The ExhaustNotes Blog

ExNotes Long Term Product Review: Sears Craftsman Air Compressor

Here at ExhaustNotes.us we take the time to give you real world, long term results in our product tests. Anyone can test a thing for a few months or a year but does that really give you an idea how the product will be working in 5 years? How about 10 years? How about 50 years?

I bought this Sears Craftsman air compressor back in the 1970s. I forget the exact year but I remember it cost a fortune. I think I got it on sale for around 200 dollars and it was the most expensive tool I had ever bought up to that time. It must have cost several week’s wages. It used to have a beige plastic cover over the motor and pump but that oxidized and turned to dust after 20 years or so.

The Sears compressor came complete with a spray gun. It was kind of a rinky-dink gun so I bought a Binks 18. I wanted to be a car painter and to paint cars you had to have a Binks Model 18. The Model 18 was pro-level equipment and I figured that if I had one I could paint like a pro. The 18 also cost a fortune in 1970 money and it weighs a ton. The Sears gun is quite a bit lighter. Weight matters when you’re leaning over a hood or roof trying to hold the hose out of the way and not drip sweat onto the car.

I found out too late that much like camera gear being the least important part of photography, the spray gun is the least important part of painting. I learned surface prep, dust control and a steady hand count for much more. One day I tried the Sears gun just for fun and it laid down a wide, even pattern; it was better than the Binks 18. The damn thing worked great and was easier to clean.

The years had not been kind to the pressure gauges on the Sears compressor. The old dials lost their clear lenses at some point and the faces rusted and turned black. It was sacrilege but I replaced them with a set from Harbor Freight. The old gauges had a cool Sears logo on them but time waits for no manifold.

I rewired the original 40-year-old compressor motor to run off 240 volts rather than 120 volts. It starts better with less droop on my off-grid shed. In the past I tried to run the compressor with a square-wave inverter and it started smoking. It seems to have recovered from that trauma and the motor only gets warm running on my new inverter.

One problem that cropped up several years ago was the easy-start pressure relief valve leaking all the time making the compressor cycle on and off more frequently. I dismantled the valve and cleaned it out. It seems to be okay now with just one quick puff of air escaping when the tank reaches pressure. I’ve set the max pressure to 80 psi just to give the old girl a little rest in her dotage. I don’t need 100 psi for anything and I’m not in a rush to get things done.

When I bought the compressor new I hated the cheap, plastic wheels. I was sure they would not last long and planned to go with some steel, ball-bearing replacements. That never happened because the wheels never broke. This rig has been hauled around boat yards, over gravel and rocks, and loaded into and out of trucks. The thing must have 20 miles on it by now.

I added a water trap and filter to the compressor, the kind with the auto drain valve. That valve saw a lot of use in humid Florida but out west in New Mexico it has yet to dump water. The hose was looking bad after 50 years so I replaced it with a snazzy red one because red is the fastest color.

The quick release air chucks were showing their age so I screwed new ones into place in a strictly prophylactic move. I like to keep my gear in top shape, you know?

The recent service I’ve given the compressor (tighten belt, clean air filter, change oil) should be good for another 10 years at the pace I work now. I give the old Sears compressor high marks, 5 stars even. The Craftsman spray gun is a good piece of gear also; I’ve painted a few cars with it. Too bad Sears no longer sells this model and hasn’t for a long, long time. Is Sears even in business? That’s one of the big problems with an ExhaustNotes.us long term review: by the time we’re done testing the product the product no longer exists nor does the company that sold it. No matter, watch for our big 20-rotary-phone comparo test in a future ExhaustNotes.us.

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Later, Gator

I had a tough time choosing a title for this blog. I went with what you see above because it reminds me of one of my favorite Dad jokes…you know, the one about how you tell the difference between a crocodile and an alligator. If you don’t see it for a while, it’s a crocodile. If you see it later, well, then it’s a gator. The other choice might have been the old United Negro College Fund pitch: A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste. But if I went with that one I might be called a racist, which seems to be the default response these days anytime anyone disagrees with me about anything.

Gresh likes hearing my war stories. Not combat stories, but stories about the defense industry. I never thought they were all that interesting, but Gresh is easily entertained and he’s a good traveling buddy, so I indulge him on occasion. Real war stories…you know how you can tell them from fairy tales? A fairy tale starts out with “once upon a time.” A war story starts out with “this is no shit, you guys…”

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So, this is a “no shit” story. It sounds incredible, but it’s all true. I was an engineer at Aerojet Ordnance, and I made my bones analyzing cluster bomb failures. They tell me I’m pretty good at it (I wrote a book about failure analysis, I still teach industry and gubmint guys how to analyze complex systems failures, and I sometimes work as an expert witness in this area). It pays the rent and then some.

So this deal was on the Gator mine system, which was a real camel (you know, a horse designed by a committee). The Gator mine system was a Tri-Service program (three services…the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force). It was officially known as the CBU-89/B cluster munition (CBU stands for Cluster Bomb Unit). The way it worked is instead of having to go out and place the mines manually, an airplane could fly in and drop a couple of these things, the bombs would open on the way down and dispense their mines (each cluster bomb contained 94 mines), the mines would arm, and voila, you had a minefield. Just like that.

It sounds cool, but the Gator was a 20-year-old turkey that couldn’t pass the first article test (you had to build two complete systems and the Air Force would drop them…if the mines worked at a satisfactory level, you could start production). The UNCF slogan notwithstanding, the folks who had tried to take this Tri-Service camel and build it to the government’s design wasted a lot of mines. In 20 years, several defense contractors had taken Gator production contracts, and every one of them failed the first article flight test. When my boss’s boss decided we would bid it at Aerojet, I knew two things: We, too, would fail the first article flight test, and it would end up in my lap. I was right on both counts. We built the flight test units per the government design and just like every one else, we failed with a disappointing 50% mine function rate. And I got the call to investigate why.

So, let’s back up a couple of centuries. You know, we in the US get a lot of credit for pioneering mass production. Rightly so, I think, but most folks are ignorant about what made it possible. Nope, it wasn’t Henry Ford and his Model T assembly line. It was something far more subtle, and that’s the concept of parts interchangeability. Until parts interchangeability came along (which happened about a hundred years before old Henry did his thing), you couldn’t mass produce anything. And to make parts interchangeable, you had to have two numbers for every part dimension: The nominal dimension, and a tolerance around that dimension. When we say we have a 19-inch wheel, for example, that’s the nominal dimension. There’s also a ± tolerance (that’s read plus or minus) associated with that 19-inch dimension. If the wheel diameter tolerance was ±0.005 inches, the wheel might be anywhere from 18.995 to 19.005 inches. Some tolerances are a simple ± number, others are a + something and a – something if the tolerance band is not uniform (like you see in the drawing below). But everything has a tolerance because you can’t always make parts exactly to the nominal dimension.

Where companies get sloppy is they do a lousy job assigning tolerances to nominal dimensions, and they do an even worse job analyzing the effects of the tolerances when parts are built at the tolerance extremes. Analyzing these effects is called tolerance analysis. Surprisingly, most engineering schools don’t teach it, and perhaps not so surprisingly, most companies don’t do it. All this has been a very good thing for me, because I get to make a lot of money analyzing the failures this kind of engineering negligence causes. In fact, the cover photo on my failure analysis book is an x-ray of an aircraft emergency egress system that failed because of negligent tolerancing (which killed two Navy pilots when their aircraft caught fire).

I don’t think people consciously think about this and decide they don’t need to do tolerance analysis. I think they don’t do it because it is expensive and in many cases their engineers do not have the necessary skills. At least, they don’t do it initially. In production, when they have failures some companies are smart enough to return to the tolerancing issue. That’s when they do the tolerance analysis they should have done during the design phase, and they find they have tolerance accumulations that can cause a problem.

Anyway, back to the Gator mine system. The Gator system had a dispenser (a canister) designed by the Air Force, the mines were designed by the Army, and the system had an interface kit designed by the Navy. Why they did it this way, I have no idea. It was about as dumb an approach for a development program as I have ever seen. Your tax dollars at work, I guess.

The Navy’s Gator interface kit positioned the mines within the dispenser and sent an electronic pulse from the dispenser to the mines when it was time to start the mine arming sequence. This signal went from coils in the interface kit to matching coils in each mine (there was no direct connection; the electric pulse passed from the interface kit coils to the mine coils). You can see these coils in the photo below (they are the copper things).

In our first article flight test at Eglin Air Force Base, only about 50% of the mines worked. That was weird, because when we tested the mines one at a time, they always worked. I had a pretty good feeling that the mines weren’t getting the arming signal. The Army liked that concept a lot (they had design responsibility for the mines), but the Air Force and the Navy were eyeing me the way a chicken might view Colonel Sanders.

I started asking questions about the tolerancing in the Navy’s part of the design, because I thought if the coils were not centered directly adjacent to the matching coils in each mine, the arming signal wouldn’t make it to the mine. The Navy, you see, had the responsibility for the stuffing that held the mines in place and for the coils that brought the arming signal to the mines.

At a big meeting with the engineering high rollers from all three services, I floated this idea of coil misalignment due to tolerance accumulation. The Navy guy basically went berserk and told me it could never happen. His reaction was so extreme I knew I had to be on to something (in a Shakespearian methinks the lady doth protest too much sort of way). At this point, both the Army and Air Force guys were smiling. The Navy guy was staring daggers at me. You could almost see smoke coming out his ears. He was a worm, I was the hook, and we were going fishing. And we both knew it.

I asked the Navy engineer directly how much misalignment would prevent signal transmission, he kept telling me it couldn’t happen, and I kept pressing for a number: How much coil misalignment would it take? Finally, the Navy dude told me there would have to be at least a quarter of an inch misalignment between the Navy coils and those in the mine. I don’t think he really knew, but he was throwing out a number to make it look like he did. At that point, I was pretty sure I had him. I looked at my engineering design manager and he left the room. Why? To do a tolerance analysis, of course. Ten minutes later he was back with the numbers that showed the Navy’s interface kit tolerances could allow way more than a quarter inch of misalignment.

When I shared that with the guys in our Tri-Service camel committee, the Navy guy visibly deflated. His 20-year secret was out. The Army and the Air Force loved it (they both hated the Navy, and they really hated the Navy engineer).

We tightened the tolerances in our production and built two more cluster bombs. I was at the load plant to oversee the load, assemble, and pack operation, and when we flight tested my two cluster bombs with live drops from an F-16 we had a 100% mine function rate (which had never been achieved before). That allowed us to go into production and we made a ton of money on the Gator program. I’m guessing that Navy weasel still hates me.

It’s hard to believe this kind of stuff goes on, but it does. I’ve got lots of stories with similar tolerance-induced recurring failures, and maybe I’ll share another one or two here at some point. Ask me about the Apache main rotor blade failures sometime…that’s another good one.

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Pandas!

That Seiko watch you see on the right, known informally as “The Panda” in watch collector circles, is perhaps the best watch I’ve ever owned. I bought it at the Kunsan AFB Base Exchange when I was a young Army dude in 1975 for the princely sum of $76, which was a bit of a stretch for me. Oh, I had the bucks. The Army didn’t pay us much, but we didn’t have expenses, either, so $76 was eminently doable. In fact, I bought Seiko stainless steel chronographs from the Base Exchange for my Dad and my grandfather, too. Their watches were only $67, but the Panda had the day and the date on the face, and three timing features: Seconds on the main watch face, minutes on the lower subdial, and hours on the upper subdial. It was a beautiful thing and it was all mechanical. I wore it for about 10 years, and then when Ebay started to get popular I auctioned it away. I was quite pleased with the results. The watch that originally set me back $76 went for just north of $200 on Ebay 30 years ago. Today, though, that same watch brings around $2000. I sold too soon. Go figure.

Anyway, being the watch junkie that I am, I was more than a little intrigued by a very similar watch now being offered by Breitling. It is also an all mechanical watch Breitling calls the “Premier.”

I’d call it a Panda, and I’d sure like to own one. But the Breitling MSRP is a lofty $8500. They are just over $6,000 on Amazon, but that’s still way above my pay grade.

In poking around on the Internet looking at the Breitlings, I learned that they offer several versions of their Premier. One is a model that pays tribute to the Norton motorcycle, which has different colors, old school numbers on the face, and a band that, frankly, looks cheap to me. The colors don’t really work for me, either, but maybe that’s because I want my Panda to look like a panda. If I wanted a Norton motorcycle, I’d buy a Norton.

Seiko is back on the Panda wagon, too, as is Citizen and perhaps others with modern versions of this classic watch design. Their prices are way more reasonable, too, being in the $200 to $300 range. But the new Seiko and Citizen Pandas are solar-powered quartz watches.

There’s nothing wrong with electric watches (in fact, their accuracy is astounding), but I’m a mechanical guy. I own a few solar watches and several battery-powered watches. I like them all. But there’s a certain cachet (a fancy word for cool) associated with a mechanical watch, even if you give up a little accuracy. I would like to wear that Breitling just to pretend I’m still a yuppie, but it’s not gonna happen.

ExhaustNotes Review: Harley-Davidson Sportster LC

I’ve typed a lot of words and rearranged them in a zillion different ways but I’ve never coined a phrase. Those days are over now and you heard it here first: The Sportster LC. It’s all mine and don’t forget who came up with it because I may never do another.

Harley’s quantum leap forward takes the Sportster from 1950s technology all the way into the 1990s and beyond. The new Sportster features fuel injection, liquid cooling, a claimed 120 horsepower and a passing resemblance to Sportsters of old. That’s all good stuff, man.

I’ve always liked Sportsters. Until the V-Rod came along they were the most advanced American-built Harleys you could buy and with the addition of electronic ignition they were the most reliable Harleys to boot. I owned a Sportster and loved how it looked parked, which it did a lot because the old 1968 XLH shook itself to pieces every 200 miles. Nevertheless it was an easy motorcycle to fix and my old Sporty never left me stranded.

The Sportster LC is a completely new model that has been the worst kept secret since the Pan American, which uses the same engine. With a bore of 4.13 inches and a shortish stroke of only 2.85 inches the new two-cylinder Sportster displaces 76.4 cubic inches in total, or ½ a bushel. We never converted to metric in the USA. Each head contains two cams pushing on four valves. With a 12:1 compression ratio you’ll be running high-test unless you’re under 50 years old in which case you’ll be stuck using premium. Harley’s combustion chambers have forced owners to buy high-test for years so nothing has changed except the power output. None of these design features is new thinking: it’s a well-trod path to modern performance numbers.

Harley claims 120 horsepower; that’s probably measured at the wrist pin so I expect 105-108-ish at the wheel, plenty for street riding. The Sportster LC puts out a claimed 94 ft-lbs of torque so taking off from a stoplight should be drama free. A claimed wet weight of 502 pounds is positively sprightly and undercuts the base model Pan American by 32 pounds. 32 pounds is a lot of weight. I’ve ridden 500-pound motorcycles in the dirt and it’s the absolute limit I would consider safe. The LC should be fun on graded county roads.

Styling on the LC is squashed and compact, almost like the bike fell into a car crusher but was retrieved before becoming a cube. There are no air gaps and the big, fat tires on both ends give the LC an overstuffed living room couch look. I’m not sold on the looks but it’s passable even if it seems to copy the Indian Scout. There are only so many ways to configure a crushed V-twin so the plagiarism is probably unintended. I like the upswept pipes, they give the LC a flat-track racer vibe and that’s a good vibe to have.

Things get a little nasty on the left side of the LC. Without the big upswept exhaust covering the mess all the complexity of a modern motorcycle is exposed. Let’s face it: The thing looks like a commercial air conditioning system from the left side. Still, I wouldn’t let the LC’s looks stop me from buying one assuming I would ever spend $15,000 on a damn motorcycle.

The looks won’t stop me from buying one but the seat-to-foot peg layout might. I can’t stand forward controls. I get that with the ultra low seat there would be no way to fold your legs tight enough for a more normal foot peg placement. Maybe Harley will come out with a Sportster LC Sport with more suspension, a higher seat and controls situated in such a way that you can ride the bike.

The LC comes with Bluetooth connectivity, cornering rider safety enhancements, ABS, traction control, selectable riding modes and cruise control. All stuff I hate except for cruise control. You may like dick-dogging with that electronic chaff but I’d rather ride a motorcycle than play digital commander. Hopefully pulling a few fuses and a warning light or two will disarm all that junk.

With only one disc stopping 120 horsepower and 650 pounds of bike and lightweight rider I sense the front brake may not be up to the modern standards of the engine and electronics package. I hope I’m wrong. Big fat tires usually make for a ponderous ride, but again, I hope I’m wrong. I seem to be doing a lot of hoping I’m wrong with this Harley Davidson.

What’s it like to ride? How would I know? I never get invited to Harley press junkets so you’ll have to get to one of H-D’s test ride events to find that out. My impression of the bike is that it’s a big improvement over the old Sportster but without the old Sporty’s provenance the LC has a long way to go before it reaches the beloved status the 1957 and up models achieved.

I guess what I liked about the old model was the tactile feel of sitting atop explosions propelling you down the highway. You never forgot you were riding a motorcycle. The Sportster didn’t become a legend by accident. Years of competition, countless race victories, heroic rides, and a fairly solid bottom end crank assembly and gearbox has made the Sportster a motorcycle everyone wants to buy used. I still want a XR1200R Sportster bad and have since I first saw one. Only time will tell if the new Sportster LC will be able to burrow into my heart the same bad-like way.

More ExhaustNotes Reviews, and more ExhaustNotes Dream Bikes await!

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Gardner’s Powder-Coated 185 gr SWCs

Here’s a quick look at some new 185-grain powder-coated semi-wadcutter bullets I received from my good buddy Jim Gardner. I loaded 50 with 5.0 grains of Bullseye in mixed brass to get a feel for how they shot. They did great!

This was a quick look with zero load development; I just used the load that had worked well for me with cast-and-lubed 185-grain semi-wadcutter bullets. The distance was 50 feet.

The two targets on the left were just to get a feel where the load shot, and then I put the remaining 40 rounds through the silhouette target. Interestingly, there was no leading and no blue paint residue in the barrel. I like these Gardner bullets!

More Tales of the Gun, including our favorite loads, are right here!

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Citizen Nighthawk GMT

Another favorite watch and one I highly recommend: The Citizen Nighthawk GMT watch. I bought mine maybe 25 years ago when this model was first offered as an exclusive through Macy’s. Today you can find them for sale through many different outlets (sometimes below $300). One of the best spots is Amazon.

At 43mm it’s a big watch, but unlike a lot of big watches, it wears well on my wrist and doesn’t seem to want to roll around. The Nighthawk has a lot of features, some of which I use on a regular basis and others that I use infrequently. I like them whether I use them or not. Watches are grown-up boy’s toys, and this one answers the mail for me. There’s the standard date display at 3:00, there’s the slide rule (explained in an earlier blog on my first-gen Citizen Blue Angels watch), there’s the GMT feature (more on that in a second), there’s the Eco-Drive engine, and there’s a lume to this thing that just doesn’t quit.

That photo above? I shot it with my iPhone in the dark a night or two ago, and other than cropping, it’s not been tweaked in PhotoShop. The lume really is that bright and legible at night. You can’t read by it, but you almost can. It’s the brightest lume I’ve ever seen on a watch. It’s so bright I sometimes wonder what it might be doing to me. Wearing this watch might be the equivalent of living in Chernobyl for a month.

The GMT feature (GMT stands for Greenwich Mean Time) is one that allows you to simultanously see the time in two time zones. This is one I use when I’m traveling (especially overseas). Unlike other GMT watches, the Citizen’s approach is to offer another hand and a dial printed on the watch face. It’s that half-circle deal you see with red and white lettering on the inner left half of the dial. The way this works is when you are in, say, China, you unscrew the watch stem, click it halfway out, and advance the hour hand so it shows the time in China (it’s usually a 13-hour difference). To see the time back home, you use the that inner half-moon dial and the home watch hand. The home watch hand is the small hand (with a red aircraft on one end and a white aircraft on the other end), and it continues to show the time back in California. You read the p.m. time on the red scale with the red airplane, and the a.m. time on the white scale scale with the white airplane. It’s all very clever.

Citizen has had this watch available in one form or another for a couple of decades now. Mine is the original version, and it’s the one I probably wear most often. The Eco-Drive feature works, and it works well with just about any kind of light. When I’m not wearing this watch, it sits on a shelf in my office, and the artificial light in there is enough to keep it percolating. I set the watch to the time.gov NIST site, and months later, it is still accurate to the second with the official US government time.

The most recent versions of this watch are a black-faced version with an OD green leather band, or an all black version with a black leather band. I saw the OD green version in a Macy’s up north this past week, and it’s a good looking piece.

Here’s the blacked out version.

Citizen’s had a lot of mileage with their Blue Angels themed watches, and that treatment has been applied to their GMT in stainless steel and leather band versions.

The two Blue Angels versions immediately above are not in current production, but they are still available. I like this watch so much I’m tempted to buy the Blue Angels version, too, but that would be excessive even for a watch guy like me.

In general, I prefer a steel band watch to a leather band. I like the look of the leather band better, but leather bands wear out or get dirty within a year or two. Then you can’t always find an exact replacement for the original leather band. I tend to wear a watch 24-7 (including in the shower), so a leather band is not the way I typically go with a watch.

Oh, one other advantage to these watches: I sometimes forget to take my Citizen Nighthawk off going through airport security, and for whatever reason, it doesn’t trigger the metal detector.

More ExNotes product reviews are here. Watches, motorcycles, guns, reloading stuff, movies, books, camping gear, bicycles, and more.

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ExhaustNotes Space Plane Review: Richard Branson’s Unity

About a mile west of New Mexico’s Spaceport is a newly paved road, A013. The road runs south from Armendaris Ranch in Engle to Interstate 25. A013 is about 40 miles long and while the paving is sort of new the road roughly follows The Camino Real, a route from Old Mexico to Santa Fe that has been in use since 1598. There are marked areas where you can hike along the very same ancient road the Spaniards retreated back to Mexico on during the Pueblo Revolt. A013 does not sound nearly as cool as The Camino Real. At 420 years old, The Royal Road deserves something better than A013.

Railroad tracks closely parallel the west side of A013 and in the narrow area between the railroad tracks and the highway hundreds of cars and people have gathered near the blocked entrance that leads to Spaceport. We’re all here to watch the very first space tourism rocket blast into the sky and it’s as close as we can get to the action. Who is the first space tourist on Virgin Galactic? Astronaut 001, Richard Branson.

Spaceport from our vantage point between the railroad tracks and barbed wire. Normally you can get much closer.

In a huge public relations mix up, none of the staff at ExhaustNotes were invited along for the ride into space. It’s like Virgin Galactic has been talking with Harley-Davidson or something. No matter, you know how we operate here at ExhaustNotes: We review anything, even things we know nothing about. There were plenty of other celebrity types in attendance like Elon Musk. Also some music industry, TV and TicToc stars I have never heard of. Lots of vindicated-feeling bigwigs from New Mexico’s government were in attendance as Spaceport has been a political football since Day One.

CT and I situated our Space Watch Compound along the fence line with our cooler full of iced tea and La Croix fizzy drinks, folding chairs, hats and a large, porous ground cloth. We were the most organized people in the scrum. The sky was early-morning New Mexican: A pale blue color that washes away into the bright sun leaving you hopelessly in love with the place. Last night a storm came through the area making everything seem to sparkle. Temperature in the Chihuahuan Desert was in the low 80s and it was still only 7:00 am.

We had fairly good cell phone coverage so CT pulled up the live feed. There were several sources all seeming to use the same video. Oddly, Steven Colbert hosted the launch coverage. I like Colbert okay but I wouldn’t have used him in this situation. It kind of made the event more like a joke instead of the historic, high technology, dangerous business that it actually is. The TicToc chick surprised me in that she did a pretty good job with the fluff pieces. Hell, what am I saying, all of it was fluff pieces.

The nearly two-generation gap between Musk and Branson was obvious when it came to social media. Even with all the advancements in video and audio technology Branson’s feed was poorly done. The video and audio looked pretty bad when you’re used to counting the screw heads holding the display panels to the command module in a SpaceX launch. Most of the stuff was 2 to 3 minutes delayed and unwatchable. The moon landing in 1969 had clearer shots and audio. I swear, my iPhone would have done better. If I had known it was going to be so bad I would have handed my phone to Branson before he went up. Maybe the recorded stuff came out better.

Heavy lifting appears to flex Eve’s wings on the way up.

None of that mattered once Eve lifted off the runway with Unity strapped firmly between its dual fuselages. A loud roar of cheers went up from all of us along the fence line. The big dually flew northwest towards Albuquerque and climbed to 45,000 feet. We could see the exact moment the Unity dropped and lit off its rocket engine. A white contrail of rocket exhaust went straight up and out of sight. On Virgin’s feed TicToc chick was saying they were going to release Unity in 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

More cheering followed Unity’s escape into space. People were shaking hands and whistling. We were glad the launch went well and nobody was bitching about rich people not using their money to feed the poor. Branson was the first billionaire in space and it had been a 17-year quest for him.

Pretty much nothing happened for a while. We expected the mother ship to come down and land but it stayed aloft. I’m guessing with only one runway at Spaceport you wouldn’t want anything landing until the powerless Unity glided back down to earth. The mother ship can go land somewhere else if need be.

Finally we caught sight of Unity coming home. It flew right over our cheap seats, circled east, then north and came in for a perfect landing, heading 340, Runway 1. The sounds of cars starting and cheering mixed with the dust from exiting spectators. I was thinking where are they going? The mother ship is still up there!

Where is it? I kept asking CT. It’s right there, she told me. I can’t see it. I guess my other eye needs a rebuild now. The mother ship spiraled down using the same counterclockwise pattern Unity used. She flew directly overhead, her barren space-socket exposed.

And then it was over. We looked around. There was only one other car still parked between the fence and the railroad. Billions of dollars and nearly two decades of work by thousands of people were on display today. It all worked perfectly. That stuff is amazing to me. Soon you’ll be able to buy your own ride into space for the price of a couple well-appointed diesel pickup trucks. $250,000 is not that much money nowadays.

Branson’s space plane may not go as high as the Space Station but I bet it uses 10% of the fuel a normal rocket launch does. Human beings are pretty impressive when they stop being jerks. Many people get angry at rich people for not saving the world with their money and then when a rich guy tries, like Gates, we suspect them of implanting tracking chips for a reason no one sane can articulate. The thing is, we are so clueless, so in the dark, we can’t guess the real world innovations that will come with space travel.

A man and his dog started packing up. He had one of those 10-foot sunshades. I asked him if he needed a hand folding it up. He said no that it was easy to do. The space show was over. The dust from all the spectator cars settled back to the Chihuahuan Desert. A guy named Kamaz, I think after the Russian Truck company, was giving a concert over at Spaceport for the VIPs. Maybe you’ll be able to find it on video.

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A Favorite 1911

The 1911 is an all time favorite handgun for me (and a lot of other people, too). I’ve owned several 1911s over the last few decades, I carried one in the Army, and I enjoy shooting them. One of the best I’ve ever owned is a bright stainless steel Series 80 Government Model I bought new back in the mid-1980s. Mine has been customized by good buddy TJ (of TJ’s Custom Gunworks) and it’s the one you see here. I have no idea how many rounds I’ve sent downrange with this gun, but it’s been zillions. Maybe even gazillions.

TJ’s Custom 1911 Touches

My bright stainless 1911 has had a number of TJ’s custom touches. The fixed Millet sights are probably the most obvious.

Front and rear Millet sights on my 1911. You’re actually supposed to focus on the front sight and the rear should be blurred when shooting (just the opposite of what you see here). I’ll post more on that in a later blog.

TJ polished and ramped the gun’s internals so it will feed anything, he added a Les Baer match grade barrel, and I had him engine turn the chamber (I love the look).

I like it so much I photographed it twice!

The original Colt front sight wouldn’t stay put on my 1911 (probably because of the number of rounds I was cycling through it), and after having the front sight restaked twice, I knew something more permanent was required. The Millet red ramp from sight has two stakes, they are each larger than the single Colt front sight stake, and TJ JB-welded them from underneath after staking. They are on there for the duration. A lot of folks prefer a dovetailed front sight and that would have worked, too, but I’m partial to these no-longer-made Millets. I just like the look.

The rear sight is a fixed Millet dovetail and it has a bright white outline that works well with the red ramp front. I’m not normally a fan of gimmicky sight doodads like red ramps and white outlines, but these just flat work. They’re quick to acquire and they put the bullets where I want them to go. Millet sights are no longer in production, but they are some of the best ever made and TJ keeps a stash in stock for his customers. I imagine he spends a lot of time on Ebay hunting for these things.

One other thing TJ did on my 1911: He fitted the extractor. It was very rough as delivered from Colt and difficult to remove for cleaning. Now (after TJ’s magic touches) it inserts and removes easily, and extraction is flawless.

1911 Accuracy

Close enough for government work, most folks would say, and maybe that’s so. When I slow down and do my part, I can tear one ragged hole at 50 feet with my 1911, and that’s good enough. If I’m shooting for fun with a bit of speed, it’s not problem to put an entire box of ammo through one big ragged hole with the odd flyer or five like you see up top.

The Millet sights print where I want them to, and I like the simplicity of fixed handgun sights. It’s a good setup.

Getting a Grip

My 1911 didn’t need a trigger job, and TJ recommended not trying to improve the trigger after he felt it. The gun came with the rubber Pachmayr-type wraparound grips from the Colt factory, and I added a Pachmayr rubberized rear grip housing. Those two items (the rubber grips and rear grip housing) are, in my opinion, as good as it gets in the 1911 game. I don’t think that rear grip housing is available any more. I wish I had bought a few extra when Pachmayr was still making them.

Appearance Is Everything

I’m not normally a shiny objects kind of guy, but when I first saw my bright stainless 1911 in that gun store 35 years ago, I knew I had to have it. The gun just looked cool and it’s a conversation starter. It’s easy to pick up minor scratches that I can see before other folks do, but they come right out with a bit of Flitz (a superb stainless steel polish) and a little elbow grease.

My Three Favorite .45 ACP Loads

The target you see at the top of this blog? That’s 50 rounds at 50 feet with one of my favorite loads for this and any other 1911 I’ve ever shot: 5.0 grains of Bullseye under a 185-grain cast semi-wadcutter bullet. I’ve got a couple of other favorite loads, too. One is the 230-grain cast roundnose over 5.6 grains of Unique (that load is 100% reliable in any 1911). Another for target work is 4.2 grains of Bullseye and a 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter. All three loads are as reliable as taxes going up under a Democrat, and they all work with the same recoil spring. In my case, that’s the spring that came with my Colt 1911.

230 grains (in this case, bullets from Xtreme), 5.6 grains of Unique, and good times.

If you’re interested in learning how to reload .45 ammo, here you go:

Reloading Part I
Reloading Part II
Reloading Part III
Reloading Part IV

We have more good stuff on our Tales of the Gun page, and if you enjoyed this piece, you might take a look.

Enfield 650 Valve Adjustment

This blog explains how to adjust the valves on a Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor. This was the first valve adjustment my motorcycle has had, and it occurred at the 500-mile mark. The first valve adjustment is an important one, as decreases in the valve gap will typically be more severe as the engine is breaking in. For the record, though, on my bike’s eight valves only one was slightly tight (and that was one of the intake valves). The other seven were pretty much where they were supposed to be, but I loosened the adjusters and readjusted them just to see if any were difficult to access or if they would give me any problems. Accessibility was superb and the adjustments were all easy to make.

Like most threaded adjuster valve adjustments, 90% of the job is just taking away or loosening the stuff you need to get at the valves (and then putting it all back on the bike). On the Enfield, that’s the right side body panel, the seat, the fuel tank and its connections, an electrical subassembly between the upper frame rails, and the valve cover. The actual valve adjustment only takes a few minutes.

You’ll need several tools for this job. Here’s the list:

- - Feeler gage.
  - 17mm socket.
  - 8mm socket.
  - 10mm socket.
  - Sparkplug socket.
  - 14mm Allen drive.
  - 4mm Allen drive.
  - Ratchet with extensions.
  - 10mm wrench.
  - Flat blade screwdriver.

Because I’m an old fart and a pack rat, I had everything I needed except for the 14mm Allen drive (that was one I had to order on Amazon). Odds are you already have most or all of this stuff already, too. We tend to pick up oddball stuff over the years. If you live on the Tinfiny Ranch, that includes stuff like lathes, concrete mixers, tillers, old MGs, and more. But the only tools you’ll need for adjusting the Enfield 650’s valves are what I listed above.

The other thing we need to do is make sure the engine is completely cool. You can’t ride the motorcycle, shut it off, and then adjust the valves. The engine needs to be cold.

Adjusting the valves sounds way more intimidating than it is. I took a couple of hours to adjust the valves on my Enfield and this was the first time I did it. On subsequent valve adjustments I’m guessing I’ll need less than an hour now that I know my way around the bike. Dealers charge up to $581 for this job, which is kind of a joke when you consider the amount of time it takes (that is, if you think getting ripped off by a dealer is funny). The dealers are counting on you being intimidated. You shouldn’t be. This is not a hard thing to do.

Start by putting your motorcycle on the center stand, as you see in the big photo at the top of this blog. That makes getting to both the left side and the right side of the bike easier.

Use your ignition key to unlock the right side body panel. It pivots out from the bottom and then pulls down, and that will take it off the bike.

Once the right side body panel has been removed, you’ll have access to the seat release (shown by the red arrow). Pull it out and remove the motorcycle seat by sliding the seat to the rear.

The next step is to remove the two 10mm bolts securing the fuel tank to the frame. This job is a lot easier if you run the fuel level down (it makes the tank lighter and easier to handle when you disconnect the two electrical connections and the three hoses underneath the tank). I had mine on E, but there was still a fair amount of fuel in the tank.

Once the two bolts are removed, set them aside (not like you see here; put them someplace where you won’t lose them). The tank will then slide to the rear. Put a shop rag on the frame behind the tank so you won’t scratch anything.

As mentioned above, there are five things that have to be disconnected underneath the fuel tank so that you can remove it from the motorcycle. As seen in the photo below, going counterclockwise from the upper left corner of the photo, these five things are:

- - An electrical connector to the fuel gage (the green connector).
  - A fuel vent line.
  - The fuel pump electrical connector (the yellow, red, and black connector).
  - Another fuel tank vent line.
  - The fuel hose (this is mated with a quick-disconnect fitting that stays on the fuel tank; it has a button you press to allow pulling the fuel hose off).

I show this on the motorcycle side of the equation. It would have been a little tough to get a photo of the bottom of the tank.

Here’s another shot of the fuel hose quick disconnect male end (it stays with the motorcycle).

This is another shot of the fuel level gage electrical connector.

And here’s a photo of one of the fuel vent lines and the fuel pump electrical connector.

After tilting the tank up and disconnecting all five of the connections described above, remove the tank and place it on a cloth to prevent scratching.

At this point, disconnect the sparkplug leads and remove both sparkplugs. We are going to crank the engine by hand, and we don’t want to have to fight the engine’s compression as we do so.

The next step is to remove the three Allen bolts that secure an electrical subassembly between the upper frame rails. We don’t need to remove the subassembly; we just need it to be pushed up so that we can maneuver the valve cover out of the way (which, incidentally, I found to be the hardest part of the valve cover adjustment process). Set the three Allen bolts aside in a secure location.

Next, remove the four 8mm bolts securing the valve cover. Set them aside in a secure location.

Once the four valve cover bolts are out, you can remove the valve cover. It will slide out on the left side of the motorcycle. You’ll probably invent a few cuss words when doing this. The valve cover is a tight fit between the cylinder head and the motorcycle frame’s upper rails (it’s why we loosened that electrical subassembly described above). There’s a complicated and reuseable rubber gasket that seals the valve cover to the cylinder head. Be careful not to nick the gasket when you’re sweet-talking the valve cover off the engine.

Once the valve cover is off the engine, you’ll have access to the valve adjusters. As this is an eight-valve engine, there are four adjusters for each cylinder (two intake and two exhaust valves). The four valves on the right side of the engine are shown below.

And these are the four valves on the left side of the motorcycle.

Here’s where you’ll need that 14mm Allen drive mentioned above. It was the only tool I didn’t already have. It was something like $6 on Amazon, and I now have two of them. Amazon sent me an email a couple of days after I ordered the tool because they felt like they lost one in shipment so they shipped it again, and then two arrived in separate packages on the same day. Don’t tell Amazon. I’m keeping both. Bezos can afford it.

Here’s the access port cover on the left side of the engine.

Remove the access port cover on the left side of the engine with the 14mm Allen drive.

Note that the access port cover is sealed with a rubber o-ring. Don’t lose this part.

If you peek inside the access port, you’ll see a 17mm bolt head. This is where the 17mm socket is used. You can crank the engine by hand (always going counterclockwise, never clockwise) to bring the crank to a position where the valve being adjusted is not being lifted by the cam lobe. This is known as getting the lifter on the cam’s base circle, and that’s what we want when we make the adjustment.

I had a feeler gage from way back tucked away in my tool cabinet. If you don’t have one of these tools, they are available on Amazon. We’ll need the 0.003 inch (or 0.076mm) feeler gage for the intake valve adjustment, and the 0.007 inch (or 0.178mm) feeler gage for the exhaust valve adjustment. The intake valves are the ones on the rear of the engine (closest to the fuel injectors) and the exhaust valves are the ones on the front of the engine (closest to the exhaust headers). I know. Duh.

This valve adjusting business is done by feel with the use of the feeler gage. I guess that’s why they call it a feeler gage. You want to make the adjustment such that after you make it, there’s a slight drag on the gage as you move it back and forth between the valve stem and its actuator (you get the “feel” of this slight drag; hence the “feeler gage” name).

Enfield makes it easy to get the engine rotated to the right spot so that the lifter is on the cam’s base circle with a handy indicator located in the cylinder head. It’s on the engine’s left side as shown in the photo below. The indicator is marked with an L above a scribe line, and an R above a scribe line.

Turn the engine by hand with the 17mm socket (again, always counterclockwise, never clockwise) until the L and its scribe line are aligned with the line on the casting as shown below. We want the L and its scribe line aligned with the corresponding line in the casting when we adjust the valves on the left side of the engine. After we’ve adjusted the valves on the left side, we’ll want to do the same thing to get the R and its scribe line aligned with the line in the casting to adjust the valves on the right side of the engine.

When the crank is appropriately positioned (for the left side of the engine, as shown above), we are now ready to adjust the valves.

The actual valve adjustment is accomplished by loosening the bronze-colored valve stem lock nut with a 10mm wrench, then making the adjustment with a flat bladed screwdriver in the adjuster screw slot, while positioning the appropriate feeler gage blade between the adjuster and the valve stem. This is what controls the gap between the adjuster and the vavle stem. When the gap is what it’s supposed to be, lock the adjuster in place with the locknut. We do this for both intake valves with the 0.003-inch blade, and both exhaust valves with the .007-inch blade.

After we’ve done the left side of the engine, we similarly rotate the crank to align the R index mark and then we adjust the valves on the right side of the engine. The R has to be on the right side of the index plate so it reads right side up.

At this point, I rotate the engine two complete turns by hand and use the feeler gage to check the valve gap again. If it’s not good I redo the above adjustments. This is just a check. For me, it’s always been good.

So, about that valve cover and the complicated seal between it and the cylinder head. Here’s what it looks like from underneath.

Note that the seal is orientation sensitive. It’s got a little half moon in the seal on the left side. As mentioned above, getting the valve cover off was a challenge. Getting it back in place with the seal properly positioned was even more of a challenge. But neither steps were really that bad. The good news is that this was the toughest part of the job, and it wasn’t that tough.

After you finish adjusting the valves, assembly is the reverse of disassembly. There are three cautionary notes:

- - Use a shop rag or two on the motorcycle frame so you don’t scratch the frame or the fuel tank when you reinstall the fuel tank.
  - When you remake the fuel line quick disconnect, make sure you feel it click into position. It’s possible to not fully make the connection, which could result in pressurized fuel being pumped out over your hot engine. That would not be a good thing.
  - When you reinstall the valve cover, make sure the seal between it and the cylinder head is correctly positioned. If it is not, oil will leak from this interface.

So there you have it. For me, that’s $581 (what the closest Enfield dealer charges for a valve adjustment) going in the Baja kitty. Or maybe the reloading components fund. Whatever. It’s not going into the dealer’s pocket, and that’s the point.

Enfield did a nice job engineering these bikes, I think, and they made the valve adjustment process straightforward. It would have really been cool if the valve cover was designed so that it could be removed without taking the body panel, seat, and fuel tank off (like on an old airhead BMW or a Moto Guzzi), but hey, it is what it is, and what it is is way less complicated than most other modern motorcycles. There’s also an argument to be made for hydraulic valves (which never require adjustment), but hydraulic lifters weigh a little more and don’t work well at high rpm.

More on Enfields? Hey, read our series on taking two Enfields (a 650 and a Bullet) through Baja. It’s what prompted me to buy my Enfield!

This idea on online maintenance tutorials was something we started at CSC Motorcycles with the RX3 250cc adventure touring platform introduction. The market received it well and we had a lot of fun assembling the tutorials. CSC was well ahead of the curve on this sort of thing and it is one of the many reasons their bikes have done so well.

ExhaustNotes Product Review: Cooper 2 Lightweight Tent

Camping on a motorcycle has never been near the top of my Fun Things To Do list. Like it or not, it seems I end up camping on a motorcycle more than is needed for strong bones and healthy fingernails. Street bike camping is tolerable because you can pile junk sky high but trail riding with a load of camping gear is a chore. Off-road, small lightweight equipment is the way to go. I’ll never admit it but it’s possible to go too small and too lightweight. My tent is an example of going overboard.

I’ve been using an old-style pup tent, like the Boy Scouts use, and when folded correctly the thing is admirably small. The pup tent reduces to the size of a bag of Batdorf & Bronson coffee and weighs next to nothing.

The problem with the pup is the ceiling height and the square footage. There’s no way to sit up in the thing, you have to crawl in and out. Once you’ve stored all your gear inside finding space for you body is a challenge. If you toss and turn throughout the night like I do your arms will be hitting the walls and roof. It’s a tight squeeze.

Unless you buy brand name equipment camping gear is really cheap, like me. I found a larger tent; the Cooper 2 (no relation to the road racing legend) for $28 on Amazon and shipping was included.

The Cooper 2 is easy to set up as it has only two fiberglass poles crossing in the middle. You fit the ends into the corners of the floor and bowing the poles raises the tent. Nearly 50-inches high at the center and with 49 square feet of floor space the Cooper 2 was huge. I could stuff all my gear inside and still have room for my sleeping bag. I could easily change into my Space Patrol pajamas with the privacy those pajamas demand. You know how it is.

The Cooper 2 is vented at the top, which kept condensation to a minimum. I didn’t get to test it in the rain but I suppose it will do as well as any other 28-dollar tent. I set up my sleeping bag towards the back of the tent and had plenty of room to throw elbows and kick out from under the covers. It was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a tent. Which is to say I woke up cotton-mouthed, fingers bleeding and a dead raccoon next to me.

All that luxury comes at a price, however. Folded up, the Cooper 2 is nearly twice as large as the pup tent and weighs 4 pounds 9 ounces compared to the pup’s 3 pounds 4 ounces. Still, the extra tonnage is worth it to me. I’ll just have to get rid of some other gear to compensate for the Cooper 2 tent, like maybe the handlebars or the front wheel of the Husqvarna.

More ExNotes product reviews are here!