The ExhaustNotes Blog

Baja, 150cc at a time: Part IV…

The trek south on our 150cc California Scooter Mustang replicas continues…

If you are coming into this adventure in the middle of the movie, you might want to take a minute or two and get caught up with our first three installments…

Part I: Baja, 150cc at a time…

Part II: Baja, 150cc at a time…

Part III: Baja, 150cc at a time…

Back to the main attraction…

After the spending the night at the Desert Inn in Catavina, fueling the bikes and checking that everything was tight the next morning, we were ready to continue south. We had agreed that if the group separated (which happens on these trips), our next rally point would be Chapala. Sure enough, that’s what happened, and Arlene and I waited for John and Simon to catch up to us near Chapala. We had a soft drink and after waiting a bit, we pushed on. We’d catch John and Simon later.

Arlene and I at the only loncheria in Chapala…

We had left early that morning and the weather was tolerable, but it soon became a brutally hot. September is the hottest month of the year in Baja, and we were feeling it.

When we hooked up with Simon and John, they were eating a morning snack…a salad with 1000 Island dressing. We continued down Mexico’s Transpeninsular Highway, and I grabbed this shot of Simon and Arlene headed toward Guerrero Negro…

On the road, on 150cc bikes, headed south in Baja.

Guerrero Negro means “Black Warrior” in Spanish. It is the name of a ship that sank near there in the 1800s. Guerrero Negro is right on Parallelo 28 (the 28th Parallel), which separates the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur. The town is also a good spot in the winter months for whale-watching tours. There’s a Mexican Army compound on the highway, and they have this cool whale skeleton right next to the highway.

From Guerrero Negro, the highway cuts southeasterly across the Baja peninsula, and we moved from the Pacific side to the Sea of Cortez side of Baja.

Going across the Baja peninsula was a fun ride, especially the last few miles into Santa Rosalia. It’s a 2,000-foot descent in just a few miles, and it’s wild. The name of this stretch is La Cuesta del Infierno. There are no guard rails and nightmarish drops if you let things get away from you. I didn’t grab any photos on the way down. When we arrived on eastern shore of the peninsula, we stopped for a few photos.

Arlene Battishill, Go Go Gear riding apparel, a custom California Scooter, and the Sea of Cortez.

Arlene’s CSC 150 had a custom paint job with the Go Go logo. John Esposito, who was with CSC at the time, did the painting. He is easily the most gifted custom painter I’ve ever known.

The crew, and one of my favorite photos from this trip. From left to right, it’s Simon Gandolfi, Arlene Battishill, J Brandon, John Welker, and Joe Berk.

We ate in Santa Rosalia, and by now, the temperature and humidity were beyond oppressive. That didn’t kill our spirits, but it came close. We were in heavy traffic, we were fully suited up, and it was a steam bath. We were close to the Tropic of Cancer, and it was about as miserable a set of riding conditions as I’ve ever experienced. Something was going on but I didn’t know what, and then traffic stopped altogether. As we sat in our riding gear and sweltered, a heavily-armed military parade marched by, music and all. Right in front of us. Had a revolution started? We didn’t know it yet, but we soon found out that Mexico was celebrating the bicentennial of the Mexican Revolution! John and I looked at each other and starting laughing. This was perfect!

John and I have been exploring Baja on motorcycles for close to 20 years now. He’s an easy guy to travel with, and he always laughs at my jokes (so I naturally like the guy). We’ve done the cruiser thing, we’ve both owned KLR 650 Kawasakis, and we’ve both owned CSC RX3 motorcycles. John was a great guy on this (and many other) trips…he’s a guy that just doesn’t let the small stuff bother him. A flat tire in the middle of the jungle? Hey, no problemo! That’s John in a nutshell, and it’s why I like traveling with him.

You may recall that part of the reason we making this trek was to road test the CSC 150 Mustang replicas under harsh conditions. Our intent on this trip was to beat the heck out of our California Scooters and find issues offering improvement opportunities. Baja is a proving ground…there’s no question about that. When I was a kid, American Motors came out with a new car that they entered in the Baja 1000 (I think it was their AMX model). Their commercials had a race car driver explaining to a Bajaeno that they were entering the car in the Baja race. The Bajaeno responded with “You’re going to enter theese hunk of tin in the Baja? Ha ha!” It was an image that stuck in my mind. Our direction from Steve Seidner, the CSC CEO, was to try to break the bikes, and Baja would be the place to do it.

And try we did…the trip would be 2200 miles through Baja. Simon commented that what we were doing with these bikes was probably something no other owner would ever do with their California Scooters, and time proved him right. It’s been nearly 10 years, and no one repeated what we did. Rough asphalt. Dirt roads. Hundreds of miles a day with wide open throttles. 100+ degree temperatures. High humidity. Up and down mountain passes. Long straights through the desert. You get the idea.

So, what broke?

I expected to have lots of light bulb failures, as I’ve had those on virtually any motorcycle I’d ever taken through Baja. I bought a bunch of 1157s for the tail lights, and a half dozen headlight bulbs. As it turned out, that was massive overkill. We had one headlight failure (Arlene’s conked out just before we reached Cabo San Lucas), and I had two tail light failures on my bike. Part of what caused my tail light failures might have been my defective rear tire…it was unbalanced due to the rip I put in it (I’ll get to that later in this saga) and that made the rear end on my bike vibrate a lot. Nobody else needed a bulb replacement, and I was surprised at how few bulb failures we had.

I guess I should point out that we had two preproduction bikes and two production bikes on this trip. Part of the test was to gage CSC’s success with improvements made when the company went from the preproduction to the production configuration. We wanted to see the same failures on the preproduction bikes as we had seen earlier, and we didn’t want to see those failures on the production bikes.

One of the problems CSC had experienced on the preproduction bikes was an occasional failure of the welded frame tab to which the muffler attaches. CSC strengthened that tab and its weld joint on the production bikes. Both tabs failed on the preproduction bikes within the first two days of riding in Baja; neither of the production bike muffler mounting tabs failed during the entire trip. I found a welder somewhere south of Guerrero Negro (my new buddy Umberto). I asked Umberto to fabricate new tabs identical to those on the production bikes, and to weld the new tabs on the preproduction bikes using the same weld pattern as the production bikes. Umberto did so, and the welds on the preproduction bike held for the remainder of the trip.

My new buddy Umberto upgrading a preproduction muffler tab to the production configuration, while simultaneously demonstrating proper personal protective equipment use. Welker is pulling fire guard duty.

We had two battery failures on the entire trip, and both occurred on the preproduction bikes. Neither of the production bikes had any battery problems. There was nothing different between the preproduction bikes’ batteries or charging systems and those on the production bikes, and at first, I was a little nervous about having a similar problem on the production bikes. Then, as the miles rolled by, I realized that the preprod bikes had old batteries. The batteries in both preprod bikes had been in those bikes for at least a year and a half, and who knows how old the batteries were before that. When we got back to the CSC plant, the boys put new batteries in both preproduction bikes, and they fired right up. The lesson here: Don’t leave on a long trip through Baja with an old battery. Duh.

The weather conditions – high heat and humidity – were tough on batteries…even J’s big Dodge Power Wagon (our chase vehicle) had a dead battery one morning. One thing about this battery business that was interesting was that Simon’s preproduction bike battery failed and his bike wouldn’t start at all. John’s preproduction bike battery failed and his bike could be kick started. John rode that preproduction bike for 9 days and 2200 miles, kick starting it all the way.

I tore up a tire on the way back from Cabo (I’ll tell you more about that in a subsequent installment). I noticed one afternoon that the tire was bald in just one spot, almost as if the rear wheel had been skidded for a long distance. I know I didn’t do that; maybe someone who rode my bike did (we swapped bikes a lot on this trip). Or maybe I hit something in the road that damaged it. Whatever the cause, I opted not to change the tire until later that day, and sometime in the next 150 miles, the tread split down to the cord in that bald spot. This caused a lot of vibration, but I took a chance on reaching San Ignacio before replacing it and it worked out okay. One thing about 12-inch tires…they were out quickly. It’s a common issue on scooters of all kinds. Well, maybe not an issue. You just need to know about it. A smaller diameter tire rotates a lot more than a bigger diameter tire, and the natural result is that the tires wear faster.

We also learned which nuts and bolts you have to keep an eye on our bikes. Nothing new there…I’ve gone through this with every motorcycle I’ve ever owned. On my KLR 650 it was the lower fairing bolts, the muffler heat shield, the muffler mounts, and the steering stem. On my Triumph Tiger it was the right foot peg and the saddlebag acorn nuts. On my Harley Softail it was nearly everything. On the California Scooter I soon learned it was the two 10mm exhaust clamp bolts at the cylinder head, and the 12mm elongated bolt at the bottom of the muffler. It became part of our ritual to check these bolts on our California Scooters each morning.

And the engine? Well, as far as I’m concerned, that old CG design was bulletproof. We flogged the bikes (we ran wide open for the last 500 miles), and we didn’t have a single engine problem. The CG engines are good, solid, reliable motors.

So, I digressed a little bit to tell you about the tech issues on the bikes. Now, it’s back to the main attraction…our ride. So where were we? Oh, yeah…I left off in Santa Rosalia. After having lunch and celebrating the Mexican Revolution in that fair city, we continued south. Mulege, a city about 40 miles south of Santa Rosalia, was to be our destination that evening.

To be continued…

Want to learn more about riding in Baja? Check out the ExhaustNotes Baja page!

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 3

There’s never a good time to work on carburetors. I was hoping for a quick rinse out operation on Zed’s fuel system but besides being dirty, sleeping in the rough has corroded Zed’s right-side carb. The other three carbs show less water damage, lessening towards the left side. No doubt due to Zed leaning to the right against The Carriage House (Tinfiny Ranch’s future guest quarters after Metallica, the main house, is finished).

My idealized, simple douche with carb spray has turned into a complete tear down of the 4-carb bank. I haven’t counted but there must be well over 100 parts between the set. Cleaning the white, calcareous deposit liberally coating the inside of the float chamber has kept me occupied and humble.

Certain parts of the carbs are well and truly stuck. The levers that raise the slides are age-welded to the pivot shafts. I gave them a firm shove and I’m not in the mood to break anything right now. The float bowl drain plugs have resisted my better efforts to unscrew them so I’ll be leaving those as is also. One screw has already broken off on the intake port and another one was pre-broken in the ignition area. I’ve got plenty of drilling and bit wrangling to do. I want to get the carbs clean enough to run the engine before destroying them with my ham-fisted efforts to achieve perfection.

Parts for Zed have begun to trickle into Tinfiny Ranch’s high altitude motorcycle shop. I scored four new intake rubbers for $50 off of Ebay, which seemed like a good deal to me. Not such a good Ebay deal was the ignition advancer bolt and grooved washer. I paid $19 and later found the two parts on Z1 Enterprises for $13.

Z1 Enterprises has a lot of Kawasaki Z1 parts for not unreasonable prices. I bought a complete new wiring harness for $139. The harness comes with the main wiring loom, the gauge cluster loom, the rear tail light/blinker loom and the loom underneath the battery box that the regulator, stator, main harness and some other junk I can’t remember plug into.

Also coming from Z1 Enterprises are fork seals, fork dust boots, a right-side handlebar switch and a few gaskets and o-rings. As I’ve yet to receive the stuff I can’t speak to the quality of the parts but I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.

I’m into Zed’s resurrection for about $240 so far. I’ll be going back to carb cleaning now. The things are a mess and every time they dry out a new, white-powder film appears. I’m using mild solvents so far but I may have to step up my game to get the carbs spic and span. You know the routine; Part 4 to follow.

If you’d like to catch up on the first two “Zed’s Not Dead” installments, here are the links:

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 1

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 2

Dream bike: 2020 Suzuki Katana

Wow, this is a departure for ExhaustNotes. So far, all the dream bikes we’ve listed have been blasts from the past.

This one is and it isn’t.

I’m over here in Singapore this week on yet another secret mission, and this story floats in: Suzuki is resurrecting the Katana! Whoa!

The 2020 Suzuki Katana. 1000cc, just like the original, but with a Gixxer engine.

This is a story that has my attention. I’ve always liked Suzuki motorcycles, and I think Suzuki engineering is as good as it gets. But that’s not what attracted me to this latest development. I actually owned one of the very first Katanas, way back when they first came out in 1982…

A skinny guy with hair, a leather jacket, and a new ’82 Katana. Life was very, very good.

I still dream about that 1982 Katana. I paid over MSRP because they were so hard to find (I’ll never do that again, but the fact that I did says just how much I wanted that bike). It was fast beyond belief, and the colors just flat worked for me. It had a Joan Claybrook speedometer (remember her?) that only registered 85 mph, as if that would somehow counteract my willingness to do stupid stuff. 85 mph, my ass…that bike lived half its life with the needle buried. The instruments were cool, too…the tach and the speedometer were pivoted in a way that made them look like they were unwinding when accelerating. I hope Suzuki does something tricky like that with the new one. My ’82 Katana was so ahead of its time that I actually got pulled over twice by cops who just wanted to see the thing. And you know what? I never got a ticket on that bike. Not once. Lord knows it wasn’t because I was a good boy.

I don’t need 150 horsepower and I don’t need 1000cc. But there’s a big difference between need and want, and I want this new Katana. This just might be the dream that comes true.

Hey, there’s more!

Dream Bike: The ’66 Triumph TT Special

So, some of this is from a blog I did for CSC several years ago, and some of it is new. It’s all centered on one of my all-time dream bikes, the Triumph ’66 TT Special.

A ’66 Triumph TT Special. Love those colors!

Some background: In the mid-60s, the ultimate street bike was a Triumph TT Special. The regular Bonneville was a pretty hot number back then, but it came with mufflers, lights, a horn, and all the stuff it needed to be street legal. Those bikes were pegged at 52 horsepower, and although that sounds almost laughable now (as does thinking of a 650 as a big bike), I can tell you from personal experience it was muey rapido. I don’t believe there were any vehicles on the street in those days (on two wheels or four) that were faster than a Triumph Bonneville. And there was especially nothing that was faster than the Triumph TT Special. It took the hot rod twin-carb Bonneville and made it even faster. And cooler looking. The Triumph TT Special will always hold a special place in my heart.

I had a spare hour a couple of years ago (yeah, that’s about how it happens), and that’s when I stopped in Bert’s. My good buddy Ron had a Triumph TT Special on display. I wondered what most folks thought when they saw the TT Special in Ron’s showroom. Bert’s sells to a mostly younger crowd (you know the type…kids who just got a licenses and go for 170-mph sports bikes), and my guess is they didn’t really “get” the TT Special. I sure did. Like I said, back in the mid-60s the Triumph Bonneville ruled the streets, and the TT Special would absolutely smoke a standard Bonneville.

Back in those days the Triumph factory rated the TT Special at 54 horsepower (as opposed to the standard Bonneville’s 52), but let me tell you there was way more than just 2 horsepower separating these machines. The TT Special was essentially the starting point for a desert racer or flat tracker. They were racing motorcycles. The TT Special was never intended to be a street bike, but some of them ended up on the street. If you rode a TT Special…well, you just couldn’t get any cooler than that.

A ’65 Bonneville TT Special, in the blue and silver colors of that year. This is a beautiful motorcyle on display in the Owens Collection in Diamond Bar, California.

I only knew one guy back then who owned a TT Special (Jimmy something-or-other), and he did what guys did when they owned a TT Special. He made it street legal, and that effort consisted of a small Bates headlamp, a tail light, and a single rear view mirror.

The first time Jimmy was pulled over in New Jersey the reason was obvious: He was a young guy on a Triumph TT Special. Back in those days, that constituted probable cause. After the officer checked the bike carefully, he gave Jimmy a ticket for not having a horn. It was what we called a “fix it” ticket, because all you had to do was correct the infraction and the ticket was dismissed. Jimmy didn’t want to spend the money (and add the weight) that went with wiring, a switch, and an electronic horn, so he bought a bicycle bulb horn. You know, the kind that attached to the handlebars and had a black bulb on one end and a little trumpet on the other. It honked when you squeezed the bulb. Ol’ Jimmy (old now, I guess, if he is even still around) went to the police station, honked his horn, and the police officer dismissed the citation. With a good laugh. It was a good story 50+ years ago and it’s still a good story today. Simpler times, I guess.

I love the ’66 white and orange color combo, too. My Dad had a ’66 T120R Bonneville back then (that’s the standard street version of the Bonneville), and it was a dream come true for me. Those colors (white, with an orange competition stripe framed by gold pinstripes) really worked. 1966 was the first year Triumph went to their smaller fuel tank, and it somehow made the Bonneville even cooler.

My father, an upholsterer by trade, reupholstered his Bonneville with a matching white Naugahyde seat. Dad put a set of longitudinal pleats on the seat in orange to match those on the tank, and each was bordered by gold piping. The overall effect was amazing. It looked like the bike ran under a set of white, gold, and orange paint sprayers. The effect was electric. That bike really stood out in 1966, and it continues to stand out in my mind. In fact, while I was at CSC, that color combo (with Steve Seidner’s concurrence) found its way into one of the new San Gabriel color combos. Some dreams do come true, I guess!

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 2

The first thing I wanted to check on Zed was whether the oil was contaminated or if the wet sump Kawasaki engine was full of rainwater from sitting outside. This was not such an easy job as the previous owner had used a chainsaw to tighten the drain bolt. The head of the bolt was mangled into a tapered affair that resisted all vise-grip attempts to get a purchase. Finally I managed to grip the o-ring flange area and got the sad thing out of the oil pan.

Luckily for me the oil came out black, pure and dirty. I priced a drain bolt and while it was a reasonable 15 bucks for a new one I decided that there was plenty of good meat remaining on the old bolt. Using 7 dollars worth of cutting blades on my 4-inch grinder I cut a 14mm hex head into the wreckage and then smoothed the saw cuts with a 9-dollar flap wheel. After I had the bolt looking respectable I ran down to Home Depot (using 1 gallon of gas @ $2.67) and bought some $6.99 silver spray paint. The paint really made the bolt look sweet and I had the satisfaction of saving money to boot!

I have no idea what originally stopped the Zed from running but by the look of the wiring harness it was electrical. The harness is melted in several places and severed in several others. It’s like someone thought they could cut the bike back to health. Cutting is a sign of deeper psychological problems and the fact that the ignition system was in a cardboard box showed how desperate things had become.

Silicone sealant slathered on the weather cracked rubber intake manifolds was less likely to stop the bike. I have found 4 new manifolds on ebay for $50 and they are on the way. Removing the carbs and air box runners was a straightforward operation.

Until this screw broke off, it’s always worse when a screw breaks on the way out. You’ll never have as good a connection as you did when the part was one piece. I am soaking it with PB Blaster, there’s no rush. At least I can get a straight shot at the piece stuck in the head.

I removed the sparkplugs for a quick, finger-in-the-plug-hole compression test and Zed has compression on all four cylinders. The actual PSI number is not too important at this time. I was more worried about a bad valve or holed piston. The sparkplugs were fluffy-sooty and so is the piston (what I can see of it through the plug hole). The bike was running rich or maybe as the ignition died combustion became less of a sure thing.

I’ve got enough apart to have confidence Zed’s engine will run. Hopefully the gearbox will be ok and the stator will charge the battery. In Part 3 we will clean, clean, clean!

Aging like a fine wine: My Model 59

The Smith and Wesson Model 59. Mine is a very early one, with a serial number that puts it in the first year of production. These old guns can shoot!

Dial back the clock a cool 46 years (which would put us in 1972), and Smith and Wesson had only recently introduced its Model 59 9mm, double-stack, semi-auto handgun. The 59 was the latest and the greatest in ‘72…a high capacity 9mm with a double stack magazine (like the Browning Hi-Power, the only other gun of its day with this feature) and a double-action first shot (pulling the trigger both cocked and fired the weapon). It was cool. Nah, scratch that. It was super cool.

I first became acquainted with S&W semi-autos with their Model 39, the predecessor to the Model 59. Dick Larsen, a family friend, had a Model 39. Sergeant Larsen was on our local PD and to me he defined cool. I really looked up to Larsen and I loved talking guns with him. In one such discussion the conversation turned to the topic of the day: 9mm handguns versus the venerable .357 magnum revolver. I thought Larsen was a dyed-in-the-wool revolver man, until he showed me his off-duty Model 39. He had it on his belt under a Hawaiian print shirt. It was a cool thing…small and light. I wanted one. “The one to get today is the Model 59,” the good Sergeant said, “if you can find one.”

The Model 59 was a new limited-production item from Smith and Wesson in 1972, and they were tough to get. Rumor has it that S&W developed the 59 for the Navy SEALS (nobody outside S&W and the Navy knew this back then). That’s probably why they were so hard to get initially; nearly all the production was headed to Coronado Island. I was going in the Army and after that conversation with Sergeant Larsen, I wanted a Model 59. In those days, if you wanted to find a hard-to-get gun you either made a lot of phone calls or you visited a lot of gun shops (the Internet and Gunbroker.com did not yet exist). My Dad did both (plus, as a world-class trapshooter, he knew people). I got lucky. Dad found a distributer who could get a Model 59, and I had one before I shipped out for Korea.

I’ve had my Model 59 since 1973, and I’m guessing I’ve probably put something north of 30,000 rounds downrange with it. In my early days, I replaced the black plastic grips with cool tiger-striped exotic wood grips I bought at a Fort Worth gun show (who would want a gun with black plastic parts?), and I had to replace the safety once back in the ‘80s. Other than that, all I’ve done with my Model 59 is shoot the hell out of it and occasionally clean it. It’s surprisingly accurate, it feeds anything, and it’s just plain fun to shoot. It’s a gun I’ll never sell.

Zombies don’t stand a chance against the Model 59. My favorite 9mm load in the 59 is a 125 gr cast roundnose bullet over a max load of Unique propellant.

The good news is the Model 59 ultimately went into high rate production. More than a few police departments chose the 59 when the migration from revolvers to autos occurred in the 1980s. All of those PDs moved on to newer guns, and today you can still find used Model 59s for cheap.

Most folks today have either never heard of the Model 59, or they would smile quaintly at its mention and then tell you how great their plastic Glocks are. But don’t dismiss the Model 59. The 59 is a grand old handgun and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut you’d love it. Mine just gets better with age (like a fine wine, I guess), and I love shooting it.

Want to see more of our Tales of the Gun? Just click here!

Zed’s Not Dead: Part I

I didn’t start out wanting a Kawasaki Z1. I’m more of a H2 750 triple guy. We were renting a house 10 miles south of Alamogordo, New Mexico and my job was to find a place to buy. Land is cheap in New Mexico and I wanted lots of it. 150 acres was the low-end of what I considered a decent spread.

Tinfiny Ranch’s 5 measly acres with a tiny shack was overpriced by about 50% and after checking the place out I told the real estate agent no dice. I did tell him I was interested in the old Kawasaki leaning against the side of the shack. A call was made to the daughter who inherited Tinfiny and a deal was made. Zed was mine.

Zed came with no title, two Emgo café farings (one color-matched!), three seats, a box full of parts, a repair manual and any other bits I could find digging through the little junk-filled storage area next to the bike. Zed’s chain was rusted and the bike was difficult to push. I used a come-a-long to winch the thing up into the truck and hauled the mess back to our rental place.

Then they sold the place we were renting. CT (my wife) found another rental in Tularosa, 10 miles north of Alamogordo and we hauled all the junk we had accumulated, including Zed, to the new joint.

A year had passed since I bought the Kawasaki and the bike was sitting in a storage trailer waiting for motivation on my part. The bike had no title so I wasn’t gung ho about the whole magilla. I mean, it wasn’t an H2, you know?

We were still looking for a place to call our own when the agent who had shown us Tinfiny Ranch called and said the seller was really lowering the price. CT and I went back out and looked the place over again. Tinfiny had electric service (not activated) a water well (broken), a septic system and a horrific wreck of a shack. It was only 15 miles from CT’s work. We figured what it would cost to make Tinfiny into what we wanted and worked our way back to a price. The agent said no way would the daughter take our offer and of course she did. I hauled the Kawasaki right back to where I had originally gotten the bike. Zed was back home.

Buying Tinfiny Ranch turned out to be a good thing because the rental we were living in also sold and we only had a few months to get the shack into a less distressed condition. There was no time to mess with Zed. I had the shack functioning at a first grade level in time to run off to China with Berk. CT moved all our junk and herself into the shack while I was gone. A more resilient wife you will never find.

Tinfiny has required massive amounts of sweat equity in the two years since we moved into the shack. In that time I walked Zed through New Mexico’s lost title maze and managed to get a shiny new title for a little over 150 dollars. Now the bike was mine: body and soul.

Having a title changed my relationship to Zed for the better. What was once a parts bike to be broken down and sold on the internet became a real motorcycle. I looked at the bike with a new appreciation for the classic lines and meaty, overhanging engine. The bike has stance. It is easy on the eyes with no hard edges or inorganic folds. It is a beautiful industrial product that has transcended the commercial realm and now resides in the empire of art.

Yeah, I’m gonna fix it, but not a restoration, that’s for people who can’t accept a missing eye on an old teddy bear. Life leaves scars. This will be a repair, a salvage operation to get Zed back on the road. I don’t know how long it will take but I know now is the time to start. At this point in my life I’m in no rush and it looks like Zed isn’t going anywhere either.

Indian ExhaustNotes!

By Joe Berk

We were visiting the Planes of Fame last month when I spotted the US Army World War II motorcycle you see below…

At first, I thought it was a Harley WLA 45, but nope, a nice young fellow named Paul was working on the motorcycle and he told me it was an Indian. Wow, you don’t see too many WWII US Army Indians. I was a bit embarrassed (after all, I wrote a book about police and military motorcycles), but the beauty of this motorcycle soon made me forget that. Check out these photos, folks…

When I returned home, I had to look up what I had written two decades ago about the Indian 741 in The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles…

INDIAN WORLD WAR II MOTORCYCLES

During the war, Indian produced about 40,000 motorcycles and essentially devoted its entire operation to military production. It produced few civilian motorcycles (the company did not even bother to print a catalog in 1942), although it maintained a small amount of its production capacity for police motorcycles. It sold its military motorcycles to the U.S. Army and to several other Allied nations, most notably England. Indian offered several models during World War II. These included the Model 741, the Chief, the Model 640B, the M1, and the Model 841.

The Model 741

The Model 741 was Indian’s main military motorcycle. It was the machine Indian had developed in response to the U.S. Army’s ill-advised initial requirement for a 500-cc military motorcycle. The Model 741’s engine actually displaced 30.5 cubic inches (or 500 cc), and for this reason it became known as the “30-50.”

The Model 741 was based on Indian’s Junior Scout. Its 500-cc, V-twin engine was the Junior Scout engine detuned for increased durability. It only produced about 15 horsepower. The Model 741 had a hand shift and a foot clutch like the Harley-Davidson WLA, but the Indian motorcycle put the shifter on the right side of the gas tank instead of on the left side as Harley-Davidson had done. The motorcycle’s throttle was in the left handgrip, in accordance with the army’s initial specification. As Harley-Davidson had done, Indian extended the front forks to give greater ground clearance. Indian also extended the rear frame for the same purpose. The Model 741 also used the much larger Indian Chief’s transmission for increased reliability. The Model 741 had a rifle scabbard on the right front fender and an ammunition container on the left front fender.

The Indian Model 741, like the Harley- Davidson WLA, was not a high-performance motorcycle. Both machines weighed over 500 pounds. Both machines had top speeds of approximately 65 mph. The army was more interested in durability than in top speed.

The U.S. Army used the Indian Model 741 during World War II, as did the armies of Great Britain, Canada, Poland, Australia, and Russia. Indian also sold Model 741s to the British Royal Air Force.

Here’s the best part of this story…The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles is still in print, it’s just $12.95, and all you need to do to order it is click on the link you see here.

Oh, and one more thing. If you live for the sound of exotic ExhaustNotes, I saved the best for last…

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An awesome exhaust note…

Last year, Sue and I were in the Columbia River Gorge gathering info for a Motorcycle Classics story (you can read it here). We flew up because I had a tight schedule and we rented a car from one of those places where you walk into the parking lot and pick whatever car you want. I saw this cool little yellow Hyundai Veloster and it got the nod….

A cool vehicle for exploring the Columbia River Gorge!

I’ve always liked the looks of that car…sporty, low, and kind of in your face. And, it had a small engine, which I find more appealing these days. I wasn’t disappointed…I loved that car.

I see another Veloster near my dentist’s office every time I have to make that trek…a custom blue number that is a visually arresting automobile. Yesterday I walked into the vape shop next door and asked who owned it. The guys inside looked alarmed…I guess because I’m a mature dude with short hair and they’re all young, they assumed something bad was brewing. But that wasn’t the case at all. I explained that I really liked the Veloster and I wanted to get some photos of it. And I did.

Folks, meet my new good buddy Jon…

Jon’s car is a 2012 Veloster and I like what he’s done to it. Lots of trim pieces, flared wheel wells, a carbon fiber hood, custom wheels, and more. Check this out…

Jon’s custom Veloster sounds great, too. I guess you could say it sort of defines our website with, well, you know…an awesome ExhaustNote. Take a listen…

Baja, 150cc at a time: Part III….

So we’re back on the story about our trek to Cabo San Lucas on reborn Mustangs, the little CG clone 150cc hardtails. We’re doing this story in installments. This is the third, and if you are new the ExNotes blog, you might not have seen Part I and Part II. My advice? Take a few minutes and read them before continuing with Part III (this part of our ongoing 150cc adventure ride)…

Part I: Baja, 150cc at a time…

Part II: Baja, 150cc at a time…

And with that, I’ll pick up where I left off at the end of our Part II Colonet coffee stop. After our coffee stop, we rolled on for another hour and stopped for breakfast. Here we were, in this little Baja restaurant, and they had wireless Internet access. That’s where I posted the first CSC blog entry on our Baja trip (and we wanted to keep moving, so it was short).

Check this out…Simon Gandolfi checking his email on my laptop!

What is the world coming to, though? Wireless Internet access in Baja. I was surprised. That trip was the first time I had Internet access in Baja. I knew the peninsula was changing.

Breakfast was good, and after that, it was a short hop down to El Rosario to top off the tanks before climbing into the Valle de los Cirios. Our bikes climbed, and so did the temperature. I’ll bet we had a 60-degree temperature swing that day. It was right at about 100 degrees in the desert. September is the hottest month of the year in Baja. Why make it easy? We stopped several times to peel off our layered riding gear as the temperatures continued to climb.

Arlene, dropping layers and trying to stay cool.

When Catavina came into view, we decided to call it a day. We might have pushed on to Guerrero Negro, but there is literally nothing between Catavina and Guerrero Negro, and it’s another 140 miles or so down the road. Too hot, too far, and we didn’t want to ride after dark.

We had a lot of fun with Simon, and we quickly dubbed him “the world’s most interesting man.” Do you remember those Dos Equis commercials? You know…the ones where a guy holding a Dos Equis beer is proclaimed the world’s most interesting man…with descriptors like “he never uses lip balm” and “his mother has a tattoo that says ‘Son.’” We really enjoyed getting to know Simon, and he most definitely is the world’s most interesting man. Before I left, someone gave me a list of “world’s most interesting man” descriptions he grabbed off the Internet, and I dribbled them out to our group as we journeyed through Baja. The one that got the best laugh was “Simon Gandolfi is the world’s most interesting man…he once called a psychic…to warn her.”

I grabbed this shot of Simon with his California Scooter in the Valle de los Cirios south of El Rosario. It’s one of my all time favorites.

Simon was also keeping a blog for his readers. Here’s an entry from Simon’s blog…

The bikes are small and pretty, surely an unusual description of a bike. Best of all they make people smile, not with scorn but with pleasure – as does watching your children play out in the yard.

The bikes were performing well. We had two current production bikes (mine and Arlene’s), and two preproduction bikes (Simon’s and John’s). During development Steve and the boys found a few improvement opportunities on the preproduction bikes, and these resulted in upgrades on the production bikes. Simon’s and John’s preproduction bikes have had some of the problems we found earlier, but the production bikes performed flawlessly.

We didn’t coddle the little Mustangs. We ran on some pretty rough roads, and the speed bumps (topes) in every little town we pass through were brutal. The Mexicans don’t just use one speed bump. They use about 20 of the things in a row, maybe 30 feet apart, one after the other. When they tell you to slow down, they mean it. We’d slow down for the speed bumps when we saw them in time (which didn’t always happen), and then we’d speed up after the topes. As I said earlier, the bikes liked running around 45 mph. We occasionally cranked them up to over 60 mph, but then we’d settle into a relaxed putt to enjoy the scenery and the ride. It’s a sweet way to see Baja.

Here’s another cool entry from Simon’s blog…

The desert here is a vast up-and-down jumble of immense gray boulders, candelabra cactus, Judas trees and skinny scrub. To the south and west lie mountains scrubbed to their stone core by a few million years of wind and occasional rain. To the east a long roll of cloud or fog lies low over the ocean. The dawn light washes the mountains a pale chalky blue. The cloud bank is touched with pink.

I have ridden on ahead. I haven’t met another car or truck in twenty minutes. Cut the engine and the silence is total. Two buzzard glide overhead. Nothing else moves. I am absorbed into the stillness and the quiet and the beauty and find myself shivering, not with cold, but with that exultation that comes sometimes when, tired yet wonderfully content, you get into a bed spread with Egyptian cotton sheets stiff from the laundry and wriggle in minor ecstasy as you clutch yourself in your own arms. Never done that? Never slept between Egyptian cotton sheets? How sad…

And if you have never visited Baja California, start planning. Right now this is about as close as you can get to heaven without a one-way ticket.

We rode into the Catavina boulder fields, one of the prettiest parts of Baja. It’s a surreal region with huge white boulder and enormous Cardon cactus.

You’ve seen this photo before. It’s another one of my favorites. I shot it from the saddle with my old D200 Nikon and 24-120 lens as we rolled through the Catavina boulder fields.

Our destination that night was Catavina, where we would spend the night in the Desert Inn. It was a grand day and a great place to call it a night. I’d stayed there many times before on prior Baja adventures, and I knew it was good. The Desert Inn is nice. It’s 100 miles from anywhere.

The courtyard in Catavina’s Desert Inn Hotel.

Our bikes parked in front of the Catavina Desert Inn.

They turn the generators off from 12:00 to 4:00 at the Desert Inn, so there’s no electricity in the afternoon. The desolation and the surrounding landscape just make it a cool place to be, even if was 100 degrees (as it was when we stopped that day). We ate in the Desert Inn’s restaurant, we sampled their Tequilas (hey, our riding was over that day), and then we hung out in the pool. Wow, that sure felt good.

To be continued…stay tuned for Part IV!

Want to learn more about riding in Baja? Check out the ExhaustNotes Baja page!