The ExhaustNotes Blog

CHiPs!

In the 1960s and 70s, you couldn’t turn on a TV and flip through the channels without encountering a cop show. Hawaii Five O, Kojak, and more. TV series had shifted from westerns to police drama, and TV was what many of us did in the evening. Basically, we watched what the entertainment industry brainwashed us into watching. It’s no small wonder a lot of guys my age wanted to be cops when they grew up. Rick Rosner (a TV producer and one of the certifiably-smartest guys on the planet…Google him and you’ll see) was also an LA County Reserve Sheriff’s deputy. One night while on duty during a coffee break (a donut may have been involved), he saw two CHP motor officers roll by. That’s how and where the idea for CHiPs was born: Motorcycles. Southern California. Police. All the right pieces fell into place.

I had just returned from a year overseas (where I enjoyed nonstop good times during a 13-month party, courtesy of Uncle Sam) when CHiPs first aired in 1977. It was hokey…the music, the scenes, the premise of nearly every episode, but it was motorcycles, and I never missed an episode. The series ran for five or six years, and it featured two main characters: Ponch Poncharello (played by Eric Estrada) and Jon (played by Larry Wilcox). Their sergeant, Joe Getraer (played by Robert Pine) was also a regular on the show.

Guys like Gresh and me know that running a Z-1 Kawasaki through soft sand, up and down stairs, and other motoshenanigans doesn’t make a lot of sense (EDIT: Maybe I’m wrong about this…see the video at the end of this blog). But we’re mere mortals. Ponch and Jon made the big Kawis behave in every episode. It was all part of the story, and it was all set in and around Los Angeles. That’s one of the reasons, I think, many of my early experiences in So Cal were like deja vu all over again when I moved here. I’d seen all these places in CHiPs before I left Texas and came to California: Angeles Crest Highway, Malibu, downtown LA, the Pacific Coast Highway…the locations and the motorcycle scenes were burned into my brain.

Susie was putzing around on Facebook the other day when she found a local community bulletin board that said the CHiPs stars would be here for autographs and photos. Did I want to go? Hell, yeah!

Larry Wilcox, aka Jon Baker, signing a photo for me. He seemed like a genuine nice guy. In real life, Wilcox was a Marine in Vietnam who served in an artillery unit. Wilcox is a year or two older than me.

The CHiPs show had a motor sergeant (Sergeant Joe Getraer) who was played by Robert Pine. Pine was there as well, and he was happy to pose for a photograph. Mr. Pine is 80 years old now.

Sergeant Joe Getraer, played by Robert Pine, who had a full time job keeping Ponch and Jon in line. Pine, like Estrada and Wilcox, had a welcoming personality. It was a fun day.

Erik Estrada was a central character in the show, the one who was always in some kind of trouble with Sergeant Getraer. Ponch (his nickname, as in Ponch Poncharello) and Jon no doubt influenced a lot of guys to apply for jobs in the real California Highway Patrol. The real California Highway Patrol had a real motor officer and a real CHP BMW at this event, along with a couple of patrol cars.

Susie and Erik Estrada. All three of the CHiPs stars allowed everyone to take as many photos as they wanted. There’s nothing pretentious about these guys.

There were a lot of things I enjoyed about this event. We had to wait in line to get up to the table for autographs, but the wait wasn’t too bad and the event wasn’t rushed at all. The weather was nice and it was a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. Pine, Wilcox, and Estrada chatted with everybody, and Mr. Estrada walked the length of the line several times apologizing for the wait and telling us they were going as fast as they could. There were a few people in line who were disabled, and Ponch helped them maneuver up to the picture-posing area (he was very friendly). All three of the TV CHiPs seemed to have the same personalities as the characters they played 50 years ago, with Estrada being the most mischievous (and, where the ladies were involved, the most flirtatious).

I asked Estrada if he still rode and what kind of motorcycle he had. It was a topic he wanted to talk about. “Ponch” told me he sold his Harley Softail 20 years ago, and that he now owned one of the six Kawasaki police motors used on the show. “The Teamsters gave it to me,” he said. I thought that was pretty cool.

The other stars in the show were southern California, the California Highway Patrol, and the Kawasaki Police 1000 motorcycle. I imagine CHiPs did a lot for CHP recruitment, and the Kawasaki police motorcycles did a lot for Kawasaki (in both the police and civilian markets). It was a brilliant bit of product placement before product placement became a thing, and it led to a nearly complete bifurcation of the police motorcycle market. Departments east of the Mississippi River stuck with Harley-Davidson, and departments west of the Mississippi went with Kawasaki (although that has changed in recent years). If you are wondering how I know that, I did a fair amount of research for The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles when I wrote it 20 years ago.

The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles is back in print and you can purchase a copy for a low, low $9.95.

Whoa…check this out…it just happened yesterday right here in LA. Who’d a thought? The CHP on full dress Harleys chasing down a guy on a Kawasaki KLR 650, and staying with him on the freeways, splitting lanes, on surface streets, and off road. These are CHiPs legends being created as this blog was being written!

Whatever the two CHP officers’ names are, you can bet they’re being called Ponch and Jon now!

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My Big, Fat, BMW Obsession: A Cautionary Tale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ExNotes Review: Site Advertising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep on clicking those Google ads, my brothers.

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ExNotes Review: Berk’s Jeep Wrangler Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Indiana Medical History Museum

This is an unusual blog about an unusual museum. On a recent visit to Indianapolis we visited the Indiana Medical History Museum.

So here’s the deal: The Indiana Medical History Museum is what’s left of what was an Indiana insane asylum. A note on the museum’s website states:

Young children and visitors sensitive to topics such as mental illness, death, and autopsy may find the museum disturbing. Human skeletons and preserved organs are on display at the museum.

All that is true. I wouldn’t take kids here. The Indiana insane asylum used to house 2,000 poor souls who had lost their minds. The building we visited was the pathology center, all that’s left of the facility (the rest has been razed and replaced with condominiums). You can’t just walk up and start visiting this museum; you have to book a tour and the tours only take a few people at a time.

The primary focus of this Indiana pathology department was research focused on unearthing the causes of insanity. Our tour guide explained that back when the facility was an active insane asylum, a third of the patients were insane as a result of tertiary syphilis. When it was discovered that this form of insanity was due to a microbe (the syphilis spirochete), further research focused on finding microbes that caused other forms of insanity (they didn’t find any). The museum’s website states that it shows the beginnings of modern psychiatry.

The autopsy room and its equipment were interesting. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to have been a doctor in the early 1900s working here. Things sure have changed.

The library was interesting. In its day, it was perhaps one of the most advanced on the planet. It’s what they had to work with.

The building and our tour guide’s description of the place were somber and respectful. Still, the tour had the feel of a Steven King novel. Scattered equpment from the early days of treating mental illness filled the hallways. Some of it was used for electroshock therapy. Other tools were for lobotomies. It’s what they had to work with back then.

Steeple tops from the insane asylum buildings.

Camera equipment for photographing microscope slide results.

Admission was a modest $10 ($9 if you are a senior citizen), and the tour takes about an hour or so. I thought it was interesting. It sure was different.

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National Museum of the US Air Force

Ohio this time, folks, and today’s feature is the National Museum of the United States Air Force. We had been exploring Indiana, and Dayton was a just a short hop across the border. This was part of our great visit with good buddy Jeff, and wow, did we ever have a good time.

The official name, as denoted in the title of the blog, is a mouthful. I’ve heard of this place as the Wright-Patterson air force museum, and it’s been around for a long time. Dayton is a hop, skip, and a jump away from Vandalia, and my Dad visited the air museum decades ago when he competed in the Grand American Trapshoot in that city when I was a kid. I always meant to get here, and thanks to Jeff and my navigator’s travel planning (my navigator, of course, is Susie), I finally made it.

Dayton was also home to the world famous Wright brothers. I recently read a great book about The Wright Brothers by David McCullough, which added greatly to my understanding of their accomplishments.

There were many other early aircraft on display. I probably should have noted what they all were. But I was having too much fun taking available light photos with my Nikon. There’s no flash in any of the pictures in this blog.

There are four main halls in the museum, each dedicated to a specific aviation era. The first is focused on the early days (that’s what you see in the photos above), and the last is focused on more modern military aircraft. There are also exhibits of presidential aircraft, missiles, nuclear weapons, and more.

The missile hall was particularly cool. The photo immediately below shows a nuclear weapon.

The missiles made great photo subjects. I had two lenses with me: The Nikon 24-120 and the Nikon 16-35. Most of these shots are with the wide angle 16-35. Both of these lenses do a great job, the 16-35 even more so in these low light, tight locations.

Here’s another photo of a nuclear (in this case, thermonuclear) bomb. It’s hard to believe that much energy can be packed into such a small envelope.

The Wright-Patterson Museum also had several experimental aircraft. These make for cool photos.

That’s Chuck Yeager’s airplane below…it’s the one he used for breaking the sound barrier (or it’s one just like it).

There was an Apollo display, including the actual Apollo 15 capsule.

Our tour guide told us something I didn’t know before. If the lunar landing module was damaged and couldn’t be repaired such that it could dock with the lunar orbiter, the plan was to leave the guys who landed on the moon there.

One of the displays showed an Apollo astronaut suited up for a moon walk. What caught my attention was the Omega Speedmaster in the display. There’s a very interesting story about that watch the Bulova chronograph worn when one of astronauts was replaced just prior to launch. You can read that story here. I wear one of the modern Bulova lunar pilot watches.

Here’s one of my favorite airplanes of all time: The Lockheed C-130 Hercules. It’s an airplane that first flew in 1954. Analysts believe it will still be flying in 2054. Imagine that: A military aircraft with a century of service.

A long time ago, I went through the Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and I made a few jumps from a C-130. My last jump was from the C-141 Starlifter jet, an aircraft that was retired from military service several decades ago (even though it was introduced way after the C-130). The C-141 jump was a lot more terrifying to me than was jumping from a C-130.

In a C-130 you have to jump up and out to break through the boundary layer of air that travels with the C-130. Because you jump up and out, it was like jumping off a diving board…you never really get a falling sensation (even though you drop more than a hundred feet before the parachute opens). On a C-141, though, you can’t do that. If you jump up and out, you’ll get into the jet exhaust and turn yourself to toast. The C-141 deploys a shield just forward of the door, so the drill is to face the door at a 45-degree angle and simply step out. When that happens, you fall the same distance as you do when exiting a C-130, but you feel every millimeter. It scared the hell out of me.

The Museum also has a section displaying prior presidential aircraft…different versions of Air Force One. That was also fascinating. One of the Air Force One planes is the 707 that was took President Kennedy to Dallas, and then returned with his body that afternoon.

Jackie Kennedy would not allow JFK’s coffin to be stowed in the freight compartment on the flight back to Washington. She wanted it to fly with her in the passenger compartment. An enterprising flight engineer obtained a hacksaw and cut away part of the bulkhead just ahead of the rear passenger door, which allowed the coffin to make the turn into the aircraft.

There were other presidential aircraft on display as well, including the one used by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Not everywhere a president flies can handle a large jet, so sometimes Presidents use small executive jets. One of the first of these bizjets used for Air Force One (any airplane carrying the President is designated Air Force One) was a small Lockheed. President Lyndon Johnson called the small Lockheed executive jet below “Air Force One Half.”

It was a good day, and a full day. Even spending a good chunk of our day at the Museum, we were only able to see two of the four halls. That made for a good day, but if you want to see the entire Museum, I think it would be wise to allow for a two-day visit.

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Stupid Hot 7.62x54R Ammo

When good buddy Jim and I became interested in Mosin-Nagant rifles about 10 years ago, we bought a few boxes of PRVI-Partizan 7.62x54R ammunition mostly to get the brass so we could reload it. Boy, oh boy, that stuff was stupid hot.

A 91/30 Mosin-Nagant rifle. These are awesome firearms. They used to be plentiful and inexpensive. Now they are neither.

We could feel it in the recoil and the pressure pulse of each shot. After a few rounds we called it quits. I didn’t want to fire any more through my Mosin and neither did Jim. The primers were sharply flattened, the bolts were hard to open, and the brand-new cartridge cases were fracturing.

A fractured case mouth in a factory round that was clearly loaded way too hot.

You think this might be a sign of excess pressure?

We only fired two or three rounds from each box, but that was enough. Prior to that point, Jim and I had fired only our reloads, and those were about in the middle of what the Hornady manual recommended. The PRVI-Partizan ammo was way hotter than our reloads.

When we returned home, I grabbed RCBS inertial bullet puller and pulled the bullet out of one of the cartridges.

You put the loaded cartridge in the end, tighten the cap, and whack the other end on a hard surface a few times. Inertia drives the bullet out.

I thought maybe the bullets were slightly oversize and that was causing an overpressure condition. But they weren’t. They miked in at 0.312 inches (right where they were supposed to be).

I dumped the powder from the cartridge case and it weighed 52.7 grains. I had no idea what the powder was, but the powders I had loaded 7.62x54R ammo with in the past (primarily IMR 4320) had always been at 43.0 to 43.7 grains. My reloads were hard-hitting and accurate, and they felt about right to me. They recoiled and had a muzzle blast roughly comparable to a .308 Winchester, which is about what the 7.62x54R Russian cartridge is ballistically equivalent to. I didn’t see any powders in my reloading manual that went north of 50.0 grains. Nope, this PRVI ammo was just way too hot. Stupid hot.

The PRVI-Partizan propellant was a stick powder, but I had no idea what it was. I just know they loaded too much of it.

52.7 grains of whatever it was. And it was stupid hot!

I pulled the rest bullets with the RCBS inertial puller, dumped all the PRVI propellant (whatever it was) in my RCBS powder dispenser, and reloaded them with the original PRVI bullets, brass, and primers with a dispensed charge of 44.0 grains.

I reloaded the disassembled ammo with 44.0 grains of the mystery PRVI propellant.

I wasn’t trying to be too cute or too scientific; I just wanted something that filled the case to about the same level as my IMR 4320 load. I didn’t have more of the PRVI propellant, so I wasn’t seeking the most accurate load. Jim and I had only bought the ammo because we wanted the brass. We just wanted to shoot it up without blowing up our rifles.

That revised PRVI load worked well. It fired, it expanded the brass to obturate adequately, and I now had once-fired PRVI brass in good shape. The revised PRVI load was reasonably accurate enough, too. I think somebody at the PRVI ammo factory just wasn’t paying attention.

These guys were oblivious to what was going on around them. They could have been workers at the PRVI ammo factory.

The next day when Jim and I were on the range, a funny thing happened: A small group of deer wandered out in front of us, oblivious to our presence and the fact that they made an easy target. But it wasn’t deer season, were didn’t have our licenses with us, they were the wrong sex, and bagging one could result in a $40,000 fine here in California. Jim and I sat quietly, and the deer walked to within 30 feet of us.

More Tales of the Gun!

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A Colorado Jeep Story

On a recent secret mission to southeastern Colorado, the rental car agency at Denver International Airport was down to Nissans. I hate Nissans, and I asked the rental car dude if anything else was available. “Just a couple of Jeep Wranglers,” said dude responded. Hmmm. I always thought it might be cool to have a Jeep. I could pretend I was Joe Gresh.

Yours truly, looking like Rambo (or maybe Joe Gresh) in the Denver International Airport rental car plaza.

“I’m in,” I said, and I was in in my very own Jeep Wrangler of the two-door turbocharged four persuasion. Short. Choppy. Uncomfortable. Gas guzzling. But a lot of fun. Gresh, I get it. I want one. Not enough to buy one, but enough to rent one again.

There’s a turbocharged 4-banger somewhere in there.

You can buy a Jeep with four engines this year:

- - The standard V-6 3.6 liter
  - The same V-6 with an electronic motor hybrid deal (it sounds on the Jeep site like it’s not an Al Gore eco thing, but more of an assist for rock crawling).
  - A turbocharged smaller four-banger (a price delete option, which is a nice way of saying it’s an option that lowers the price of the new Jeep).
  - A 392-cubic-inch hemi. Just for grins I looked for a dealer online that had one of these $80K hemi Jeeps in stock, and I found one. It’s an $88K Jeep that gets 17 mpg on the highway and 13 in the city. Here in the People’s Republik, gas is well over $6.00 per gallon. Filling up my Subaru cost $95.12 yesterday.

My rental car had the turbo four banger and it still sucked fuel like a politician seeking campaign donations. At first I thought it was not going to be so bad because the instrument info center said I was averaging over 20 miles per gallon, but when I got out on the freeway at 77 mph it said my instant fuel economy was in the “you’ve got to be kidding me” category. That little 4-banger was actually doing worse than what Jeep claimed the 392 Hemi would get.

My istantaneous fuel economy at the time I took this photo was 16 mpg. That was on cruise control at 77 mph. I never could get back to this screen.

I suppose I might as well get the negative stuff out of the way first. For starters, fuel economy was atrocious. But then, folks don’t buy Wranglers for their fuel economy. And on that subject, I found that switching between screens to get the fuel economy info was tricky…tricky enough that I couldn’t find my way back to the instant fuel economy screen. Maybe the Jeep genies thought I didn’t need to know. Some things are better left unsaid, I suppose.

Another negative, which is maybe a positive, is that my Jeep felt gangly to me. Not as in tattoos and gats, but as in unsteady on its feet and ready to tip over (think of me putting my pants on in the morning and you’ll get the picture). Part of that was due to the Jeep’s height and its extremely tight turning radius (small steering wheel inputs made for huge course corrections, and on the freeway steering that barn door at nearly 80 mph it was all a bit unsettling). On a dirt road, though, K turns become a thing of the past. This thing can turn on a dime and give you nine cents change. It can make a U-turn on a two lane road.

Monster fobs. Hard to lose. Easy to inadvertently activate.

The key fobs were huge, and I guess that’s okay, but I found I was unlocking the Wrangler or setting off the panic alarm damn near every time I put the key fobs in my pocket, or if I stuck my hand in my pocket to get my chapstick or anything else.

Cargo space? As the Sopranos might say, fuhgeddaboutit. The rental car dude folded the rear bench seat up, but it wouldn’t stay up, and even when it did, there really wasn’t any room for my gear. You’re not going to be taking a lot of stuff with you in a two-door Wrangler. That pretty much killed it for me as a rifle range car. I wouldn’t be able to get all my shooting gear in there.

Wind noise is another issue. Oddly, it didn’t bother me when I was driving, even at freeway speeds. But no one could hear or understand me on a Bluetooth telephone conversation. Two folks gave up altogether and just hung up. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Seriously? This is the kind of fit and finish we get on an American legend, a descendent of the vehicle that helped us win World War II?

One last point…although the overall build quality seemed to be pretty good, Jeep lost me from a quality perspective with the fuel filler cap fit. It looks like the production tolerances were either not met or they were assigned by an AutoCad jockey who went to the Doris Day school of mechanical design.

The good news? Well, the good news is that there’s lots of good news. I fell in love with my Jeep. It was cool and I felt cool driving it. And even though it was tall enough to make getting in and out difficult, I knew almost immediately I’d be renting one on my next secret mission. I don’t need the Aston Martin and its machine guns, smoke dispensers, and ejection seat. For my secret missions, I want a Jeep.

Man, that Jeep was fun. Once I got over the difference in feel between it and a regular car, I felt invincible. Seriously. I mean, I’m a 71-year-old Jewish kid from New Jersey with a different doctor for damn near every organ in my body, but I still felt invincible in my Wrangler. I was driving directly into a Colorado hailstorm east of the Rocky Mountains at close to 80 mph, but I was in a Jeep. Gresh, I get it. It’s a power thing.

After the hail passed and I was back on the road, I found another plus: The headlights actually lit up the road, even on low beam, and that’s something I had not experienced in any rental car in a while.

Imagine that: Headlights that actuallly work!

So I was out there in cow country and the center of an ag world, doing my secret mission thing and having fun like I always do. Way off in the distance from the secret mission du jour there’s a couple of hills called Two Buttes (it’s actually one hill with two peaks). I had always wanted to ride out to Two Buttes and see what it was all about. I knew a Jeep wasn’t really essential, but the combination of longer days (more sunlight), the draw of a place unexplored, the dirt roads to get there, and my Jeep worked its magic.

Headed into the Two Buttes State Wildlife Area.

From the main road, Two Buttes looks like it would be easy to find and easy to find my way around. Like elections, though, what you think you’re going to get and what you actually get aren’t often the same. When I got closer to the Two Beauts, I found the area was a maze of dirt roads laid out in no particular order. The guys I was working with on my secret mission told me about a hidden lake, and my objective was to find it and grab a few photos. Waze was sketchy as hell out there in farmroadland, but I didn’t care. I was in a Jeep.

Ah, success. The lake and the Jeep, as seen through my iPhone’s wide angle lens.

Another photo of the lake, or pond, or whatever it actually is called.

I explored, I shot a bunch of iPhone photos, and I had a good time. I want a Jeep. I’m not going to get one. But I want one.

My last photo of the day, leaving the Two Buttes State Wildlife Area.

Maybe it would be even more fun with the 392 Hemi. I did a bit more research, and I learned that Jeep only introduced the 392 Hemi this year, in 2022. It seems that the new Ford Bronco (you can read our mini-review of it here) will be offered with a V8 in their Bronco Raptor package and Chrysler felt compelled to counter. Hey, whatever floats your boat. I found this 392 Hemi Jeep review and I thought you might find it interesting.

A Jeep. Who’da thought. A Jeep. Man, it was fun.

More ExNotes product reviews!

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Bill’s Old Bike Barn: Guzziland and Motomilitaria

One of the main halls in Bill’s Old Bike Barn features Moto Guzzi and military motorcycles along with other militaria, motorcycle engines, and more. We know Moto Guzzi primarily as sporting motorcycles. Back in the day, though (the day being World War II and beyond), Moto Guzzi made motorcycles for the Italian Army. Good buddy Bill has a few and they are on display, along with military motos from Germany and America and sporting Moto Guzzis.

There’s just so much to take in. I imagine Bill enjoys collecting and curating these things. That’s a cargo parachute, and it fits the collection nicely. There are several airplanes throughout Bill’s Old Bike Barn.

The Harley WL comes to mind first when anyone mentions military motorcycles. It’s the iconic World War II American military motorcycle. It’s a 750cc flathead V-twin, OD green, and it has a scabbard for a .45 ACP Thompson (and there’s one in Bill’s WL).

The quintessential American military moto, also used by Canadian forces. When I was a kid, we heard stories that you could buy these brand new, still in the shipping crates, for $25. I never found out if that story was true.

The German counterpart was a 750cc flathead BMW and sidecar. Zündapp also provided sidecar bikes to the Wehrmacht. And BMW also had a 600cc overhead valve model. Bill has a BMW with sidecar on display in this hall, but it’s a later model (note the overhead valve engine configuration).

Here’s another interesting military motorcycle: The 1946 500cc single-cylinder Moto Guzzi Alce. You wouldn’t think a motorcycle would be notable for its sidestand, but that’s one of the first things I noticed about it and Bill made the same comment. If you’ve ever tried to park a motorcycle in soft sand, you’ll know what this motorcycle is all about.

A 1946 Moto Guzzi Alce. It’s also the cover photo for this blog. Note the passenger handlebars.

A macro shot of the Alce storage compartments.

This is a serious kickstand. I could have used this in a few spots in Baja!

Harley-Davidson wandered into the military motorcycle world when they bought the Armstrong-CCM company in 1987. Armstrong had a 500cc single-cylinder Rotax-powered bike and Harley probably thought they would make a killing selling these to the US Army, but they were a day late and more than a dollar short. The Army had zero interest in gasoline-powered vehicles (the US Army has been 100% diesel powered for decades…I knew that when I was in the Army in the 1970s). The effort was quickly abandoned. That’s the bad news. The good news? The Harley MT 500 military bikes became instant collectibles. And Bill’s Old Bike Barn has one.

A Harley-Davidson MT-500. “MT” was an abbreviation for military transport; it more accurately was an acronym for sales results (as in “empty”).

Interesting, but for Harley it was no cigar.

The military room also houses the Moto Guzzi Mulo Meccanico, and motorcycle half-track featured in an earlier ExNotes blog.

The Mulo Meccanico, a case study for why complexity for complexity’s sake always comes in second place. Intended to replace live mules in Italian Army service, the real donkeys had the last laugh. Or was it a hee haw?

The Mulo and the Alce military bike share real estate in Bill’s Old Bike Barn, along with commercial and very desirable Moto Guzzi non-military motorcycles. Here’s an early 1970s Moto Guzzi Ambassador.

A Moto Guzzi Ambassador from the early 1970s, when Bill was a Moto Guzzi dealer.

Bill’s Old Bike Barn includes what has to be the definitive Moto Guzzi motorcycle classic, the Falcone 500. In case you’ve ever wondered, it’s pronounced “fowl-cone-ay.” Fire engine red is a color that works well on Moto Guzzis.

A beautiful 1951 Moto Guzzi Falcone, also known as the baloney slicer for its exposed flywheel on the bike’s left side.

One of the more unique “motorcycles” in Bills Old Bike Barn is a 1961 motorcycle-based dump truck. Bill kept it in its original unrestored condition for a number of years and used it to haul manure around on his farm (I used to write proposals in the defense industry, so Bill and I have that in common). Bill cleaned up the Guzzi dump truck, customized it with a show-worthy paint job, and made it too pretty to use. This is a three wheeler built around the same 500cc Falcone baloney-slicer motor shown above.

A Moto Guzzi trike dump truck. Gresh and I have a thing for three wheelers reaching back to our ride across China. Bill used this one for hauling manure around the farm.

The Guzzi dump truck’s motorcycle underpinnings are obvious.

So there you have it, folks. This is the last in our series of blogs about Bill’s Old Bike Barn. I enjoyed my visit to Bill’s more than I have to any other museum, partly because of the content and partly because of Bill. If you’re looking for a worthy destination and an experience like no other, Bill’s Old Bike Barn should be at the top of your list. I’d allow a full day for the visit, maybe with a break for lunch. We asked Bill for the best kept secret regarding Bloomsburg fine dining and his answer was immediate: The Scoreboard. It’s only a mile or two away and you can Waze your way there. Try the chili; it’s excellent.

There are six blogs in our series about Bill’s Old Bike Barn. Here’s a set of links to the first five:

Our first blog on Bill’s Old Bike Barn? Hey, here it is:

Bill Morris: The Man. It’s a great story.

Military motorcycle half-tracks? You bet!

With 200 motorcycles in his collection, Bill’s personal favorite might surprise you!

What drives a man like Bill to collect? Our story on Billville and the Collections answers the mail:

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A Tale of Two 9s

I recently tested two 9mm loads to assess:

- How 124-grain roundnose Boudreau powder-coated bullets performed in the SIG P226 and the Springfield Armory 1911, and
- The effect of seating depth on accuracy with 124-grain roundnose Ranier plated bullets in the Springfield Armory 1911.

A friend of mine recommended Boudreau powder-coated bullets. They are reasonably-priced and I liked the look. Ralph, the Boudreau master caster, recommended seating the bullets at 1.055 or thereabouts, which is deeper into the case than I usually go but that’s what I did with these. They look pretty cool. One of my shooting buddies observed that the loaded rounds looked like lipstick. That’s good; that’s the look I was going for.

These are the Ranier plated bullets.

I tried Accurate No. 5 propellant for the first time. My local reloading shop had this propellant in stock so I thought I would try it (these days, you take what you can get). Accurate No. 5 is a flake powder like Unique, but it burns much cleaner. It doesn’t leave the sooty residue Unique leaves, and there’s much less smoke (that’s partly due to the powder-coated bullets, too).

I also wanted to evaluate bullet seating depth’s effects on accuracy with the Ranier bullets. There’s nothing too scientific or rigorous in this evaluation; I just wanted to get a feel if the 1911 was more accurate or less accurate with the bullets seated deeper in the case or further out (I didn’t do this evaluation with the SIG).

My load manuals don’t make a distinction between powder-coated bullets versus other bullets. I read some comments online that indicate powder coated bullets get the same velocity with lighter propellant charges. I finally found some data on the Hodgdon powder website for 124-grain powder coated bullets, and it showed the charge range running from 4.6 to 5.4 grains of their Accurate No. 5 powder. This was a quick-look test, so I loaded 10 rounds at 4.6 grains, 10 rounds at 4.8 grains, 10 rounds at 5.0 grains, 10 rounds at 5.2 grains, and finally, 10 rounds at 5.4 grains. As mentioned above and per Ralph’s suggestion I seated all bullets to a cartridge overall length (COAL) of 1.055 inches. I fired one 5-shot group at each charge level with the 1911, and one single 5-shot group at each charge level with the SIG P226, all at 50 feet. Like I said above, it was not a rigorous assessment; I just wanted to get a feel for what worked and what didn’t. Here are the results:

These are the targets (the Springfield 1911 target is on the left and the SIG P226 target is on the right). I worked my way from the top down and left to right with each charge weight, so the top bullseye on each target is with 4.6 grains of Accurate No. 5 and the bottom right one on each target is with 5.4 grains of Accurate No. 5).

All of the powder-coated-bullet loads functioned perfectly in both guns and none of the cartridges exhibited any pressure signs. The heaviest charge on the Accurate site (5.4 grains) gave the best accuracy in both guns. That’s the load I’m going to go with on future loads with this bullet. The load had modest recoil and it was pleasant shooting. These are good bullets and they function well with the Hodgdon-recommended charges. I will also mention that I was a little surprised: This was the first time the Springfield Armory 1911 outshot the SIG. In the past, my SIG P226 had been more accurate than any 9mm handgun I ever tested, including my 1911.

The next test was to assess the effects of seating depth on accuracy. My buddy Paul and I had a discussion on this topic and we both realized that after sending 9mm projectiles downrange for 60 years and evaluating powder, bullets, primers, and more, we had never investigated bullet seating depth as a variable in 9mm reloading. The 9mm cartridge is a short one, and most semi-autos have generous chambers to improve reliability. The combination could naturally lead to the cartridges swimming around in the chamber, perhaps more so than a .45 ACP cartridge. It stands to reason that a longer cartridge (i.e., not seating the bullet as deeply in the case) could minimize movement of the cartridge in the chamber and improve accuracy. But there are other requirements at play, like getting the cartridges in the magazine, not seating the bullet so far out that it hits the rifling before the round is fully chambered, and reliable feeding of the bullets from the magazine into the chamber. So I thought I’d run a quick experiment.

For these tests I used Ranier 124-grain plated roundnose bullets and the Springfield Armory 1911. It was unscientific. I made 25 rounds with 6.4 grains of Accurate No. 5 (a max load) and the Ranier bullets seated to a COAL 1.100 inches (which is about what I would normally do), and another 25 rounds with the same powder charge, but with the bullets seated to a COAL of 1.156 inches (which is a little more than a twentieth of an inch further out). Here are the results:

It was an easy load to shoot and there were no flattened primers or other pressure signs. All loads functioned reliably in the 1911. There was little to no leading with the Ranier plated bullets, even though this was a max load.

Here’s what the targets looked like. The top two little guys are with the bullets seated out for a COAL of 1.156 inches; the bottom two little guys are with the bullets seated deeper and a COAL of 1.100 inches.

What this quick look says to me that the Ranier plated bullets are more accurate if they are seated further out. These worked in my 1911 magazine; I didn’t check them in the SIG P226 magazine (nor did I shoot this load in the SIG). If I was to do this test again, I’d check to make sure the longer cartridges would fit in the SIG’s shorter magazine and I’d also test them for accuracy in the SIG.

I haven’t assessed the Boudreau powder-coated bullets at different seating depths. I will get to that later. I’ve got a bunch of the Ranier bullets, and a bunch of the powder-coated bullets. Primers…that’s another story. Everybody needs primers.

The standard warning: The load data included in this blog are for my guns. Yours may be different.