Michigan State Police 2020 Motorcycle Test Results

Think you know how to ride?

If you’re into large touring bikes and you want to get a realistic assessment of what their capabilities are, there’s no better place to go than the annual Michigan State Police test report.  These folks can ride and you’ll see what Harley, BMW, and Yamaha motorcycles can do in capable hands.

Good buddy Mike is a retired police director who was right in the middle of this kind of stuff, and he sent the link for the latest MSP report to me.   There’s no advertising and it’s all presented clearly and in a way that’s easy to understand.  It’s fascinating reading and the results are presented in a no-nonsense engineering format.  Check out this table of results for the 0-100 mph acceleration tests:

The Michigan State Police report has similar displays for 0-60, 0-80, top speed, braking distances, fuel economy, lap times, and more.  I couldn’t put the report down.  In their best days (days that are way back in the rear view mirror), none of the motorcycle magazines did this kind of outstanding work.   And there’s more…they have all of the above and more for police cars, too.  Check out the stats on the Ford EcoBoost vehicles.

The best part?  The report is free, and you can get to it here.   You can thank me later.


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Tom Collins – The Southern Armoury

Our good buddy Art has another gun story for us, this time about owning a 1911 .45 auto in the UK.  The 1911 is one of my all time favorite firearms.  I enjoyed reading Art’s story and I’m sure you will, too.


On March 10th, 1984, 39 years after its manufacture, the Colt 1911A1 with serial number 2322134 became all mine, along with a mere 150 FMJ rounds and a bottle of Hoppe’s No. 9 (ah, that sweet aroma).  My new addition cost me the grand sum of £150 ($192) for the gun, the total bill being £183.65 ($236) for the ammo and cleaner.

The Southern Armoury at 171 New Kent Road in southeast London was a small, nondescript shop tucked in between others. Far from salubrious, the battered front door and dirty shutters belied the fact that its owner, Tom Collins, would stock some very obscure ammo and classic guns from the bellicose Victorian era right up to the latest in firearms. To keep it all low key and to prevent wannabees and Walter Mittys, his drudgey shop window would uninvitedly be filled with airguns, pellets, targets and old shotguns. This small, honest-to-God shop was always busy with a throng of two-or-three deep patiently waiting people.  Tom and his wife used to live upstairs from the shop which had an old clock outside that everyone used as a marker point. It held good time and was too high to be vandalized or stolen.

Whenever I used to ring up and ask for the price of something, Tom would think for a second and mumble “about £20.” I would then offer to send him a check for “about £20” which would have him scuttling away for the proper price. It never failed.

Tom had a penchant for the most obscure adverts via the shooting press. We’d all stand around discussing this at the shooting club and wonder what the hell had gotten into him for producing some seriously mercurial stuff, sometimes involving cartoon balloon texts, barrels of black powder, an old sailing vessel and a circus elephant.

The other aspect also open for frequent and frivolous discussion was Tom’s toupee, which seemed to have a life of its own. Ill-fitting would not even begin to describe it.  At first it looked like his head was nursing a few semi-comatose gray squirrels, such was the thing’s mobility when perched on top of his head. We swore that it would stay in one spot every time he turned his head, and we’d place silent bets where the parting would be from one day to the next. It was doubtful that Tom knew which was the front or rear.

The quality of Tom’s math was suspect and as he refused to use a calculator, quite a few clients walked out of his shop having been undercharged. Some of these actually bought from him again, hoping he’d make the same mistake.

One of my shooting club members, Bob Wade, gave me a handwritten note about the serial numbers range of all the contracted 1911A1 manufacturers. Mine was about 6000 away from the last Colt batch in 1945. My gun was nothing special, although the slide and frame numbers were matched, it seemed that most of the other parts weren’t. Not that it mattered much. The original grips were discarded for some Pachmayrs and my clunker shot well. I don’t think I ever bought more ammo for it. Another club member reloaded for me but the solid lead bullets he had were never supposed to be used in an auto and just wouldn’t cycle properly. The guy was also known for not taking a double load too seriously, so I never asked him again. When he later died in a scuba diving accident and the facts of his miscalculations became known to us, none of us were surprised.

My wife and I took a long weekend in Yorkshire and my .45 with two full mags came with me just in case there was an opportunity for some unofficial target shooting. This came in the shape of a little ensconced lay-by at the side of a quiet country road with 12′ high sloping chalk walls. As I was busy examining my shot placements on a small discarded gas canister, the crunching of gravel alerted me to see a very curious cyclist who arrived out of nowhere and was wondering where the hell those shots had come from. He took off when he saw me and so did we – in the opposite direction. My only visual memories exist in saving four distorted slugs out of the chalk.

In 1987 the Southern Armoury closed its doors for good. Tom and his wife were getting old and tired, and it would only be a few years later that Tom hung up his toupee for good, leaving behind a plethora of old memories that the old dogs like myself are only too fond of recollecting.  The old clock is no longer there and the last time I drove past there, the shop had sacrilegiously become a hairdresser.

Although I sold my Colt around 1990, the new owner must have been one of the 40,000 pistol shooters who had to say farewell to their belongings during the 1997 pistol ban. My old .45 is probably part of a manhole cover somewhere in China where its American spirit continues to be part of the old guard who will never retire or capitulate.


I think all of us with a few miles under our belt have a story or two about a favorite old gunstore, a favorite old gunstore proprietor, or a favorite old gun.   Mine cover places like Barney’s in El Paso, the Rutgers gun shop in Highland Park, Treptow’s in Milltown, Starkey’s (another El Paso shop), and more.  They’re mostly all gone today, but wow…the memories.

Do you have a favorite memory?  Hey, drop us a line in the Comments section, or maybe even write a guest blog for us (send it to us at info@ExhaustNotes.us).  We love hearing from our readers.  And Art, thanks for another great tale!


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Movie Review: The Irishman

A swing and a miss is the way I’d describe it. Formulaic. I know what the Italian quattro (Scorcese, Pacino, DeNiro, and Pesci) were thinking: Hey, it worked before; maybe it will work again.  The mob. The Kennedys and Castro. DeNiro as an Irish hit man. Hoffa. Music from the 1950s. Voiced-in explanations from the main characters giving the lowdown on each mob dude. Over-restored ‘50s and ‘60s cars. Let’s throw it all against the silver screen for 3½ hours and maybe something will stick (yeah, you read that right: 3½ hours). I know what they were thinking:  Goodfellas, The Godfather (and all of its Roman-numeraled follow-ons), and Casino.  Yeah, it worked before, so maybe it will work again. Except it doesn’t.  Those earlier mob flicks were great. The Irishman is not.

Guys, at some point you have to realize there’s not any milk left in the cow. Even with your digital filtering to make old guys look young, all you gave us were weird, slitty-eyed visions of a younger DeNiro with the body and gait of a senior citizen (where’s Fredo when you need him?).  And Pacino playing Hoffa? Another swing and a miss (you should have let the ump call a strike). Jack Nicholson will forever be Jimmy Hoffa; Pacino just wasn’t believable in this role.  If you can see it, then hey, I’m the Pope.  Al, go back to threatening Mr. Trump. You’re not believable in that role, either, but you apparently know what they say about bad publicity.

Save your money, folks, and hang on to that 3½ hours of your life I’ll never get back.  The Irishman is one that should sleep with the fish.

Product Review: iPhone 11 Pro

I’ve been a Mac fanboy since I bought my first Mac laptop computer. Coming from the industry standard PC/Windows environment the Mac was a revelation in simplicity. I had no routine tasks to perform, no re-stacking those little blocks, no blue screen freeze ups, no re-booting, no unplugging the power, no internet viruses and the thing worked for 10 years before it was too slow and space-limited to run a film editing program. My old Mac still works fine but it’s been softwared into obsolescence. Once I got the hang of never needing to do anything and learned the Mac Way of doing tasks I never looked back.

Mac users used to laugh about the bloatware that came standard with each new iteration of Windows. PC users had to upgrade their computers to fit all the useless junk that Microsoft stuffed into their multi-level marketing system masquerading as an operating system. Macs were clean machines: If you wanted extra programs you went out and got them.

With Apple fandom comes an Apple phone and I’ve had the 3, 4 and 6 models. For the most part the phones have been okay. The 6 I’ve been using for a long time was getting glitchy. I suspect the glitches are pre-programmed into the phone to drive sales of newer phones. The thing needed re-booting everyday. It was almost like Windows software had infected the thing. Web sites stopped displaying properly and the newer iPhone software versions (free!) were not compatible with the old 6. My wife decided that I needed a new phone and with Black Friday deals flying around on the Internet she secured a new phone at somewhat of a good price.

The biggest reason for choosing the 11 Pro over the other iPhone models is the camera. Or cameras. There are 3 separate focal length lenses built into the back of the phone: A super wide 13mm, a wide 26mm and a standard 52mm (all view angles 35mm equivalent). Note: These ranges are optical so you are not just zooming into an ever-decreasing pool of data. I don’t know if the three lenses share a sensor or if each lens has its own sensor. If you do digitally zoom there are a lot of pixels. I don’t know how many. You can look that stuff up online. Anyway, I don’t care about file sizes as long as they don’t get too big.

The new 11 Pro is supposed to be water resistant. I’m not going to test it out but that is a big improvement for motorcycle riders. No more digging around for a plastic grocery bag or a ziplock when it starts to rain.

Once you get past the great camera and the improved water resistance Apple has become Microsoft. This phone is full of bloatware and programs that I will never use. It’s the most intrusive thing you can buy. Everything you do or say is tracked. I spend my free time looking for ways to shut the junk off. If it’s not facial recognition it’s Siri butting onto the screen trying her best to seem relevant. The overly sensitive touch screen keeps taking me places I don’t want to go. Maybe there is a way to deaden the touch response.

The home button is gone so you have to tap out, but that motion sometimes takes you to another screen. I’ve yet to figure out how to stop the first open-screen from displaying my messages. Anyone can pick up my phone, tap the screen and see my latest communications. The home screen is two pages of junk I will never use. Maybe I’m not typical.

Everything seems to take an extra step or two. To screen shot I have to choose where to save the image; with the old 6 it went to photos automatically. The button functions are relocated for no good reason. I’m sure there is a way to work around this stuff. The thing is, I shouldn’t have to opt out of all this junk. I shouldn’t have to search through the extensive menu layout to find intrusive software and shut it off. I couldn’t even activate the phone without signing into iTunes. Apple isn’t selling you a phone any more; it’s selling a tracking device for advertisers. They should pay me to carry the thing. If someone invented a lead-lined, soundproof pouch to slip your iPhone into when you want to be alone they could make billions. Maybe print happy pictures of cats on the dead-zone pouch and call the thing “Garbo.”

“The best camera is the one you have with you.” It’s an old photographer’s cliché but so true. Get the iPhone 11 pro for the cameras.  There is no other reason to subject yourself to the bloatware. And the cameras are enough reason for me to put up with Apple’s nosy corporate attitude.  With this phone I’ll be able to rely even less on a real camera when I travel on a motorcycle. I’ve just got to watch what I say around the thing.

Happy Thanksgiving, and let’s hear from you…

My first motorcycle had 3 cubic inches. This one must be 48 times better.

I love this time of year.  The temperatures are nice (although it’s raining here in So Cal today and for the next couple of days), it’s good to get together with friends and family, and like most folks fortunate who live in the US, I have a lot for which I am thankful.

Earlier this week, I picked up a screw in one of my Subie’s tires, so it was off to America’s Tire, where they fix these things for free.  The idea is that you’ll think of them first when it’s time for new tires, and in my case, you can bet that’s going to happen.   It was a 2-hour wait, and I used that time to go for a walk.  Our local Harley dealer is just up the street from the tire place, I hadn’t been in a Harley showroom in a while, so I stopped by to check things out.

 

Things have changed from when I rode a Harley.  In those days, any Harley dealership was a hopping place.   When I walked over to the dealer this week, the place was mostly empty, they didn’t have a ton of T-shirts, and there were plenty of motorcycles.  It’s a world gone mad, I tell you.

Sometime when I wasn’t looking, production shifted from T-shirts to motorcycles. In the early and mid-1990s, you’d have to go to the Laughlin River Run, Daytona, or Sturgis to see this many Harleys in one spot.
Ah, hope springs eternal. A thousand dollar dealer markup? At least these folks are honest about it, and they don’t try to disguise gouging as freight and setup.

I haven’t kept up with the latest from Harley, other than the headline-grabbing stuff about the Livewire.  I guess they had a hiccup with the initial rollout, but that sort of thing happens and I hear it’s been fixed.  What hasn’t been fixed is the Milwaukee notion that any Harley is worth $30K, and I think that’s one of the major reasons the bar-and-shield folks’ best days are in the rear-view mirror.  I haven’t heard that Livewires are flying out of the showrooms, and judging by the looks of the dealer I visited, neither is anything else.  It’s not just me saying this…the stock market shows a Harley trend that is downright scary.  Harley has ridden their rebel reputation big time since the early 1990s, but one place you don’t want to buck the trend is in the stock market.

Harley’s stock performance over the last 5 years.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last five years. It’s been said that a rising tide lifts all boats. Maybe it does. Maybe Harley’s stock would have been much lower without the bull market of the last few years. Maybe, maybe, maybe….

The Harley sales guy was eager to help, so I asked him about the Bronx 975 (Gresh did a piece on it not too long ago).  My guy never heard of the Bronx, so I asked if they had any Sportsters (there was one, so maybe they are selling better).  I then asked about Harley’s Street models (the 500 and 750 V-twins), and he told me there were none.  “They didn’t sell too well,” he said.  I thought that was unfortunate.   I’m conceited enough to think that if Gresh and I had ridden those bikes in Baja, if Harley offered guided Baja tours to Street buyers, and if Harley had an effective blog, that bike could have been a winner.  We sure sold a lot of motorcycles at CSC with those Baja tours (including to folks who didn’t ride with us in Baja).  It was just the idea that they could (that, of course, and the CSC motorcycles’ price).  Good buddy Dan is adventure touring in Tunisia right now along with a bunch of other Guzzistas on a ride organized by Moto Guzzi.  I think that’s brilliant (and I’m jealous).   Tunisia!  Damn, that’s exotic!

I don’t think there’s much of a future in two-wheeled, 900-pound, 114-cubic-inch dinosaurs, but hey, what do I know?  That’s a rhetorical question…I think my lack of knowledge is right up there with the industry wizards who continue to ponder the “what can we do about the sad state of the motorcycle industry” question, and then continue to offer 114-cubic-inch, $30,000 motorcycles that sit for presumably extended periods on showroom floors.  And like I said earlier, I don’t think ebikes are the answer.

So, what do you think?  Let us know with a comment or two.  We love hearing from you.  And I think the folks in Milwaukee would, too.  They read these pages, I think, judging by what I’m seeing on Google Analytics.  Let us know.

A Garand Update: Speer and Hornady

The M1 Garand on the bench at the West End Gun Club.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about new bullets I had purchased for the Garand. They are Speer 168-grain Target Match bullets, and they’re designed to go head-to-head with the benchmark bullet in this arena, the Sierra 168-grain jacketed boat tail hollow point bullet. As you will recall, I talked to the Speer engineer and he recommended bumping the IMR 4064 propellant charge up from what I had tried previously and seating the bullets out a little further.

Speer 168-grain jacketed hollow point boat tail bullets.

I only had 20 Speer bullets left from the box of 100 I initially purchased and Phillips, my local dealer, didn’t have any more.   I also had a couple of boxes of 178-grain Hornady AMAX bullets in my stash and my Hornady reloading manual had a Garand-specific load for these, so I loaded some of them for testing in the Garand as well.   You can’t just use any .30 06 load for the Garand; the loads have to be specific for the Garand.  If you go outside of what’s recommended for these rifles, you can damage the rifle.

Reloaded .30 06 ammunition with Hornady’s 178 grain AMAX bullets. I was concerned about the plastic tips hitting the feed ramp, but I need not have been. These bullets performed well.

It was windy out at the West End Gun Club this past weekend, so I don’t know if my results were the result of the load, or the wind, my shooting abilities, or all of the above. Take my results as an indication of what might work, not the ultimate authoritative conclusion on either bullet’s inherent accuracy.  And as regards my propellant charges, work from your own manual.  You will want to develop your own loads, starting at the bottom of the range and working up.

My testing for this session was limited.  I had two loads for each bullet (both the Hornady and the Speer bullets), and all were with IMR 4064 propellant.  I did all of my testing from the bench at 100 yards.

For the 178-grain Hornady AMAX bullets, I used 45.0 and 46.4 grains of IMR 4064, and a cartridge overall length of 3.240 inches.   This load came right out of the Hornady reloading manual.  For the 168-grain Speer bullets bullets, I used 47.0 and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064, and a cartridge overall length of 3.295 inches (as recommended by Speer).   All loads were with Remington brass and CCI 200 primers. I trimmed the brass to 2.500 inches. This was the 6th firing of these cases in the Garand with these cases.

I reloaded and fired a total of 40 rounds for this test.  I reload for the Garand in multiples of eight cartridges (because that’s what the en bloc clip holds), and like I said above, I only had 20 of the Speer bullets left.  So bear with me (this is going to get a little complicated).   I had one clip of eight rounds with the 168-grain Speers at 47.0 grains of IMR 4064, and one clip of eight rounds with the 168-grain Speers at 48.0 grains of IMR 4064.   Then I did another clip of eight with the 178-grain Hornady bullets at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064, and a fourth clip of eight with the 178-grain Hornady bullets at 46.4 grains of IMR 4064.  That left four of the Speer 168-grain bullets, so I loaded those four with 47.0 grains of IMR 4064, and then I loaded another four rounds with the Hornady 178-grain bullets and 45.0 grains of IMR 4064.   Yep, you read that right.  That en bloc clip had two different loads in it.

I had a concern that the plastic tips on the Hornady 178-grain AMAX bullets might be damaged sliding up the Garand’s feed ramp, but that didn’t occur. At the seating depth Hornady recommended, the bullets are pointed into the chamber and the tips never touched the feed ramp.

None of the 40 cartridges exhibited any pressure signs. There were no flattened primers, no excessive muzzle blast, no case ruptures, no extraction issues, or anything of that nature. Everything fed and ejected normally.

I fired the mixed clip of Hornady and Speer bullets first, and surprisingly, it was my best group of the day (it was also the only group I fired where there was a lull in the wind that morning). The first four shots were with the Hornady bullets, and of these, only one was just outside the bullseye (it might have been the first round fired from the cold, oiled barrel). All the remaining seven rounds shot into a pretty tight group, with six of the seven in the 10 ring. The bottom line based on this one group to me was that either load (the 178-grain Hornady load at 45.0 grains of 4064, and the 168-grain Speer load at 47.0 grains of 4064) were awesome, and both shot to the same point of impact.

The next group up was the 168-grain Speers with 47.0 grains of IMR 4064. I couldn’t duplicate my prior results as shown in the above photo. Six shots were in the black, two were out, and of these two, one was down in the 6 ring. It could have been the wind, or it could have been me.  Most likely it was me (the wind wasn’t blowing down).

Then I fired the clip of eight with the Speer 168-grain bullets and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064.  Five shots were in the black and three were outside, with one low at 7:00 in the 6 ring again.

It was on to the Hornady 178-grain bullets, first at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064.  Five shots were in the black, one was in the 8 ring at 9:00, one was in the 7 ring at 10:00, and again, I had one shot go low in the 6 ring at 7:00. The group was biased to the left. That was probably the wind.

And finally, I shot the Hornady 178-grain bullets at 46.4 grains of IMR 4064.  6 were in the black, 1 was in the 8 ring at 9:00, and yet again, 1 was in the 6 ring at 7:00.  These were a little more tightly clustered favoring the left side of the bullseye, consistent with the wind pushing the shots to one side (the wind at the West End Gun Club always blows northeast to southwest, pushing the shots to the left).

The bottom line is that any of loads could be good, but that first clip of mixed bullets was (for a guy at my low talent level) phenomenal. The wind no doubt distorted my results (along with my lack of consistency shooting the Garand). I have 180 of the Hornady bullets left, and I’m going to load them at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064. I’ll buy more of the 168 gr Speer bullets because they did well, too, and I’ll load them at 47.0 grains.  I’m just not that good to say with certainty which load is best; the variability in group size you see here is probably more me than anything else.

The Speer bullets are the least expensive of the three brands I’ve tried in the Garand at $25/100. Next up are the Hornady AMAX bullets at $32/100. The Sierra 168-grain MatchKing bullets (not tested yesterday, as I had used all of them previously) are the most expensive at $37/100. If there’s a difference in performance between the bullets, I’m not good enough to see it. I have 180 of the Hornady bullets left, and I’m going to load them at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064 later today. I’ll buy more of the 168-grain Speer bullets because they did well, too, and I’ll load them with 47.0 grains of IMR 4064.

So which bullet works best in the Garand?  Any of these are better than I am, and for a guy like me, evaluating accuracy at 100 yards with iron sights is subjective at best (my old eyes ain’t what they used to be).   But I’m having fun, and I love shooting my Garand.


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Movie Review: The 24 Hour War

Gresh’s review of Ford versus Ferrari had my attention, and SWMBO wanted to see the movie, so off to the theatre we went.  My take on it was pretty much identical to Joe’s:  Grand entertainment, lots of grimaces and Hollywood liberties with the facts, but overall, an entertaining if not entirely accurate flick.

Later that evening, we were channel surfing and we flopped over to Netflix, and what do you know, a documentary titled The 24 Hour War popped up.  I know Amazon, Facebook, and others use all kinds of spyware to figure out what to pitch to us next, but wow, this was amazing.  That very day, and a pop up for another movie about the great Ford versus Ferrari war and Le Mans.  Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound, so we watched The 24 Hour War.

Unlike Ford v. Ferrari, The 24 Hour War took no liberties with the truth, the facts, the timelines, or the vehicles themselves.  It was a damn fine bit of actual, factual reporting, and I enjoyed it more than the movie we had seen earlier that day.  If you get Netflix, it’s free, and if you own a microwave and a refrigerator, you won’t have to pay $15 for popcorn and a couple of Cokes (like Gresh did).

A few more good things about The 24 Hour War:  It went into much more detail about Henry Ford and Enzo Ferrari (I found that interesting), and portions of the show were narrated by A.J. Baime.  Mr. Baime does a series on interesting cars people still drive in The Wall Street Journal and I love his writing.   I’m just finishing up a book by Baime about our industrial mobilization prior to and during World War II, and it, too, focuses heavily on the Ford family.   The guy is a great writer, and I’ll have a review here on Baime’s book, The Arsenal of Democracy, in the near future.

One more thing regarding the cars themselves:  To me, it’s not really a contest and I don’t much care who won Le Mans.   Given the choice between owning a Ford GT or a Ferrari, to me the answer is obvious:   It’s Ferrari all day long.

But I digress.  Back to the review.  The bottom line?  Ford versus Ferrari was an entertaining movie, but the The 24 Hour War is an absolutely outstanding documentary.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

One hell of an ad…

A selfie of yours truly, as reflected in J’s visor, somewhere in the twisties below Lake Tahoe.

Good buddy J, with whom I’ve ridden a lot, is selling his old KLR. I had to laugh when I read his ad, and with his permission, I’m printing it here for you to enjoy as well (and if you ride a GS, my apologies in advance).   J and I have ridden big miles in Baja (those trips were on the CSC RX3 motorcycles), as well as northern Nevada and California in the Lake Tahoe area (we both rode our KLRs on that ride).  They were all awesome rides.

Okay, that’s enough of a stroll down memory lane.  Here’s the ad for J’s KLR:


2005 Kawasaki KLR 650 project for sale – $800 (DAYTON)

2005 KLR650 project for sale
$800
49,509 miles

Do you have big adventure-bike dreams but a very small adventure-bike budget? Have you got some basic mechanical skills, a strong desire to learn more, and a dry place to work over the winter? If so, this is perfect for you.

This is a Kawasaki KLR650. The OG adventure motorcycle.

Show up at any gathering of adventure riders on a well-traveled KLR and hold your head high. While a guy on a BMW GS has to put up with constant Starbucks jokes, when you ride a KLR you just climb on and go look for a good taco stand. In Baja.

I’ve done this. I rode this bike all the way to Cabo San Lucas and back. In winter. To a Horizons Unlimited meet in Mariposa. I rode it to Overland Expo in Flagstaff a couple of times and had a beer with Ted Simon. All of those were amazing trips. I want you to have trips like that.

The best thing about this bike is that you’ll know everything about it. Because you overhauled it yourself. Imagine sitting around the campfire, under a big desert sky, telling the story of how you brought this bike home, tore it down, put it back together, and rode it to somewhere awesome, far away. You need that experience in your life.

The bike has been sitting in my garage since June, 2016. I haven’t tried to start it since then. It ran well enough when I stopped riding it. I know the clutch was slipping under load. And the fork seals were leaking. I quit riding this because I got something newer that I liked better. I’m not aware of any major issues that aren’t easily fixed.

Somebody who really knows what they are doing could probably have this thing roadworthy in a few days. I don’t have the time nor the motivation to make that happen. So I’m offering it as a project, at a price much lower than I would ask if I didn’t just want it out of my way.

Clean title in hand.

First person who shows up with $800 in cash, and a truck or trailer to haul the bike and all the extra parts away, gets everything.

Farkles:
Progressive Suspension adjustable rear shock with remote adjuster
Doohickey done at Happy Trails headquarters in Idaho
Happy Trails soft panniers with waterproof liners
Happy Trails pannier racks
Happy Trails engine guard and highway pegs
Happy Trails engine guard bags
Happy Trails skid plate
Happy Trails rear master cylinder guard
Moose Racing handguards
Bike Master heated grips
Powerlet accessory power outlet on handlebars
RAM mount ball mount and double-socket mount
Sargent gel seat, needs to be recovered

Spare parts and extras:
New Shinko 705 front and rear tires, still in the shipping packaging
Slightly used Michelin T63 front and rear tires, lots of life left
New clutch kit, still sealed in the original packaging
New clutch cover gasket, still sealed in the original packaging
New clutch cable, in original packaging
New front and rear brake pads, still sealed in original packaging
Spare engine, needs to be rebuilt
Spare carburetor
Lowering links
Shortened sidestand
Clymer shop manual


You know, after reading that ad, I’m tempted to buy that KLR myself.  But I’m in the same boat as J:   I don’t have the time or the motivation to bring it back to life.  But wow, it’s one hell of a deal and the Kawasaki KLR was one hell of a motorcycle.   I had a lot of fun with my KLR, and I often wish I still had it.  But it went to a good home, and good buddy Daniel is putting it to good use.

The ride J and took with a bunch of other motojournalists in the northern Sierra Nevadas was grand.  The riding through that part of the world is about as good as it gets.

J on his KLR a few years ago.
Carla King’s photo of yours truly. My KLR went down the road a couple of years ago. Maybe I should have kept it.
Chasing J, Carla, and a a few others in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Oh, hey, one more thing:  If you have an interest in J’s KLR, here’s the link to the ad.

Seattle’s Museum of Flight

Susie and I were up in Seattle earlier in the year for a wedding and while we were there, we visited the Museum of Flight.  It’s one of the world’s great museums, and the $25 admission fee was money well spent.  We were lucky on our visit: It was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, and the museum had a special exhibit focused on that.  It was awesome.

Neil Armstrong’s actual Apollo 11 capsule. The actual capsule. It was like touching history.
One of the Saturn rocket engines used on the Apollo mission.
My photo of a photo: Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. I came close to meeting him once at Nieuport 17, a restaurant in Tustin, California, but he wasn’t there the night we were.
An Omega Speedmaster watch worn on the moon.  One of these original moon watches sold for $1.6 million just a few years ago.  There’s an interesting story on this Omega watch (and on a competitor watch, the Bulova). My apologies for the flaky photo; this was the best I could in the dim lighting.

The Apollo special exhibit was only a fraction of what the Museum of Flight displayed.  The main hall had all kinds of aircraft.

A view of the Museum of Flight’s main hall. That’s an SR-71 at the center of the photo. It’s a spy aircraft developed in the 1960s that flew entire missions over Russia and China, all at supersonic speeds.
An early commercial passenger aircraft.
An F4 Phantom. I was an engineer on the F-16, the air combat fighter that replaced the F4.  When I was in the Army, we provided air defense for an airbase in Korea with an F4 wing, and watching these aircraft take off with their afterburners on was fun.
A World War II airplane on display in the Museum of Flight’s Personal Courage Wing. The Personal Courage Wing, a separate part of the Museum, has 28 aircraft from World War I and World War II.

We spent nearly a full day at the Museum of Flight, and we could have spent more time there.   We visited the Apollo display, the Main Hall, the Personal Courage Wing, and the Red Barn (the original Boeing airplane factory).   As were left the airport, we saw an enclosed pedestrian walkway over the road, and it led to an area with several aircraft parked on the other side of the road.   We could have spent another day there.  We’ll save that for our next visit to Seattle.

Seattle’s Museum of Flight is a 20-minute ride out of downtown Seattle, and it’s a great way to spend a day.