Looking both large and deceptively small from the outside, the Indiana War Memorial is located in the center of Indianapolis. Susie and I were there for a visit with good buddy Jeff, whom I’ve known since before kindergarten. We both migrated west after college, both of us did so for work, and Jeff staked his claim as a Hoosier. We spent a few days recently bopping around Indiana and Ohio and it was a hoot. One of the first places we stopped was the center of downtown Indianapolis, and we wandered into the amazing and impressive Indiana War Memorial. It wasn’t on our itinerary; it just looked interesting, it was open, and we entered.
The name is a bit misleading, as the Indiana War Memorial is both a memorial and a world class military museum, tracing the history of American combat from the Revolutionary War to our most recent conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The building itself is impressive, with tall halls and huge lower level display areas. The displays are impressive. So is the architecture.
The Indiana War Memorial wasn’t crowded; in fact, we had the place to ourselves.
Peering up in the main tower, this hall focuses on The Great War.
Moving on to the lower floors, the displays focus on the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War II, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan conflicts.
This is an interesting exhibit from Gettysburg, which we had visited just a few weeks ago.
I enjoyed the small arms displays. That’s my buddy Jeff in the photo below.
One of the last halls we viewed focused on the Vietnam War. This is a Huey Cobra helicopter with a three-barreled Gatling gun mounted in the nose.
Admission was free, and during our visit we had an extra treat. When we first entered the Indiana War Memorial, we had a nice chat with a guy about our age. Jeff mentioned that his father had served in World War II, and that I had served in the US Army. Our new friend told us he had been in the Air Force. As the conversation progressed, we learned that we were speaking with a retired general officer, who was now the Director of the Indiana War Memorial (General Stewart Goodwin).
Not too long ago, I posted the Model 60 handjob blog, which was a story about fitting a new hand to the revolver to correct an out-of-time situation. When I took the reworked Model 60 to the West End Gun Club to check its performance, I brought along my Rock Island Compact 1911. Both guns are on my concealed carry permit and I thought it might be cool to rapid fire on the police qualification target at 7 yards.
As you can see from the photo above, the guns appear to be comparably sized, but that photo is a bit misleading. I don’t feel like I’m printing with the Compact 1911 (you know, allowing the gun’s outline to standout against my shirt), but the 1911 does hang heavier and it presents a bigger shape under an untucked shirt. I’ll get to the specs of both guns in a minute, but first let’s take a look at how they compare on target. The first target is the Model 60; the second is the Rock Island Compact 1911.
50 rounds, rapid fire, at 7 yards from the Smith and Wesson Model 60 (all fired double action).50 rounds, rapid fire, at 7 yards from the .45 ACP Rock Island Compact 1911.
I shot both targets using a two-hand hold from the standing position. Both are accurate and close enough, as they say, for government work.
The loads were fairly stiff. I used a cast 158-grain truncated cone bullet with 4.4 grains of Unique propellant for my .38 Special ammo, and a 185-grain cast semiwadcutter bullet with 5.0 grains of Bullseye for the .45 ACP. Given the choice, I wouldn’t want to be hit by either one. But I’m betting that the 1911 hits harder.
.38 Special and .45 ACP reloads. Both were fairly stout. The 158-grain truncated conical bullet .38 Special loads are potent. The .45 ACP semiwadcutters come from Jim Gardner’s casting operation, and they are accurate and hard hitting.
The Model 60 Smith and Wesson weighs 19 ounces empty and it carries 5 rounds (which adds another 1.8 ounces, for a total of just under 21 ounces). The 1911 weighs 34.6 ounces empty and it carries 7 rounds in its 7-round mags (that adds another 3 ounces, for a total of 37.6 ounces). The loaded 1911 weighs almost twice as much as the loaded Smith and Wesson revolver. Anything you measure in ounces may not seem like a lot, but trust me, when you carry it all day, it is. From a weight perspective, the Model 60 has an advantage.
I know all you keyboard commandos want to tell me I could carry 8 rounds in the 1911, but I won’t carry with a loaded chamber in a semi-auto. Save your breath if you think I should. The Israelis don’t carry with a round chambered and they seem to know what they’re doing, we didn’t carry with a round chambered when I was in the Army, and I’ve seen more than a few accidental discharges from folks who carried with a round chambered in a semi-auto handgun. Nope, it’s an empty chamber for me. Your mileage may vary.
From an accuracy perspective, you can see from the targets above that I shoot the 1911 better. I don’t think the 1911 is inherently more accurate than the Model 60. But in my hands, and with my old eyes, I can hold a tighter group with a 1911. Most of that has to do with my 1911’s sights. I have a red ramp/white outline set of Millet sights that good buddy TJ (of TJ’s Custom Guns) installed on my 1911, and those things are the best handgun sights I’ve ever used. The Model 60’s sights…well, let’s just say it’s a game of hide and seek with them. The 1911 gets the nod from an accuracy perspective.
You might think 7 versus 5 rounds is a tremendous advantage. On paper, maybe. In real life, the average number of rounds fired by a concealed carry permit holder in a confrontation is less than 2 rounds. It’s kind of a draw from a capacity perspective, at least from my perspective. If you’re a keyboard commando, you may feel differently. Go post your opinions on Facebook; they need folks like you.
So what’s my preference? Most of the time, it’s the 1911, but I love both of these handguns.
Susie and I were channel surfing on Netflix the other night and a trailer for Operation Mincemeat appeared. It looked like it might be interesting so we hit the play icon. Wow, this movie is great. The story is about the British military intelligence deception operation to convince the Nazis the 1943 Allied invasion of Europe would begin in Greece and not Sicily. Everyone knew Sicily was the logical choice, including the Germans, but the Brits managed to pull off a miracle and the Germans diverted the bulk of their forces to Greece. I won’t tell you much more about how MI5 did this (beyond what the trailer below shows) because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you.
Operation Mincemeat is a dark, foreboding movie, as it should be. Literally tens of thousands of lives and indeed, the future of humanity, hung in the balance.
One of the interesting characters in this true Operation Mincemeat story is a mid-level British Intel officer named Ian Fleming.
Johnny Flynn playing Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat. Here Fleming is intrigued by a Q Branch watch with a bezel that becomes a buzz saw. You have to pay attention or this and other scenes that inspired 007 will zip right by.
Yes, that Ian Fleming…the one who went on to create and write the James Bond stories. He and several other MI5 officers were working on spy novels while the real Operation Mincemeat was unfolding. At one point, the man in charge (played to perfection by Colin Firth) exclaimed, “My God, is there anyone here who isn’t writing a spy novel?” There were other James Bond references, including the senior MI5 person everyone referred to as “M,” Q Branch, and more.
Trust me on this: If you are a James Bond fan, you will love Operation Mincemeat.
Nah, that’s too restrictive. Anyone who enjoys a good movie will enjoy Operation Mincemeat. It’s on Netflix and it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. I enjoyed it so much I watched it again from start to finish the next day. It was that good. You can thank me later.
I grew up in the South, way deep south, which means open-wheel automobile racing has always been a little suspect to me. Stock cars built in the good old USA slamming into each other every corner was auto racing. Tracks were small ovals either paved or dirt and the fence wouldn’t save you if a Chevelle climbed the wall just right. Stock car racing was total immersion. Saturday night, roasted peanuts, greasy pizza, burning rubber and beer will transport me right back to Hialeah Speedway in the late 1960s. For a young punk it was a glorious way to pass a hot Florida evening.
Yankees raced open-wheel. Yankees to me were any people that lived north of Fort Lauderdale. I couldn’t tell the difference between Indy cars and Formula One cars and truthfully, I still can’t. The open wheel cars raced far away from the crowd: almost nothing ever hit you at an Indy car race.
Roger Penske was a successful Indy car team owner before he started renting big yellow moving vans and he has a multibrand luxury car dealership with a small museum attached. I had time to kill so I wandered over to the museum with a southern-chip-on-my-shoulder, cocky, dirt oval attitude: Show me what you got, Big Daddy.
The museum is small, all on one floor with a gift shop and a lunch counter a floor above the display cars. Turns out Penske won the Indy 500 more frequently than you would assume and the 500-mile winners in the museum are the actual race cars tidied up for display.
The first engine on your left as you enter the place is Mercedes-Benz 500/265E. Right off the bat with the foreign car stuff, you know? This sweet looking 3-1/2 liter V-8 put out 1024 horsepower at the relatively low RPM of 9,800. The first time out this engine won the pole and the Indy 500 in 1994 with Al Unser behind the wheel. The Mercedes 500 was the first car to pull off this stunt so I guess they got it right the first time.
Mark Donohue won the 1972 Indy 500 in this Drake-Offenhauser powered McLaren M16B. With a 4-speed transmission the car burned through methanol 75 gallons at a time. The car averaged 191 miles an hour for the race, which is about 91 miles an hour faster than the cars on my beloved dirt ovals.
Rick Mears of off-road racing fame won the 1984 Indy 500 in a Penske-March car powered by a Cosworth-Ford. Averaging 207 miles per hour I’m guessing the Cosworth fairly sipped fuel from its 40-gallon methanol supply. Or, maybe the pit crew was really fast. When you’re circling in top gear all the time you don’t need more than the four speeds the March transmission provided.
Now we’re getting somewhere: a Chevy 2.65 liter V-8 pumping out 720 horsepower at 10,700 RPM. This engine won the 1991 Indy 500 with Rick Mears behind the wheel again. This engine went on to win 72 races.
I find it hard to believe that these tiny, multi-plate clutches can hold up for 500 miles pushing 200 miles per hour. The things aren’t much bigger than a motorcycle clutch. Maybe I’m wrong? Is this an accessory drive?
Penske didn’t just run teams, he raced real cars like I like. This Pontiac super-duty 421 cubic-inch beast won the 1963 Riverside 250 with Penske behind the wheel. A Borg Warner T10 handled the shifts, Monroe Regal Ride absorbed the bumps and a Carter AFB mixed the fuel/air. I guarantee the bodywork was not this nice in 1963.
Joey Logano won the 2015 Daytona 500 with this Penske-chassis Ford Fusion. The 358 cubic-inch Ford put 775 horsepower to the famed Daytona high banks.
The photos above show an unusual Lola T-152, 4-wheel drive Penske car from 1969. It’s plenty potent with 850 horsepower squeezed from the Drake-Offenhauser engine at only 9000 RPM. That big hair drier on the side must have made lots of boost. This car also lugged around 75 gallons of methanol.
There are more cars and engines at the Penske museum but I’m leaving them out so you’ll have to visit the museum to see them all. Penske even built a small racetrack for Mini Coopers behind the museum but that area has been taken over as a parking lot by the dealerships. Land Rover enthusiasts have a couple of artificial hills to practice on but the lady who runs the museum said that they don’t use those hills any more.
I came away from my visit impressed by Penske’s many racing successes. He’s not just a rental truck guy. I’ll go as far as to say if Penske raced at Hialeah Speedway back in the late 1960s he would have probably banged fenders with the best of them and carried many golden trophies somewhere north of Fort Lauderdale. Where the Yankees are from.
The Penske Racing Museum is located at 7125 E Chauncey Lane in Phoenix, Arizona.
People collect for different reasons. Some are completists…they collect to own every variation of an item ever made. Others have a theme…something guides their collecting and they can’t rest until they have acquired items that show all aspects of that theme. Still others are brand loyalists…they want everything associated with a particular marque. Others collect to rekindle memories…items in their collections bring back better times. And people collect different things. All kinds of things.
As I surveyed the expansive and overwhelming contents of Bill’s Old Bike Barn, I wondered: What made Bill tick? What fueled his desire to collect? I asked the question and Bill answered it, but I’ll wait until the end of this blog to share the answer. Hold that thought and we’ll return to it.
When I knew we were going to Pennsylvania and my wife Susie Googled motorcycle museums…well, silly me. I thought we would find a motorcycle museum if I was lucky and it might make a worthy topic for a blog or two. Maybe an article in a motorcycle magazine. Susie gets the credit for finding Bill’s Old Bike Barn. I didn’t realize we had hit the Mother Lode. We had stumbled into a more advanced collection than we had ever seen.
No, wait: I need to restate that. It would be unfair to call what I found in Bill’s Old Bike Barn a collection. I realized when assembling this story that what Bill created is not a mere collection. It is, instead, a collection of collections. Bill’s Old Bike Barn might have started as a motorcycle collection, but it goes beyond that.
Way beyond.
Anybody can collect and display motorcycles. Well, not anybody, but you get the point. In the course of curating a collection, advanced collectors, the guys who go exponential and become collectors of collections, amass collections of all kinds of things. Then the question becomes: How do you display your collections? What’s the right format?
Bill had the answer to that, too.
Billville.
Hey, if your name is Bill, and you have a collection of collections, why not start your own town, and display each collection in different stores and businesses and government offices, all in a magical place called Billville. You see, if you have your own town, you will also have streets on which these shops are located. And you can park different cool motorcycles on the streets in front of the shops. The Billville concept solves several challenges simultaneously. The streets let you display the motorcycles and the shops. People see the shops and what’s in them and they want to add to the collection, so they bring in and contribute more things you can exhibit. The shops grow and the town of Billville thrives. Sense a pattern here?
Bill, at home on the streets of Billville.One of many streets in Billville. The streets in Billville are lined with something even better than gold: Vintage motorcycles and Bill’s collection of collections. Bill’s collections are hypnotic in their appeal.
Being a world-renown blogger and motojournalist, I had the grand tour of Billville, led by Bill himself. Bill led, I followed, and my jaw dropped with each turn and every stop in Billville. Billville. I get it. It’s brilliant.
The Billville camera shop. Nothing is for sale, much is on display, and the inventory exceeds 6,000 pieces.
We started in front of the Billville camera shop. I had my Nikon D810 along for the shots you see here. I’ve been a photography enthusiast all my life. I asked Bill if he was into photography, too, when he mentioned the camera shop. “Nah, I just had a few cameras on display. Folks see that and they come back a week later with a bag of old cameras. There’s more than 6,000 cameras in the collection now.”
There’s a very cool Norton parked in front of the Billville Camera Shop. The bike behind it is a Velocette. Per capita motorcycle ownership in Billville is off the charts. Billville is huge, the streets are long, the shops are amazing, and the collections are dreamlike. Pick a collectible item, and there’s a Billville shop housing a collection for it. Into Coca-Cola memorabilia?
An Aermacchi Harley and Harley’s attempt to penetrate the scooter market, the Topper, parked in front of the Billville Coca-Cola shop.
You can’t have a town without a police department, and police paraphernalia are collectible. Billville has its own PD, with a police stuff collection.
The Billville PD and its neighbor…a shop with walls constructed entirely of collectible beer cans.Every police officer who wanders through the Billville PD probably leaves a department patch.The Billville PD has, as you might imagine, its own contingent of motor officers.
Bill told a funny story about visiting firemen. After seeing the collections, they asked Bill if Billville had a fire department. When they asked the question, Billville did not. So the visiting fireman offered to donate their vintage fire engine if Bill would build the Billville Fire Department around it.
A vintage Mack fire engine. A local fire department donated it.
“Then I had to make a fire bike,” Bill said. After all, this is a motorcycle museum.
Bill and his personally-crafted fire bike. This is cool stuff.
Bicycles? You bet. Billville has an interesting collection. Check out the badging on the one shown in these photos.
Want to guess who made this bicycle?Check out the chainring. HD. Cool.Harley-Davidson. I had never seen one of these before visiting Bill’s Old Bike Barn.My Nikon was earning its keep during my visit to Bill’s Old Bike Barn. If you make the trip, don’t forget your camera.
Some people collect toys. Bill is one of them. What would a town be without a toy store?
Another place to display one of Bill’s collections. That’s a cool two-stroke Harley parked on the street in front of it.
Billville has a post office and a restaurant. Take a look at the ornamental wrought iron surrounding the restaurant. Bill told me he purchased huge quantities of wrought iron when he was buying up motorcycle dealer inventories in Europe.
The Billville post office is on the left; the restaurant is on the right.A vintage bike in front of the finest dining in Billville.
Are you into Avon collectables? Billville has you covered there, too.
A 1970s Harley two-stroke and a vintage CL Honda Scrambler. Bill’s collections are extensive and varied.
There are several spiral cases throughout Billville. I thought they were purely decorative. But there seemed to be more to see upstairs, so I climbed one. My reward was more collections. How about phones? Yep, those, too.
Some of the phones in the Bill’s Old Bike Barn phone collection……and more phones.
Bill told me again about people bringing things to him. Matchbox cars? Why not?
Matchbox cars line a wall. There’s something for everyone here. Dads, moms, and kids.
Into horse collectibles? You bet.
Horsepower. Lots of it.
As you might guess, there was an area for Elvisabilia (or should that be Presleyana?).
The King.
If you were wondering, Billville has a dentist’s office, too, complete with vintage dentistry equipment.
Vintage dental stuff. The photo ops in Bill’s Old Bike Barn were endless.
And, of course, Billville includes the motorcycles, motorcycle engines, and everything-associated-with-motorcycles collection. Bill’s collection doesn’t stick to only one marque. You’ll see Harley, Indian, Moto Guzzi, Triumph, Norton, Velocette, Honda, Yamaha, Zündapp, Peugeot, and many, many more motorcycles.
An airbrush painting on one of Bill’s trailers. Check out the vintage Harley and sidecar.Now, check out the actual vintage Harley and sidecar.A vintage Knucklehead in the main hall. Note the spiral staircases on the right. There’s more up there, folks. Lots more.Vintage Indians. Some are left unrestored; others are restored to better-than-new condition.
Bill’s collection is eclectic. The collections themselves are eclectic, and within the collection, the pieces Bill has exhibited vary widely. He’s not just a Harley guy or an Indian guy. He likes anything that’s interesting. You saw the prior blog about Bill’s favorite ride, a Zündapp. Other bikes pepper his collection, including one I always wanted…an early SL350 Honda twin. It’s the color I always wanted, too, and it’s in its 100% original, unrestored condition. I stared at the SL so hard I might have worn away some of its paint.
A stunning and unrestored SL350 Honda.Ah, the mileage on the SL350 Honda…the motorcycle is over half a century old, and it has but 4,000 miles on the clock. Wow.
So, back to that question I posed at the top of this blog: What makes a collector collect? Everyone has their reasons, and like I said at the beginning of this blog, I wanted to know Bill’s. I asked the question. Bill smiled, lowered his gaze, and answered softly. “I like to see peoples’ reactions when they see the collections,” he said. That being the case, I think Bill must have really enjoyed our visit. We sure did.
A sparkadillo. There’s a lot of folk art in Bill’s Old Bike Barn.
Our first blog on Bill’s Old Bike Barn? Hey, here it is:
Another day, another Bill’s Old Bike Barn story. Wandering through the collection (I should say collections, but that’s a topic we’ll cover in the next Bill blog), I had to wonder: With all the absolutely stunning vintage motorcycles in his collection, which is Bill’s favorite? Which is the one he prefers above all others?
So I asked the question. I expected to hear something along the bar-and-shield line, as many of the machines in the barn are drop-dead-gorgeous vintage Harleys. Or maybe an Indian. You know, the V-twin thing. ‘Merica, and all that. Bill served in the US Army and he’s a patriot. Bill’s favorite motorcycle would most likely be a big V-twin from either Springfield or Milwaukee, I thought.
Nope. I was wrong. Think Nuremberg. As in Germany.
Right about now, you’re probably thinking BMW. But you’d be wrong, too. Bill’s personal favorite ride is a 1952 KS601 Zündapp. Take a look:
Bill and his 600cc KS601 1952 Zündapp.
Bill’s answer to my favorite moto question surprised me, both by his selection and his immediate ease in offering it up. “It’s my Zündapp,” he said, leading me over to the bike you see in these photos. “When I bought it, it only had 2,600 kilometers. It’s in original condition and it is the smoothest motorcycle I’ve ever owned.”
Check out the odometer on Bill’s Zündapp!A fuel tank that looks like a fuel tank. Bill’s Zündapp is a classy motorcycle.
A Zündapp!
So, who exactly is Zündapp and what’s their story? Glad you asked.
Zündapp started in 1917 as a bomb company. That’s right. Bombs. Munitions. Things that solve big problems quickly. The Zündapp name comes from combining the German words zünder and apparatebau (igniter and apparatus), which are the two things you need for a munition (the detonator and the secondary, or main, explosive). The detonator gets the explosion started and the secondary explosive does the heavy lifting. In 1919, after World War I ended, Germany was prohibited from things like making bombs (the Treaty of Versailles and all that). Zündapp had a choice: Go out of business or start making something other than bombs. They went with Door No. 2, and Door No. 2 led to motorcycles.
Zündapp first made two-strokes with engines from another manufacturer; they started making their own two-stroke engines in 1924. By the 1933 Berlin Motor Show, Zündapp was making four-stroke boxer twins along with their line of two-stroke machines. The four-strokes were called K models in a nod to their shaft drive (kardan means shaft in German). Just before World War II, Zündapp introduced the KS600 flathead boxer twin, with shaft drive, a pressed steel frame, and four-speed transmission. 1951 saw the introduction of the KS601 (the model you see in today’s blog). It featured a tubular steel frame, telescopic front suspension, and Zündapp’s 592cc overhead valve boxer twin engine. It looks a lot like a BMW motor (I supposed to the Germans, a Harley probably looks a lot like an Indian).
The Zündapp is a very interesting motorcycle. One of the Zündapp’s more interesting features is its interchangeable front and rear wheels (they were designed to allow easy tire rotation). When introduced, the KS601 was Germany’s fastest road bike. The Zündapp KS601 also enjoyed a reputation for excellent reliability. Zündapp built fewer than a thousand KS601 motorcycles through 1958, and what you see in this blog is one of them. Production ended in 1958 when Bosch acquired Zündapp.
I could have spent more time examining Bill’s Zündapp. It has not been restored. It is 100% original. It is one year younger than I am. It’s the first Zündapp KS601 I’ve ever seen. It exudes a magnificent patina, and it does so elegantly. I’m going to guess that wherever Bill rides it, he has the only one. It’s easy to see why it is Bill’s favorite.
Catch up with our earlier Bill’s stories! Bill Morris is the real deal, and Bill’s Old Bike Barn is one of the most interesting motorcycle museums I’ve ever visited. We’re doing on a series on the man and the museum; this is our fourth installment.
Miss our first blog on Bill’s Old Bike Barn? Hey, here it is:
Good buddy Paul is the guy who got me interested in the Uberti Single Action Army and blackpowder Colt replicas, and it’s an interest that I am thoroughly enjoying. We visited recently and Paul showed me one I had seen before that he had recently added a set of custom grips to. This is a Uberti Single Action Army with the black powder frame chambered in .44 Special, and it is a stunning example of Uberti’s work.
Paul purchased a set of synthetic ivory grips that had a large decorative eagles molded into the grip material. The original grips with the eagles didn’t quite make it for Paul, and the fit of the grips to the grip frame was poor. Paul sanded the eagles into oblivion and very carefully recontoured the grips for what is now a perfect fit. There are no gaps and no overhangs anywhere. There’s something about the Colt SAA configuration that just feels right in the hand.
I like this gun. I’m a big fan of the .44 Special cartridge. Paul tells me he shoots a 215-grain bullet he casts himself and it is quite accurate. Like my .45 Colt Uberti, Paul’s gun shoots to point of aim at 50 feet, which is great for a fixed sight handgun.
Paul and I had a good conversation about our shared interest in these old western style sixguns. We’re both about the same age and we grew up in an era when cowboy TV series and western movies dominated the entertainment industry, and that undoubtedly influenced our taste in firearms. It was a good time to be a kid, I think.
Today the ExNotes blog extends the tale of Bill’s Old Bike Barn and our continuing features on this magical mystery museum. I knew as soon as I entered Bill’s that a single blog would be entirely inadequate. Nope, this place is like peeling an onion; each layer reveals another story or three. Today’s feature is on two of Bill’s more interesting vehicles, and it was a tough call…everything in this Pennsylvania pleasure palace is interesting. But for today’s feature, the motorcycle half-tracks get the nod.
Bill with his Moto Guzzi Mulo Meccanico. Bill said riding the Mulo is a bear…there are levers and pedals and other things that require constant attention.
Motorcycle half-tracks? I mean, who’d a thought? They come across as the illegitimate offspring of a motorcycle and a Viagra-fueled armored vehicle. It’s a concept that just seems weird, like the designers were stoned when putting pencil to paper. Maybe it is and maybe they were.
The first of these moto half-tracks is the Kettenkrad. The Nazis created the Kettenkrad koncept at the beginning of World War II and it’s no secret the Übermenschen used a lot of what they called Pervitin (which was actually crystal meth) to stay, you know, amped up. That might explain some of the Kettenkrad’s design.
A Kettenkrad parked under the awning behind Bill’s Old Bike Barn. What were the engineers smoking?
I’d seen Kettenkrads in photos and World War II movies, but I’d never seen one in person until a very recent visit to the Lyon Air Museum (the topic of an ExNotes blog and a recent Motorcycle Classics Destinations piece). And wow, just a few months later, here’s another one.
The other moto half-track, the Moto Guzzi Mulo Meccanico, was new to me (I had never heard of it before my visit to Bill’s). It’s the machine you see in the cover photo above.
Bill has one of each: A Kettenkrad and a Mulo Meccanico. The Guzzi half-track holds a place of honor in Bill’s Guzziland display; the Kettenkrad rotates between museum display duties and residing among several military vehicles parked outside the Museum.
Although both are rare, of the two there are a lot more Kettenkrads. Both vehicles were designed specifically for military applications, but in different eras. The Kettenkrad was a 1939 Nazi project designed and built by NSU Werke AG at Neckarsulm, Germany. Originally designed as a paratrooper support vehicle, NSU built 8345 Kettenkrads (10% were built under license by Stower, another German manufacturer). Production stopped at the end of World War II, and then NSU resumed Kettenkrad manufacturing for agricultural applications through 1948.
The Nazi war machine used Kettenkrads extensively on the Russian front for ferrying supplies and troops. Some also saw duty in western Europe and North Africa. Toward the end of the war (and because of fuel shortages) Kettenkrads became airfield tugs (the Nazis used them to pull their airplanes to the runway; the Luftwaffe pilots only started their aircraft engines when they were ready to take off).
As a mechanical engineer, I always wondered if the Kettenkrad’s motorcycle front end actually steered the thing, or if the vehicle steered by driving the tracks at different speeds (as other tracked vehicles do). Talk about mechanical complexity…the Kettenkrad does both. Up to a point, the steering is via the handlebars and front wheel. Once the handlebars go beyond a certain angle, differential track speed steering kicks in. In really rough terrain, the Nazis removed the front wheel entirely and traveled only on the tracks. The Kettenkrad tops out at 44 mph, it has a 36-horsepower, inline, four-cylinder, water-cooled Opel engine, and it weighs 3,440 pounds (a little more than my Corvette).
Next up: The Moto Guzzi.
Wow, talk about mechanical complexity. Check out the front end: A brake, front-wheel drive gears, shafts, u-joints, single-sided fork, and more. The fender offers enough clearance to allow use of snow chains. I wonder what shop rates were back in the 1960s.
The Moto Guzzi Mulo Meccanico is a real oddity. Not only had I never seen one; I never knew such a thing even existed. There were only 200 ever made, and it all happened in the early 1960s. Built for the Italian Army (its official designation was the Autoveicolo Da Montagna, or mountain vehicle), Bill explained to me it was designed for hauling supplies over Alpine peaks. The Italians wanted something more modern to replace the donkeys they had been using (hence the unofficial name, the Mulo Meccanico).
The Italians have a thing for gated shifters. Before going to paddleshifters, Ferrari used the same approach.
The tracked Goose had a gated hand shifter on the right side of the thing that allowed the rider to select any of six forward speeds or reverse. A speedo is the only instrument; it was the Mulo’s single nod toward simplicity. Everything else was hopelessly complex.
You could run the Mulo Meccanico with or without treads. You could adjust the track (distance between the rear wheels) on the fly. You know, sometimes those Alpine goat trails get narrow.
The mechanical details and specs on the Guzzi half-track are both unusual and impressive, but ultimately, the all-too-common engineering mistake of injecting complexity where none was required doomed the Mulos. And wow, the Italian military had a complex set of requirements. The Mulo had to do everything a real donkey could do and then some. The Italian Army wanted to be able to adjust the rear track on the fly to suit narrow trail conditions, so Moto Guzzi designed that into these bikes. The Army wanted all wheels to be driven. Atsa no problem, the Guzzi guys said. The customer wants tracks, like Il Duce’s buddy had on the Kettenkrad? Si, Guzzi said; tracks could be added to the two rear drive wheels (as you see on Bill’s). A steering wheel will do nicely, they thought. And check out the front fork. It was way ahead of its time: Single-sided, a driven front wheel (the thing can actually climb a vertical surface, as you’ll see in the YouTube video below). It’s not hydraulic drive, either; there are shafts and gears and u-joints buried in all that mechanical complexity.
Moto Guzzi originally planned to use their 500cc single for these vehicles, but it wasn’t powerful enough. So Guzzi engineered a V-twin-powered half-ton half-track that could tow and haul a combined 1,100 pounds. The Mulo weighed about 2,200 pounds and had a top speed of 50 mph. Yee haw!
Patina raised to an exponent. Hey, it’s only original once! The future of Moto Guzzi motorcycles, the transverse V-twin engine, lies buried in amongst all that complexity.
What you see here is a camel designed by a committee (the Italian military-industrial complex tried to mechanically create a donkey). The only lasting things to come out of the effort were the famed Moto Guzzi transverse V-twin engine and a good story (that would be this one). The resulting mechanical camel intended to replace the mule died a quick and merciful death, but the engine went on in several iterations to power all subsequent Moto Guzzi motorcycles. Modern versions of the Mandello Del Lario motor power Moto Guzzis today, and the guys who ride Moto Guzzis (like my good buddy Dan) absolutely love them. I always wanted a Guzzi, but it’s an itch I haven’t scratched. Yet.
The Italian Army originally ordered 500 Mulos with deliveries starting in 1961. But the Guzzi’s complexity ran smack into that age-old engineering axiom (KISS, or Keep It Simple, Signore). The Moto Guzzi Mulo Meccanico was just too complicated, too difficult to operate, and too dangerous. The real donkeys could get through those mountain passes just fine and the Mulos could not. In 1963 production stopped after only 200 units. The Army literally went back to donkeys. The real ones.
Hee haw.
One more thing I thought you might enjoy: I found a couple of YouTube videos showing both moto half-tracks, the Kettenkrad and the Mulo Meccanico, in action. The folks in the videos seem to be having fun.
Bill Morris is the real deal, and Bill’s Old Bike Barn is one of the most interesting motorcycle museums I’ve ever visited. We’re doing on a series on the man and the museum, and this is our third installment in that series. You can see the first two below.
Miss our first installment on Bill’s Old Bike Barn? Hey, here it is:
My grandparents on my mother’s side owned a cabin in Cashiers, North Carolina. Built on the side of a steep hill you had to hand carry everything up to the cabin. Maybe if we had a 4-wheel drive we could have made it to the cabin, but my grandparents owned a Volkswagen van. The VW would start spinning its wheels halfway up. Mr. Price, who also lived in Cashiers, built the cabin. It was a slow process as The Grands paid as they went, never going into debt for the place. Mr. Price was easy going and worked on the place whenever he was sent money.
After about ten years of walking to the cabin my Grandfather, Grandmother, Billy Mac and me poured a concrete driveway to the cabin. It was about ten feet wide. The concrete trucks couldn’t make it all the way to the top so we manhandled buckets and buggies to pour that section. Further down we could just dump it out of the truck into the forms.
The job was easier than it sounds because we only had to strike off the top and finish the edges. The driveway had a concave shape to funnel water down the middle like a big sluice. We left the driveway as poured to provide a high traction, rough surface. At intervals we troweled an expansion groove. All in, the driveway was probably 300 feet long. After the driveway was built a car could make it to the cabin and it was real luxury not having to carry stuff up the steep, muddy driveway.
The road to the cabin was dirt, winding past two small lakes that were full of fish. Several roads split off the main road and at the last split before Gran & Gramp’s cabin there was a house with a purple-pink, GT750 Suzuki parked out front. The GT had three, flat black expansion chambers fighting for position underneath the crankcase.
I had read about the Suzuki triple cylinder in Popular Mechanics magazine but this was the first time I saw one in real life. Popular Mechanics did a road test on the bike and loved the big Suzuki. It got fairly good fuel mileage and Suzuki’s complex CCI oiling system was stingy with the injector oil. The Suzuki 750 was regarded as a touring bike, not at all like Kawasaki’s mad, mad three-cylinder H2 750.
The air in the mountain valleys carried sound in mysterious ways and when the owner of the Suzuki started the bike those expansion chambers cackled in on me from all directions at once. Was he above me, below me? Heading away or towards me? It was surround sound of the very best kind. I had a Honda Mini Trail and would ride over to the Suzuki house just to look at the bike. Polished aluminum cases, a color-coordinated radiator, big tachometer and speedo with a water temperature gauge: it didn’t seem like a touring bike to me. It seemed like something from another planet.
In the USA GT750s haven’t reached silly H2 prices yet. Their slightly boring reputation keeps the price low-ish. The engines last quite a long time and a GT750 turning 50,000 miles without a rebuild would not be unusual. A quick Google search brings up runners from $3500 to $8000 and that’s not bad compared to the overly complex modern stuff we are faced with at the local Mega Brand Dealer.
Probably the later GT750s are better motorcycles than the early ones. Suzuki improved the front brake and bumped up the power slightly towards the end of production. The first GTs had a Buck Rodgers look that you either loved or hated. I loved it. Really, I’d be fine with any year. The double-sided, twin leading shoe front brake on the first one was a thing of beauty and I’m guessing stopped good enough.
Of all the three-cylinder Suzukis I think the 750 is best. The 380 was a dog, the 550 was almost unnoticeable on the bike scene in those days. The big, water-cooled GT 750 made a huge splash (ha) and still ranks as one of my one-day, must-have dream motorcycles.
The Suzuki GT 750 is a sensible classic that you can ride everyday and cross the country on if the mood hits you. That’s not why I want one. I want one because of the sound it made in the mountains of North Carolina. I can hear it as I type this sentence, a cross between the whining of a tornado and the keys of a mechanical typewriter slapping onto the page.
Paso Robles’ Estrella Warbird Museum is way more than just warbirds. There are military vehicles, a munitions display, classic cars, race cars, vintage motorcycles, small arms, and more. And then it’s in Paso Robles, a worthy destination all on its own. We’ll touch on each of these in this blog.
First, the warbirds. There are a bunch on display, and there are two I feel most connected with personally…one is the F4 Phantom, and the other is the F-16 Air Combat Fighter.
That’s an F4 at the top of this blog. It’s what the USAF was flying when I was stationed at Kunsan AFB back in the mid-1970s, and it is an impressive airplane. I was on a HAWK air defense site just off Kunsan, high up on a mountain top overlooking Kunsan. We could pick up the F4s as they started their takeoff roll on Kunsan’s runway. When our high-powered illuminators locked on, the pilots knew it in the cockpit. They’d take off on full afterburner (a sensory and sensual delight for anyone who witnessed it), execute a quick 180, and then fly directly at my missile site coming in at just under Mach 1 below the top of our mountain. They were trying to break the lock my scope dopes had on them. Then, at the last minute, they’d climb just enough to clear the tops of the HIPIR’s Mickey Mouse ears. The radars would flip around 180 degrees in two axes with such force that one side of the radar’s support legs would clear the ground by 6 inches. Ah, those were grand and glorious days. At night, in the Kunsan AFB Officers Club, the Air Force jet jocks would ask me about the radars. My answer was always the same: Sorry, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. They’d laugh. They thought I was joking.
When I left the Army, my first job was on General Dynamic’s F-16 engineering team, and just about every defense industry job I’ve had since was somehow associated with something on that airplane. Munitions, 20mm Gatlings, fuel tanks, aerial refueling systems, ejection seats…it all seemed to come back to the F-16. I loved being around that airplane.
Well, okay…maybe one more airplane, and that’s the F-86. Yeah, it’s been obsolete for decades. But when I was at Kunsan AFB in the mid-1970s, the ROK Air Force (as in Republic of Korea) still flew the F-86. It’s a svelte little bit of a fighter, and it was on display at the Estrella Warbirds Museum.
As soon as you enter the Estrella Museum, there’s a small arms display. Hey, I love that sort of thing, and this display grabbed my attention.
I caught something the Estrella curators missed. See those red arrows in the photo above? That rifle was labeled as a Mosin-Nagant. I know my Mosins, and this wasn’t one of them. It was maybe a Mauser, but most definitely not a Mosin. I told one of the docents. She thanked me, but I don’t think she understood what I was telling her.
The Estrella Museum had a munitions display, too. It was cool. I like bombs and bullets. And mines. A mine is a terrible thing to waste, you know.
The Museum also houses the Woodland Automobile Display, which includes classic cars and race cars with an emphasis on dirt track oval racers. The collection was extensive, interesting, and photogenic.
There were military vehicles and motorcycles, too. I’ll get to those in a second, but first, take a look at this. How about a water-cooled Harley Knucklehead engine used in midget racing? That’s what you see in the photo below.
The engine you see above is a Drake-modified Harley V-twin, and it was way ahead of its time. The Drake/Harley was called a “popper” because it vibrated so much. These engines produced close to 100 horsepower, and that was way back in the 1940s. 100 horsepower. Water cooled. Harley, how could you have ignored this back then?
The Estrella Warbird Museum also has a few interesting military motorcycles, including a World War II US Army WL Harley, an M20 BSA single (used by the British in World War II), and real oddity…a 98cc World War II Welbike used by British paratroopers.
For me, a big part of the Estrella Warbirds Museum was its location. I love the Paso Robles area. Getting there is easy. If you’re coming from the North, pick up the El Camino Real (Highway 101) south. If you’re coming from the south, it’s the 101 north. Take California State Route 46 east, Airport Road north, and watch for the signs.
The best kept secrets in this area? The obvious ones are not secrets at all: The riding in and around San Luis Obispo County is awesome. Paso Robles is a wine producing region, and there are plenty of vineyards. You can ride west on State Route 46 to get to the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the premier motorcycle roads in the world (it intersects the PCH near Cambria and Hearst Castle; both are worthy destinations). For a world-class dinner, ride just a few miles south to McPhee’s Grill in Templeton (make reservations, though…you won’t get in without a reservation). There are great missions all along the 101 attesting to the region’s early Spanish influence (they followed the El Camino Real in developing the missions, you know), including the nearby San Luis Obispo and San Miguel Missions. Paso Robles is a California destination, and the riding is good year round. If you’re going in the winter months, dress accordingly. If you’re riding in the summer, stay hydrated.
Never miss an ExNotes blog. Sign up here for free!
