot of collected works on this shelf. CT organized it. The unseen hand of her masterful brain is behind the curtain. Anyway, don’t blame me. The Best of Robert Benchley is another collection in the smart, funny but down to earth mold. Benchley also wrote for The New Yorker (what a murderer’s row!) and he dabbled in Vanity Fair during slack times. When these stories were originally written the intention was to parcel them out slowly. Each issue of The New Yorker was an event. Best-Of collections hit you with a fire hose of quality that overwhelms your brain and maybe numbs your senses a bit.

The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van are three full-length books crammed into one small space. I’ve read The Commitments and The Van for sure. I can’t remember if I read The Snapper so I’ll have to get my magnifying glass out and check. If you only have time to read one of these stories by Roddy Doyle make sure it’s The Van. The Van is like Trainspotting except with food trucks instead of heroin.

The Best Short stories of O. Henry should be required reading for anyone thinking of writing for fun or…fun. O. Henry invented the ending-with-a-twist that featured large in last century’s story telling. We seem to have gotten away from these surprising finishes like, “Darn! She shouldn’t have cut her hair!” Now stories just kind of fade out with a pale, rictus arm reaching out of a lake or it’s revealed that the two main characters are father and son.

Finally, we come to Hunger by Knut Hamsun. This book was published in 1890 yet the ensuing 130 years have not dulled the edge of the humor in this book. Fittingly for this blog, the protagonist is a failed writer and we follow his slow starvation and descent into a delirium world. It’s funnier than it sounds. If you want to be a successful writer, learn a trade is what I took away from reading Hunger.

These are some of the books I use as inspiration when I’m faced with replacing a transmission in a Jeep or trying to work the self-checkout in Wal-Mart. At the emotional level, living in today’s world is no different than when these authors were writing. Life still becomes more ridiculous the deeper you dig into the thing and all we can do is shake our heads and crack wise. Wait here while I go sell my pocket watch.

The 100-Mile Loop

If I had to guess, and I really can’t imagine why I’d ever have to, I would say New Mexico has two or three times as many dirt roads as paved roads. I’m not getting on those trails at anywhere near the frequency I should be so I called up my moto-buddy Mike and asked him to show me the volcanoes. With the morning temperature hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit it didn’t take much convincing to get Mike to ride along in Brumby, the 1992 YJ Jeep.

There is a huge expanse of territory encircled by Highway 380 to the south, Interstate 25 on the western edge, Highway 60 up north and Highway 54 marks the eastern edge. Roughly 50 miles square, this land has hundreds of miles of dirt roads crisscrossing in all directions. These roads lead to huge cattle ranches and as such are kept in pretty decent condition. In dry weather you could run most of them in a two-wheel drive sedan. In wet weather they become much more challenging.

With the Jeep heater on high, we turned north off 380 and headed 25 miles into the outback to find the volcanoes. I didn’t really see a traditional cone-shaped volcano; at the volcanoes it’s more a lava field with an impressive variety of colorful minerals scattered about. Rust reds, crumbling ochers, and black lava dominate. The area is pockmarked with sinkholes several feet deep. What looks like broken beer bottles is actually exposed glass fused between layers of lava. I need to quick-learn geology because this spot is interesting and needs further exploration.

Forty miles from the volcanoes are the Gran Quivira ruins. The Spanish have a long history in the area. If you are a Native American you probably don’t think highly of the Spanish. The ruins of three large churches with pueblos built around them are thirty to forty miles apart. The southernmost one, Gran Quivira dips into our loop and it’s worth taking a trip just to see the masterful stonework.

The ranches out here have a loosey-goosey cow containment policy. Since the land is so dry it takes many acres to support one cow. Fencing huge amounts of land is not cheap so you get just a bit of fence near the road and the cows wander around doing cow-like things. It’s best to drive past slowly. If a cow hits your truck at 30 MPH things will get compressed rapidly.

After the ruins we ran for many miles on a slippery mud road that seemed to be the final drainage point for 50,000 acres. I put Brumby in 4WD because the little Jeep wanted to spinout when we sunk into the really muddy bits. Having the front wheels pulling seemed to make the truck go straighter.

In Corona we pulled up to the only good Mexican restaurant in town, also the only restaurant in town. As soon as I managed to unfurl my body and escape the Jeep’s door the neon “Open” sign went dark. I looked inside and the chairs were leg-high on the tables and staff was cleaning up.

I cracked the door and stuck my head inside, “Are you guys really closed?” The Senorita in charge said, “Yes, but it will take us a while to clean up, come in.” Not wanting to create more trouble, Mike had a burger with un-sweet tea and I seconded the order.

After a late lunch we ran the county-maintained dirt roads all the way back to Carrizozo. With the setting sun illuminating Brumby’s bug and mud splattered windshield I nearly overcooked a few turns, but only because I couldn’t see them.

All told we did over a hundred miles of off road exploring and we only scratched the surface of this one tiny section of New Mexico. It will take many lifetimes to see all this state has to offer and next time I’m bringing a metal detector.

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AMA Pro Racing Dismembers The Golden Goose

Fresh off a couple years of record attendance and wild popularity for flat track racing the AMA has decided to destroy the successful formula that has created all that positive buzz. Whenever a race series becomes popular the AMA cannot stop itself from diluting and dividing it into numerically more, yet overall weaker championships. They are doing just that in flat track with the new Supertwins class.

The historic, fabulous, drama-filled heat race format is no more. You’ll not see a lightly sponsored privateer like No. 23 Carver on an obsolete XR750 whip the asses of the best factory riders and teams like he did a few years ago. You’ll not see it because the AMA has limited entries to 18 pre-approved teams. No more heat races, no more last chance qualifiers, no more excitement.

The AMA hopes that we won’t notice that the game is rigged but flat track fans know a setup when we see one. To get in the Elite 18 it will take lots of money along with co-branding with the AMA and your chances of getting picked are much better if you have a really nice race transport semi-truck and branded pit barriers. Rider talent only comes into play after all the other barriers have been surmounted.

The chosen few will run two semis and if I know the AMA and the power of money I’m guessing the first nine places of each semi will make the main. It’s NASCAR thinking run amok. The AMA wants a more professional product to sell to television audiences. They want recognizable teams and popular riders spoon fed to an audience they feel are too stupid to appreciate a couple of privateers pitching a heated battle for 8th place. They want us to be like NASCAR fans cheering on personalities and products rather than effort. To achieve this end they are tossing out the very things that have made AMA flat track the premier motorcycle race series in America.

The AMA has it backwards. Fancy transporters and branded awnings don’t mean shit to flat track fans when the flag drops. AMA flat track is popular because of the unpredictable rough and tumble racing, not in spite of it. It’s popular because of the lone wolf in his van taking on the biggest motorcycle manufacturers in spite of the fact that it seems hopeless. It’s popular because no matter how out-gunned any expert rider on any night can ride his ass off and make the main event or even win the whole shebang. It has happened more than once.

You haven’t heard a crowd roar like the throat-rattling cheer flat track fans make when an underdog rider beats the big guns in a main event. It restores your faith in hard work, man. I hear you when you tell me the same guys win all the races anyway. That’s because they are the best riders on the best bikes. It’s always been that way in motorcycle racing, but flat track fans still hope to see the improbable and we don’t need to dumb down flat track to make our hopes impossible.

The legalese mumbo-jumbo in the document above is the rider’s path to the Main Event now. Replace grit, determination and talent with money and you have the new rules pretty well down. Teams will need to be partners with the AMA, it’s so not like it used to be and frustrating as hell. What utter and complete bullshit.

The list of eligible engines for Supertwins is longer than the number of eligible teams!

Ah well, it was an exciting, if short-lived resurgence in American Flat Track racing. At least we still have the singles class and an interesting, if sporadic, ATF Production Twins class (the true Class C Championship). The powers that be cannot leave well enough alone. Success is not enough for today’s bottom-line economy. Branding, sponsorship and tight control of the final product are paramount. It won’t be long before the AMA sells the racing rights to an engine manufacturer and Supertwins becomes a one-design spec class. I guess nothing ever stays the same and we all get sold out in the end. Welcome to AMA Flat track 2020.

Spaceport America

Fifty or so miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico and just over the mountains from White Sands Missile Range lies a huge bet on the future. The bet was placed almost 20 years ago and it’s been a 200 million-dollar, back and forth political football game to get to where we are today: Spaceport America, New Mexico.

Depending on which major party was in charge of New Mexico’s state government Spaceport has been alternately starved, funded or sabotaged. Some politicians hoped the thing would fail and worked towards that goal. Other politicians hoped it would put New Mexico on the front row of the commercial space race and threw taxpayer money at the project. If that wasn’t enough a well-publicized disaster with major tenant Virgin Galactic’s space plane and the collapse of oil prices (New Mexico gets huge sums of tax money from the oil industry) only increased the headwind.

The very access road to Spaceport is an example. Paved only in 2018, 10 years after construction began. Before that, heavy equipment and materials had to be hauled to the job site 50 extra miles via the town of Truth or Consequences or attempt a direct route from Las Cruces over a rough dirt road impassable during the wet. As usual, political gamesmanship made the project harder, costlier and take longer.

Hopefully all that is behind us. Virgin Galactic plans on moving its headquarters to Spaceport in 2020. The White Knight, first stage of Galatic’s commercial flight system, rests snugly in Sir Richard Branson’s curvy-sexy Spaceport hanger. Boeing, UP Aerospace, EXOS Aerospace, HyperSciences and SpinLaunch have become tenants. At least 20 successful launches have flown from Spaceport. These enthusiastic space pioneers are basically wealthy kids, the same as we were with our Estes model rockets except they are using real rockets.

While the site is “substantially complete” at this time and ready for business you get the feeling there are a lot of loose ends to tie. The public has access to Spaceport but you’ve got to be with a tour group as they don’t want idiots wandering around falling into drainage ditches or accidentally pushing flashing red buttons and causing rockets to launch. Tours start from Las Cruces or Truth or Consequences. We took the Las Cruces tour because we were going to Deming’s Tractor Supply for a 3-point box blade. I like to mix cutting-edge Aerospace facilities with dirt moving equipment whenever I can.

Once past the security gate you wonder where that 200 million dollars went as there are only two buildings of any size on the property. My guess is the lion’s share went into the 2-mile-long, 200-foot-wide, 42-inch-thick, multilayer runway. This thing has crushed rock, several courses of varying density concrete, a layer of asphalt and a thick topcoat of concrete. It looks like you could land a battleship on Spaceport’s runway.

The first building we visited was the main office and flight control tower. This domed structure was constructed using an inflated bladder, which was then shot with sprayed concrete material. After the dome mud set up the bladder was deflated and the interior shot with more sticky goo. You can build a high ceiling without internal supports using this method but the ones I’ve seen in the past all cracked.

The entrance area shows signs of deterioration already. High overhead, ill fitting, water damaged sections of patched drywall look like a buttery layer cake that has slipped a layer. Gaping holes on the exterior of the building reveal wires and skeletal metal studs. It’s sloppy work that people like me notice. I mean, this is the very first place visitors to Spaceport see. I’d appreciate it if management pulled the maintenance crew off of life support projects and tidied up the front door.

The flight control room is a fairly simple set up. It’s nothing like Mission Control in Houston. One 3-dimensional curved desk with computer monitors spanning the width of the desk sits a few feet back from a large window. I find it amazing that there is no radar but the restricted airspace over Spaceport America means there are no obstacles to hit until you smack into the Andromeda Galaxy. Launches are easy here; no need to re-route airplanes or alert the local populace. They tell me flights can be scheduled in a couple days rather than months. That’s a big window of opportunity and one of the selling points of the joint.

We like to say you get the first mile free when you launch your spacecraft from New Mexico. At 4500 feet Spaceport is close enough and it’s a real fuel savings when you consider gravity is stronger the closer you get to the concrete I’ve poured in my backyard. There’s also a zillion acres of vacant land surrounding Spaceport so collateral damage from explosions and failures to launch will be limited to sagebrush and bunnies.

Behind the visitor center and incorporated into the same concrete dome is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week fire-rescue operation. There are a lot of things that can go wrong with space travel before you even leave the ground so these guys are on call even when no flights are scheduled. The fire guys gave a great talk on their various duties and let us sit in the Big Mama fire truck. All their gear was spotless and ready to go. Full EMS capability with a beautiful 2-bay ambulance is on site. If I ever sever a limb during a routine training mission I want these guys taking care of me.

Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company takes up most of Spaceport’s futuristic, crawling-out-from-the-earth hangar structure. We couldn’t see inside because the electrically controlled windows were set to opaque and our guide didn’t have access to the switch that makes them clear. Blurry photos of the Mothership were all I could get. A secret panel blended into the steel-walled entrance walk opened, leading us to a kind of waiting lounge/museum. It was real James Bond super-villain stuff. Here was the G-force spinner that takes potential astronauts up to 6 Gs in preparation for their flight. Passengers who fail the spin test can’t fly.

I didn’t take the spin test because I wanted to digest my breakfast in peace. At 2 Gs older folks crawled out of the machine slowly and appeared a little disoriented. A tall, skinny 14-year-old was having a ball in the machine wanting more speed all the time. You could have taken that kid to 12 Gs no problem.

Listen, lots of people think space flight is a waste of money. They believe that all earthbound problems should be solved before we wander off into space. Complaining about the government or rich folks spending their money on space adventures instead of those less fortunate is a popular pastime. I’m not one of them. I figure the rich can spend their money however they want. Helping the unfortunate is what taxes are for. Whatever is left over is yours to invest in cocaine, prostitutes or space travel.

By now you know I dig all things space related and believe the faster we blow this joint the better off the Earth will be. 2020 should be an exciting year at Spaceport because Virgin Galactic claims they will be firing some spacecraft high into the sky.

Anyone have a spare $250,000 to send me up?