Favorite Baja Hotels: Bahia San Quintin’s The Old Mill

Ah, the Negro Modelo flows freely at the Old Mill Hotel.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I’ll start by simply saying if I’m going to spend the night in Bahia San Quintin, it’s a sure thing it will be at the Old Mill Hotel, another one of my all-time favorite Baja hotels.  In fact, as I write this, I’m thinking it’s worth a Baja ride just to stay at the Old Mill in Bahia San Quintin.  I usually take a full day to get down there, even though the map says you can do it in a little over four hours.  I’ve done that, but then the question is:  Why?    I think it’s best to take things at a more relaxed pace and enjoy the ride south as you enter through either Tiajuana or Tecate (Tecate is a much nicer town and the ride to Ensenada from there is a much nicer ride).

The route south. The last 100 miles or so before reaching San Quintin is an agricultural region. The road becomes much more desolate a few miles south of San Quintin.

San Quintin is a good 200 miles south of the border, near the southern end of the agricultural fields that put much of our produce on the table.  Susie and I once got got in a farm worker labor riot in San Quintin, but that was an isolated incident and all’s cool now.

Bahia San Quintin is the bay on the Pacific Ocean west of the Transpeninsular Highway (that’s Mexico Highway 1, which runs the length of the Baja peninsula).  To get to the Old Mill Hotel, watch for the sign on Highway 1 (it’s the one you see in the big photo above), and turn west toward the Pacific.

A satellite view of Bahia San Quintin.

Once you turn off the Transpeninsular Highway, it’s about a four-mile ride to get to the hotel, and it’s a much better ride than it used to be.  I don’t mind telling you that I used to be completely intimidated by that road (it was a dirt road that was either powder-like soft sand or a mud bath, depending on the weather, and it was hell on a motorcycle), but the road is paved now and it’s a pleasant ride to the bay.

Good buddies Dave and Paul on a ride about 15 years ago, before the road to Bahia San Quintin was paved.

As you approach the end of the road, you’ll see another sign on your left for the Old Mill Hotel.   Make a right turn, ride a hundred yards, and then a left will put you there.  The hotel is sort of shaped like a U, with comfortable rooms on either side of a parking lot that is frequently filled with motorcycles.  As you might guess, the Old Mill is located on the site of what used to be an old mill, and there’s still milling equipment left around the area.  It’s a pretty interesting place.

The Old Mill Hotel parking lot is usually filled with motorcycles. I’ve always been able to get a room there, but it wouldn’t hurt to make reservations with the number at the bottom of this blog.
Sometimes you can park right in front of your room, although security has never been an issue for me at the Old Mill Hotel.

The office is on your left as soon as you enter the hotel area, and they are nice folks.  They usually offer a complimentary beer when you check in (and if they forget to offer, just ask), which usually leads to quite a few more.  It’s a great way to start your visit to a great place.

Lovely Lucy, who provided the beer, worked the hotel office, and served us dinner in the Eucalipto.
Senor Gresh demonstrating the correct method for initiating a visit to the Old Mill Hotel.

If you walk west just past the hotel parking lot, you’ll be standing on the edge of Bahia San Quintin.  It’s a cool area.

At the edge of Bahia San Quintin. One night at the end of a great day, we heard something exhale loudly just off this dock a few feet into the Bay. It was dark; we couldn’t see it. “That is a whale,” good buddy Dave correctly determined. Bahia San Quintin is a fun place.

Motorcycle travel through Baja is not without its risks, the principal one being that you’ll weigh more when you get home than you did when you left.  Nowhere is this more true than in Bahia San Quintin.  When you stay at the Old Mill Hotel, there are three outstanding restaurants just a few feet from your door.  The first is a relatively new one, the Eucalipto, headed by Javier, a world class chef from Mexico City.  The Eucalipto is part of the Old Mill Hotel (it shares a wall with the hotel office).  I’d say it’s one of best in Baja, and it’s open for dinner and for breakfast (handy when you are leaving the next morning).

A fine Eucalipto dinner. Chef Javier will not disappoint.
An amazing Eucalipto stuffed tomato salad.
Dinner in the Eucalipto. Or maybe it was breakfast. Both were excellent.

The Molino Viejo (the Old Mill) is a larger restaurant next to the Old Mill Hotel. It’s has a bar and live entertainment, and widescreen televisions for sports and other events.  The food is outstanding.   Just turn left on the boardwalk at the end of the hotel parking lot.  I’ve had many a fine meal here.

Another awesome restaurant next door to the Old Mill Hotel.

Don Eddie’s is a third dining option.  Turn to your right when you walk to the bay, and it’s right there.  It’s not as hopping as the Eucalipto or the Molin0 Viejo, but the food is absolutely outstanding.

A seafood platter at Don Eddie’s. Like I said above, there’s a serious weight gain risk associated with riding Baja.

Once when I was leading one of the CSC Motorcycles tours and we stayed at the Old Mill, Don Eddie himself told me that if we wanted breakfast there, just let him know how many and he’d have a buffet set up for us the next morning.  I think there were about 15 of us on that ride.  I took the suggestion and it was beyond amazing, with a variety of Mexican breakfast delights and quantities that were astounding.   When it came time to settle up, Don Eddie gave me a number that was embarassingly low.  I doubled it, divided it by the number of guys in our group, and it was still cheap.

The last time I stayed at the Old Mill Hotel I recall it was about $40 for a room.   You can see more at their website (HotelOldMill.com) and the email address is Oldmillbaja@gmail.com

They are reachable by phone at 01 (616) 165-6030, and they have a US number 185-5690-9272.

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British Vertical Twin Wannabees: Royal Enfield vs Triumph vs Kawasaki

I think most motorcycle videos are silly, including the ones I’ve done (and I’ve done a few).  It’s a personal preference…videos (compared to the written word and good photography) dumb down whatever they cover, and I would much rather read a good article with great photos than watch a video.  But on occasion I’ll stumble across a video I enjoy.  I recently encountered a couple that hit home for me.  One compares the Royal Enfield 650 to the Kawasaki W800, and the other compares the Enfield to a Triumph Bonneville.

Back in the day (the 1960s), British vertical twins ruled the roost, and of those the Triumph Bonneville was the king.   My father rode a 1966 Triumph Bonneville, and I’ve owned a number of Triumphs from the ’60s and ’70s.  They were (and still are) awesome motorcycles.  It just makes sense to me that ’60s-era British vertical twins are a platform deserving of the sincerest form of flattery (i.e., copying), and apparently, the modern incarnations from Kawasaki, Royal Enfield, and Triumph do exactly that.  Well, maybe not exactly, but enough to let you imagine you’re Steve McQueen.

These videos are fun to watch.  The narrators are funny as hell and there are some great quotes.  One was, “I’m not even going to try to keep up with you on the way back…you just take care of yourself and watch out for buffalo.”  That quote reminded me of Gresh’s video when he entered a corner a bit too hot on a Harley Sportster and famously said, “It handles pretty well when it’s out of control.”

The video editing and imaging in these two videos are superior (way better, in my opinion, than what you see from the self-proclaimed videomeisters here in the US).   And the tech content is light years ahead of the typical vlogger tripe clogging up our bandwidth.

Enjoy, my friends.

Here’s a fun fact:  All three of these bikes (the Royal Enfield Interceptor, the Kawasaki W800, and the Triumph Bonneville) purport to copy British vertical twins, yet none of these bikes are British.  The Enfield is made in India, the Kawasaki is made in Japan, and the Triumph is made in Thailand.

I ride a Royal Enfield 650.  I like my Enfield, and for the money, the Enfield has to be one of the best buys ever in motorcycling.  Gresh and I already did a road test of the Enfield in Baja, and you can read our reports on it here.  One of these days in the near future I’ll do a road test my current Enfield and tell you what it’s like to own one of these grand machines, but I’ve got another road test I’m going to post first.  That’s on the 250cc CSC RX3, 5 years in.  Good buddy Sergeant Zuo over in Lanzhou has 50,000 miles on his RX3 and it’s still going strong.

I am enjoying my Enfield, and I just found a bunch of Enfield accessories available online through Amazon.  I’ll poke around on there a bit later today.

Stay tuned, folks.  More good stuff is coming your way.

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Book and Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

I met Charlie Wilson a couple of times when I was an engineer in the munitions business, so Charlie Wilson’s War had a special attraction for me when it was first published.  Charlie Wilson was a US Congressman from Texas, and to say he was larger than life would be a huge understatement.  Tall, good-looking, a booming voice, a warm personality, and his trademark navy blue suits, white shirts, and suspenders made Mr. Wilson both awe-inspiring and approachable.  Larger than life, as I’ve already said.  Charlie Wilson was someone who was instantly likeable. I’ve never met anyone like him.

We made ammunition, mines, and cluster bombs in those days, and in the 1980s our business was (if you’ll pardon the pun) booming.  My specialties were cluster bombs and mines; we had a sister division that designed and manufactured 30mm A-10 and 25mm Bushmaster ammo.   Congressman Wilson’s interest in us was in the ammo side of the business, and as a relatively high-rolling young dude I was able to attend the meetings when he was in town.  Charlie’s efforts were focused on arming the Afghan rebels trying to kick the Russians out of Afghanistan and back to the Motherland, and what they desparately needed was something that could knock down the Hind helicopter.  That’s where we came in.  The Hind was an armored helicopter (a flying tank, essentially), and we made 30mm ammo that could knock out Soviet tanks (which it did in droves during Operation Desert Storm, our war that would follow a decade later).

President Reagan didn’t want to give the Afghan rebels the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stinger missile, as he was concerned about those weapons falling into the wrong hands.  But he was okay with providing purpose-built, shoulder-fired weapons that would use A-10 ammo.   Now, I know what you are probably thinking:  The A-10 30mm round has more muzzle energy than a World War II 75mm Howitzer round, and there’s no way anyone could fire one of those from the shoulder.

Well, hold that thought.  The 30mm anti-Hind rifle was shoulder fired, but not in the sense we would ordinarily think of a shoulder-fired weapon.  The deal was you backed up to a rock or a tree, put the butt of the rifle against it, and then sort of got underneath it.  Like I said above, that’s where we came in.  We provided the ammo.

Ultimately, the program outlined above was cancelled and President Reagan okayed selling Stingers to the Afghan rebels.  Before the Russian chopper pilots could learn (but instantly and intrinsically came to understand) the words to Patsy Cline’s hit tune,  Stingers were doing what they were designed to do.  The Stingers were astonishingly effective, and within a few days of their arrival, the Soviets realized they were in Deep Geshitski (as they say back in Mother Russia).  It wasn’t too long before they rolled back across the bridge to the Soviet Union.  Come to think of it, not too long after that the entire Evil Empire collapsed.  Charlie Wilson was one of the guys who made it happen.

I don’t mind telling you that I was in awe of Charlie Wilson, and when the book (Charlie Wilson’s War) came out, I bought and read it immediately.  Then it was made into a movie with the same name (Charlie Wilson’s War), and we similarly saw it immediately.  Tom Hanks (one of the all time greats, in my opinion) was good in the lead role, but as Lloyd Benson might say, he was no Charlie Wilson.  Mr. Wilson could have played himself.  He had the right kind of personality and magnetism for it.

The good news is that Charlie Wilson’s War is still in print (it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read), and the even better news is that if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, Charlie Wilson’s War is running on that platform right now.  Trust me on this:  It’s one you want to see.

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Hasty Conclusions: Harshali Saddlebags

I’ve been working on Zed, my Kawasaki Z1, trying to get it ready for touring. I get the feeling that it will soon be safe to knock about the country again and if not, that the general population doesn’t give a damn whether they contract the virus or not. To that aim I purchased a pair of slick looking goatskin saddlebags from Amazon. I like to keep Bezos in the chips so I figured a pair of $33 Harshali bags all the way from Rajasthan would do the trick.

I didn’t want giant saddlebags, just something for tools and water maybe a snack so I thought the 11″ wide, 8″ tall, 3″ Harshali bags would be sufficient. Being male, I assumed 11-inches would be a fairly good-sized bag, you know? Turns out they looked pretty stupid on the Kawasaki. What looked stupid on the Kawasaki looks just right on the Husqvarna so that’s where the Harshali (one bag, right side) ended up.

The saddlebags look well made. The leather is as thick as a goat, I guess. The metal buckles seem sturdy and are a slightly tight fit for the straps. Like the long running joke in the British sitcom, Are You Being Served, I’m sure they will ride up with wear. One area I may reinforce is the frame strap-to-bag rivet. They seem sturdy enough for street riding but I bounce the Husqvarna of rocks and other hard objects. Two thin steel plates riveted with the leather sandwiched between might be the way to go.

The Harshali bags have several zipper compartments and dividers inside. Being only 3-inches deep these dividers seem pretty dumb but who am I to say. The saddlebag design looks like a lady’s purse missing the handle. That may actually be what they are but I’m secure enough to strap one on.

On the outside face of the bag there is a small pocket that would hold a pack of cigarettes if I smoked or a compact if I used face powder during a ride. It’s a good place for a couple-three candy bars or your bundle of sage.

The reviews on Amazon lead me to believe there may be two saddlebag factories in Rajasthan one building beautiful, sturdy bags and the other turning out stinky, ill-sewn, moldy trash. I got the good set. They smelled like leather the buckles and rivets were rust free.

I’m happy with the Harshali bags so far. Only time will tell if they hold up to the rough and tumble world of motorcycle touring. Which reminds me: I still need a set of bags for the Kawasaki. Bezos is laughing all the way to the bank.

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The 2021 MacManus Award

Last year I wrote about the MacManus Award, a program I helped revive with the Rutgers University Reserve Officer Training Corps.  Captain Colin D. MacManus was a US Army Infantry officer and an Airborne Ranger who graduated from Rutgers in 1963.  Captain MacManus was killed in action in Vietnam in February 1967 and posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action.

US Army Captain Colin D. MacManus, Rutgers University ’63.

To commemorate Captain MacManus’ life, each year the MacManus family awarded a .45 Auto to the graduating senior who held his Rutgers Corps of Cadets assignment, and in 1973, that was me.  The award was a very big deal to me in 1973, and it’s still a big deal to me today.  I still shoot my MacManus .45 regularly.

My first handgun: The Colin D. MacManus 1911 and a couple of 5-shot, 25-yard hand held groups I fired with it. I had it accurized in the 1970s, and it is still a tack driver.

The MacManus award fell away a few years after I graduated, but we were successful in restarting it in 2020.  The young man who won the MacManus award last year communicates with me regularly.  He’s now a US Army Infantry lieutenant going through the Ranger School at Fort Benning Georgia.  Good people, these are.

My good buddy at Rutgers, Colonel Javier Cortez, selected the top cadet at Rutgers for the 2021 graduating class, and I’m happy to report that this year’s honoree will receive his 1911 from the  Colt company (last year’s award was a Springfield Armory 1911, another fine handgun).  This year’s Colt is the Classic Government Model just like you see in the photo at the top of this blog, and Colt is putting some special touches on it through their Custom Shop.  That’s the same Colt model I was awarded in 1973, I’ve put a few tons of lead through it since then (230 grains at a time), and my Colt is still going strong.

Because of the pandemic, there was no award ceremony last year.  We’re doing the award ceremony via Zoom this year, and I’m looking forward to it. If you would like to read more about MacManus award and its revival last year, you can get to it via this link:

The Colin D. MacManus Award

This is good stuff, folks, and I am delighted to be associated with the effort.  These are fine young men we are honoring.  I’m proud of them, and I know you are, too.

Keep up with all the good ExhaustNotes stories!

 

IMR 4166: A quick look

Necessity is the mother of invention, or something like that.  When I heard that IMR 4320 was discontinued (on top of the ammo and components shortage), I was not a happy camper.  IMR 4320 was my go to powder for several cartridges, and now what I have left is all there is (and it’s almost gone).  But it really doesn’t matter, because we can’t hardly find propellants of any flavor. That notwithstanding, I made the trek to my local components supplier a couple of weeks ago, and he had only three propellants left:  IMR 4166, 8208, and BLC2.  I’ve never used any of these, although I had heard of Ballsy 2.  The 4166 seemed interesting…it matched my motorcycle jacket, but none of my reloading manuals had any data for it (it’s that new).  I bought all three.

I went online and found data published by the manufacturer, so I worked with that for my 30 06.  IMR 4166 is an extruded stick powder.  It will flow through a dispenser, but the dispenser throw variability was about 0.2 grain, and that’s enough when loading for rifle accuracy that I’ll weigh every charge with my scale and trickle it in with my RCBS powder trickler.N Would 0.2 grains make an accuracy difference?  I don’t know (and someday I’ll test to find out).  I suspect not, but weighing every charge only takes a few seconds more, and it seems like the right thing to do.

IMR 4166 is a stick powder that looks like any other stick powder. It’s in a powder trickler in this photo. Yeah, I weigh the powder for every cartridge.

On the IMR website, it said that Enduron IMR 4166 is one of a new class of propellant that offers four adventages:

Copper fouling reduction.  These powders contain an additive that drastically reduces copper fouling in the gun barrel. Copper fouling should be minimal, allowing shooters to spend more time shooting and less time cleaning a rifle to retain accuracy.   Hmm, that might be interesting.  We’ll see how it does, I thought to myself as I read this.

Temperature change stability.  The Enduron line is insensitive to temperature changes. Whether a rifle is sighted in during the heat of summer, hunted in a November snowstorm or hunting multiple locations with drastic temperature swings, point of impact with ammunition loaded with Enduron technology will be very consistent.  In the old days, I might have dismissed this as a solution looking for a problem, but I’ve experienced what can happen in a temperature sensitive powder.  I had a max load for my 7mm Weatherby that was fairly accurate that I took out to the range one day when it was 107 degreees.  I fired one shot and had great difficulty getting the bolt open.  It’s a real issue if you develop a load at one temperature and then shoot it at an elevated temperature.  If IMR 4166 is free from that characteristic, that’s a good thing.

Optimal load density.  Enduron powders provide optimal load density, assisting in maintaining low standard deviations in velocity and pressure, a key feature for top accuracy.   Eh, we’ll see how it does on paper.  I have some loads that are low density (i.e., they occupy well under 100% of the case volume) and they shoot superbly well.   I’m interested in how the load groups.  The target doesn’t give extra credit if an inaccurate load has a low standard deviation.

Environmentally friendly.  Enduron technology is environmentally friendly, crafted using raw materials that are not harmful to the environment.  Okay, Al Gore.  Gotcha.  Now go back to inventing the Internet.

My test bed for the new powder would be a Model 700 Euro in 30 06, a 27-year-old rifle I bought new about 10 years ago.  I had just refinished it with TruOil and glass bedded the action (a story a future blog, to be sure), and I hung a cheapie straight 4X Bushnell scope just to get a feel for how everything might perform.

The Model 700 Euro had a tung oil finish. The rifle was only offered in 1993 and 1994. The tung finish didn’t do it for me, so I did my usual TruOil finish. That’s an old Bushnell 4X economy scope up top.

My load was to be a 180-grain Remington Core-Lokt jacketed soft point bullet and 47 grains of the IMR 4166, all lit off by a CCI 200 primer.  If you’re interested, I was using Remington brass, too.  The cartridges were not crimped.

Loaded 30 06 ammo with the Remington 180-grain jacketed soft point bullet.

Wow, those 180-grain bullets pack a punch.  Recoil was fierce, and I probably felt it more because the Model 700 doesn’t have a recoil pad.

Okay, that’s enough about my heroics.  Let’s take a quick look at how the propellant performed.   With regard to the reduction in copper fouling claim, I’d have to say that’s an accurate claim.  After 20 rounds (the very first through this rifle), I ran a single patch with Hoppes No. 9 though the bore, followed by a clean patch, just to remove the powder fouling.  There was a very modest amount of copper fouling, way less than I would have seen with any other propellant.  Ordinarily, at this point in the cleaning process (i.e., removing the soot) I would normally see a bright copper accent on top of each land.  With 4166, there was only a minimal amount of copper present (as you can see below).   After a second patch with Hoppes No. 9, the copper was gone.  I guess this copper fouling eliminator business is the real deal.

This is a brand new rifle even though it’s nearly 30 years old. Check out the machinings inside the bore. Remington, for shame!

With regard to accuracy, 4166 has potential.  I shot five targets that afternoon, and this was the best.  It’s a 0.590-inch group at 100 yards, and that ain’t too shabby.

Sometimes you just get lucky. Other times you rely on careful load development, glass bedding, and a steady trigger squeeze.

The bottom line for me is that IMR 4166 is a viable powder.  Now, like everyone else, I need to find more.  That’s going to be a challenge.  But at least I know that my IMR 4320 has a decent replacement.

Getting to One

Joe Gresh raised an interesting topic with his recent blog on motorcycle quantity.   You know, how many motorcycles are too many?  That blog got a lot of hits and tons of comments on Facebook.  It seems like he struck a nerve.

The most motorcycles I ever owned at one time was five, which pales in comparison to Gresh’s shop full of motos and maybe the collections of a few other people I know.  When my collection hit that peak, I had a Triumph Daytona 1200, a Harley Heritage Softail, a Suzuki TL1000S, a Honda CBX, and a KLR 650.  That was about 20 years ago. There was no rhyme or reason to my collection and no central theme guiding the contents of my fleet.  I just bought what I liked.  In those days I had more money than brains, but don’t interpret that to mean I was rich.  I just never had a lot of brains.  Most folks who know me recognize that pretty quickly.

My Harley Softail in the muddy plains outside Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur. There’s a kitchen sink in there somewhere.
The Triumph Tiger. Good, but tall and very heavy. It was essentially a sport bike with excess suspension travel and ADV cosmetics.
Me with a buddy currently in the witness protection program, and my Honda CBX. It was a surprisingly competent touring motorcycle.
The Triumph Speed Triple. One of my buddies nicknamed it the Speed Cripple, which became true for me.
Ah, the yellow locomotive. My Triumph Daytona 1200. Delightfully crude and fast. I loved this bike and I rode the 2005 Three Flags Classic on it.
Turning sportbikes into touring machines…my TL1000S somewhere in Baja. This was a seriously fast motorcycle.

I seemed to hover around that number (five, that is) for a while.  Other bikes moved in to displace one or more of the above, most notably a Triumph Tiger and then a Triumph Speed Triple.  Those were fun, but they’ve gone down the road, too.

One of my favorite former motorcycles for real world adventure riding…the Kawasaki KLR 650 in its natural surroundings (Valle de los Cirios in Baja).

Which one did I enjoy riding most?  That’s easy.  It was the KLR 650.  The KLR 650 was the bike that led me on an arc toward smaller motorcycles, like the CSC RX3 and then a TT250.  I was a bit player implementing Steve Seidner’s decision to bring those motorcycles to America.  The 250s were a lot of fun.  I sold off all the big bikes and only rode 250s for a few years, then I fell in love with the new Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor when it hit the market, and suddenly I was back up to three.

But three, for me, was too many.  I haven’t been riding much in the last few years for a lot of reasons.  The pandemic put a dent in any big travel plans (YMMV, and that’s okay), and constantly moving the battery tender around and cleaning the TT250’s jets was getting old.  I couldn’t move anything in my garage because there was so much stuff crammed in there, and I had to park the TT250 under the rear porch awning.  I don’t have a separate workshop area and I don’t pour concrete (I don’t have Mr. Gresh’s talents, but even if I did, it looks like too much work to me), so hanging on to a big motorcycle fleet was not in the cards.

My TT250. I’ve ridden it in Baja, too. It sold the day after I placed an ad for it a couple of weeks ago, and at the asking price. This bike held its value well.

Badmouthing Facebook has become trendy, but I’ll tell you that Facebook Marketplace came to the rescue.  I already had a ton of photos of my motorcycles and whipping up ads for the TT250 and the RX3 literally took only seconds.  I checked Kelly Blue Book values, picked prices only marginally below what a dealer would charge, and both bikes sold quickly.  The TT250 sold the day after I listed it; the RX3 took one additional day.

All the China haterbator keyboard commandos said Chinese bikes had no resale value.  Like everything else they posted, they were wrong.  The haters said Chinese bikes were unreliable (they were wrong), the haters said you couldn’t get parts for them (they were wrong), the haters said they were built with slave labor (I’ve been in the factories, and they were wrong), and they said they had no resale value (and they were wrong about that, too).  My 6-year-old RX3 with 20,000 miles on the clock went for 69% of its original MSRP, and my 5-year-old TT250 with 3,000 miles went for 74% of its original MSRP.  That’s pretty good, I think. And both sold right away.  Not that I was in a hurry to sell.  I probably could have held out for more.

My current sole ride (or is that soul ride?), the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 on Baja’s Highway 1 south of Ensenada.  At this point in my life, one motorcycle is enough.  Your mileage may vary.

So I’m down to one motorcycle, and that’s the Enfield.  For me, at this point in my life, one motorcycle is the right number (your mileage may vary).  I’m on to other “how many” questions now, like how many guns are too many, and how many bicycles are too many.  The answer to both of those questions is something south of my current number, but those are topics for future blogs.

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The Five Best New Ideas In Motorcycling

I may seem like a cranky old man but I’m not that old. I admit I don’t like many of the useless widgets and features coming out on new motorcycles. As a rule they do nothing to enhance the feel of the wind or the joy of riding. Oh sure, they may make motorcycling safer and protect riders from themselves but the additional weight, more frequent breakdowns, and costly repairs (due to excessive complications) hardly seems worth it to me. I would go as far as to say a 1985 Japanese bike is more reliable than most any 2021 motorcycle.

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Listen, I’m a booster for motorcycling. I know manufacturers need to sell new bikes and new bikes need to appear improved over older models. I don’t want you to think of me as a negative person and a killjoy about your fancy-pants electronic-nanny bike. If you imagine you’ve found something you like and feel happy about I’m good with it. And there have been a few improvements to motorcycles since I started messing with them. Keep in mind that I’ve been riding since the late 1960’s so some of the things I think of as new are not actually all that new.

Modern disc brakes are the biggest improvement to motorcycles. I rode for many years on bikes that would not lock the front wheel no matter how hard you squeezed the lever. Not only were the old drum brakes weak, they faded so badly going downhill that often the rider was left with no brakes at all. The first mass produced disc brakes in the 1970’s were a huge leap but nothing like the new multi-piston, multi-disc brakes on modern bikes. Motorcycle brakes became so good manufacturers had to hobble them with anti-lock systems to keep riders from crashing in a panic situation. You really can flip over frontwards on some bikes. My Husky 510 has a dinner plate sized disc that is a miracle of stopping power and it doesn’t come with a safety net. In the dirt I use one, very light finger. On pavement two fingers will stand the bike on its nose. I like having that power even though I’ll probably wipe out using it.

Fuel injection is the second best idea but you have to make compromises with complexity. Carburetors are relatively easy to adjust and owners can screw them up with just a few simple tools. Fuel injection requires some type of reader or display to tune. Aftermarket companies sell all manner of work-around black boxes and mapping programs. I’d say tune-ability is a toss up between the two fuel/air mixing systems.

At a fixed altitude, humidity, temperature and barometric pressure a carbed bike can run just as well as any injected bike. My token modern bike, the Husky 510, has FI but the rest of my bikes have carburetors and I manage to get from Point A to Point B just fine. I accept FI’s extra complexity because fuel injection works great. Over extreme altitude variations fuel injected motorcycles run so much better than carbed bikes you could almost miss their biggest advantage: less clogging. In a perfect world, a world without alcohol blended in, our gasoline carburetors do an acceptable job. The problem is modern fuel has such a short shelf life that, left to absorb moisture and drop out of suspension alcohol fuel can clog up carbs in just a few months of storage. Draining the carbs before parking the bike more than a month is mandatory.

Once past the fuel pump a fuel injection system is sealed off from oxygen and the elements, drastically improving gasoline’s shelf life. Even if the fuel does goes off in the tank the high fuel pressures of fuel injection tend to pump the crud on through. It’s still possible to gum up a fuel-injected bike sitting long periods of time but much less likely.

O-ring chains are not really new but the most recent versions are incredibly good. My early experience with O-ring chains saw the little o-rings go missing and the chain ended up no better than a plain old chain. After that I stopped using them for 30 years. Skip forward a few decades and it’s not unusual to get 20,000 miles or more out of a brand name O-ring chain. Give an O-ring chain a shot of 90–weight oil every 400 miles or so and you’ll be riding carefree minus the heavy parts of a shaft-driven motorcycle. Belt-drives are good, too, but every time I’ve taken a belt driven bike scrambling the belt starts squeaking and it takes a thousand miles for the noise to go away. On small displacement motorcycles O-ring chains do add a bit of drag but don’t trouble yourself over those things.

Tubeless, spoke rims are a recent development and they are a great new idea. Besides looking cool as hell, tubeless, spoke rims combine the easy hole patching ability of tubeless tires with the light, strong construction of spokes. I don’t know what took so long but I’m all for it, brother. One place I see a potential problem is running low pressures off-road but that has nothing to do with the wheel. If you’re trail riding at 15psi I suggest you stick a tube in your tubeless spoke wheel. I like the looks of spoke rims on a motorcycle but I also like being able to stab a tire plug in a flat tire and be on my way in 5 minutes. Tubeless spoke rims are a win-win idea. One day maybe I’ll have a bike with them fitted.

Liquid cooling has been around since gasoline engines were invented but I still think of the application in motorcycles as modern and one of the best ideas. Besides a few odd bikes like Scott and Suzuki most bikes were air-cooled until the mid 1980’s, and 1980 seems like yesterday to me. The big advantage to liquid cooling is the ability to tune the bike with one less variable to worry about: you know within a few degrees what temperature the engine will be 98% of the time. There’s also a sound deadening benefit that has become more important as we move forward into an eerily silent, clean world.

I own two liquid-cooled motorcycles and the extra complexity of the cooling system has not caused a problem on either one. I forget they are liquid cooled. My old Yamaha V-Max developed a leaky water pump at 80,000 miles but once fixed it rolled on to 112,000 miles without a hitch. Unfortunately, that bike was sunk in one of the many hurricanes that struck the Florida Keys during my time there.

These advancements in motorcycling have made bikes safer, quieter and more reliable, but not any more fun. I enjoy riding my old air-cooled, drum braked, carbureted, tube-tired, non-O-ring chained, Yamaha two-stroke best of all. It goes to show that as we move into the silent, safe, modern world the biggest and best ideas in motorcycling are still inside your mind.

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Two .44 caliber 1858 Remington New Model Army Revolvers

This is a guest blog by good buddy Jose, and it compares two modern Italian reproductions of the famed .44 caliber 1858 Remington New Model Army revolver.  One is manufactured by A. Uberti S.p.A. (it’s the one on top in the big photo above); the other is by F.LLI Pietta (the revolver on the bottom). Here’s another shot of the two:

The Uberti in on top right, the Pietta is on lower left.

The 1858 Remington New Model Army was a competitor to Colt’s blackpowder percussion sidearm.  The Army went with both versions but primarily bought the Colt (it was 50 cents cheaper than the Remington).  Then the Colt factory had a fire in 1864.  At that point, the Army starting buying Remingtons in quantity.  The Remington was considered to be the stronger revolver because it has a top strap over the cylinder (the Colt does not), and some folks feel the Remington is easier to aim because the rear sight is cut into the frame (instead of the hammer, as on the Colt).  And there are other advantages to the Remington, which Jose covers.  With that as a background, here’s Jose’s article on the modern Uberti and Pietta reproductions.  All photos in this blog are by Jose.

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If you’ve never fired a percussion revolver you’re really missing out on huge part of firearms history. But maybe you didn’t know that even here in California you can order one of these fine blackpowder revolvers online or over the phone with a credit card and have it shipped to your doorstep without background check or going through an FFL. Your state rules may vary.

Cap and ball packpowder sidearms were a huge part of arms on both sides during the American Civil War. The Union Army had a contract for the Colt 1860 Army, but when Colt could not keep up with demand Remington Model 1858’s were ordered. Many troops preferred the Remington over the Colt for a number of reasons. The Remington has a top strap making it stronger, and the Colt was prone to having loose percussion caps jam the cylinder.

Uberti 1858 Remington Revolver

I’ve had the Uberti for about 10 years. It’s an awesome piece of fine craftsmanship. There is nothing cheap about this revolver, the fit and finish are supurb. The cylinder and barrel are a deep blue, the steel frame is color case hardened, and the trigger guard is polished brass, ans walnut stocks, giving it a very classy look. The gun is a six shot .44 cal, rifled 8-inch barrel with 1:18 LH twist, and weighs in at 2.7 pounds.

454 cal pure lead balls, Remington #10 percussion caps, waxed felt wads, and the Uberti 1858 New Army.
Powder measure, balls, waxed felt wads, and caps.

I use .454-inch diameter balls cast from pure soft lead (stick on wheel weights or plumbers lead, BRN 7) weighing in at 143 grains. It fires best when loaded with 35 grains of FFF blackpowder (I don’t like substitute synthetics), a felt pad soaked in bore butter over the powder, and the ball over the top. The felt over the powder charge prevents a chain fire from jumping between cylinders, and also adds some lube to the barrel between rounds helping prevent a buildup of powder. Either Remington or CCI #10 percussion caps provide the spark.

The color case hardened steel frame on this model Uberti is off set nicely by its polished brass trigger guard.
The loading lever on the Remington 1858 is used to ram the ball into each cylinder, after loading powder and waxed wad. The percussion caps are placed on the cylinder nipples only after all cylinders have been loaded.
The cylinder doesn’t require removal between loadings, only for cleaning.

The Uberti is very well balanced and feels good in the hand. The cylinder locks up very tightly. There are noches between the cylinder nipples to rest the hammer on making it safe to carry with all six cylinders loaded. The rear sight is a V-notch on the top strap, unlike the Colt 1860 which has the notch on the hammer because the 1860 lacks a top strap. It’s no exaggeration that out to 40 yards my the Uberti 1858 holds about as tight a group as my Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 mag!

The Remington 1858 has a top strap over the cylinder making it stronger than the Colt 1860 and older firearms. It also allows for placement of a stable V-notch rear sight as opposed to the Colt’s rear site which is a simple notch filed on the back of the hammer.
Nice sight picture. This Uberti has a 1:18 barrel groove twist and holds groups as tight as my Ruger Super Blackhawk out to about 40 yards.

Properly cleaning and blackpowder revolver after a day in the field is a good exercise in gunsmithing. The revolver should be entirely disassembled, down to the Springs, removing hammer from the frame, cylinder pin, loading lever, trigger, mainspring, nipples from the cylinder – everything except for removing the barrel from the frame and front sight.

The notchs between the nipples are for the hammer to rest, allowing the six-gun to be safely carried with all cylinders loaded.

A good set of gunsmithing drivers and properly fittjng nipple wrench are mandatory to keep from damaging the screws. Owning a blackpowder revolver will help anyone gain confidence to start Barking simple dunsmithing repairs and parts replacements on other types of firearms. If you don’t already have a blackpowder gun order one today! They are a blast.

Pietta 1858 Remington Revolver

This one was recently purchased because the price was right. It looks like it has never been fired, and I’ve not fired it yet, either. The specs are essentially the same as the Uberti; however, the claimed weight of the Pietta is only 2.4 pounds compared to Uberti’s 2.7 pounds. For whatever reason the Uberti feels much lighter and more well balanced. The Pietta is noticeably front heavy. The Pietta has a little play at cylinder lockup. The hammer pull and trigger feel smooth and crisp, similar to the Uberti.

The Pietta, another quality Italian replica in a slightly lower price range.

The really nice thing about the Pietta is that it came with an optional .45 Colt conversion cylinder. I’ve always wanted to get a conversion cylinder for my Uberti but they are very expensive, about 2/3 what I paid for the gun, and they always seem to be out of stock.

This Pietta came with a .45 Colt conversion cylinder.
The conversion cylinder has an upper plate that holds a separate firing pin for each cylinder.

The conversion cylinder for the Pietta fits very nice, locks up tightly, and came with a box and a half of .45 Colt ammo which I have no intentions of using. Remington first started converting Model 1858 revolvers to .46 cal rimfire metallc cartridges in 1868. These were still blackpowder cartridges as smokless powder hadn’t yet been developed. So I will hand load .45 cartridges for the Pietta using blackpowder to stay traditional.

I’m looking forward to shooting these two together on a side-by-side comparison soon. For now, I hope you enjoy the photos.

That’s an awesome article, Jose.  Thanks very much for sharing it with us here on the ExNotes blog.

I asked Jose to tell us a bit about himself, and he did.   Jose is a geologist, an offroad racer, a fly fisherman, an upland game hunter, a handloader, and he likes to teach outdoor sports to young people. He lives on the banks of the Henry’s Fork River in Idaho in the spring and summer months and he spends the winter months in Big Bear Lake, California. Most of Jose’s offroad racing adventures are in Baja.  Jose’s other hobbies include taekwando, and cumbia and bachata dancing.  An interesting man, to be sure!

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The KLR 650 is back!

An new exciting thing is that Kawasaki brought back the KLR 650.  A review of the Kawi info makes it look like the big change is fuel injection, along with a few other things (like digital instrumentation, accessory and USB outlets, higher alternator output, optional integrated locking luggage, and optional ABS).  Per the Kawasaki announcement:

The all-new KLR®650 dual-sport motorcycle is built to empower your passion to escape and explore. Featuring a 652cc engine, new fuel injection system, all-digital instrumentation, disc brakes, and optional ABS, the KLR650 is ready and eager to make new memories. Dual-sport capability allows the journey to go on- and off-road with all three available models, including two special edition models that are equipped with factory-installed Kawasaki Genuine Accessories. With the KLR650, KLR650 Traveler, and KLR650 Adventure motorcycles, your next great expedition awaits.

This is good; Kawasaki is finally catching up to CSC’s RX3 and RX4 series of adventure motorcycles.  Don’t get me wrong; I owned a KLR 650 (first gen) and it was a stellar motorcycle.  One of my good buddies is still riding it.  They were fabulous motorcycles; I hope the new one is as good.  By the way, if you’d like to read our comparison of the KLR 650 to the CSC RX4, you can do so here.

My 2006 KLR 650 in Baja.

Pricing, per Kawasaki, is $6699 for the base model and $7,999 for the fully-loaded model, with a Kawasaki-listed destination charge of $410.   There’s no mention of the setup fee.  But they do mention in the small print that the dealer sets the actual destination charge and your price may vary.  You think?  Mark my words…dealers will throw on a $1500 freight and setup fee on this bike.  When you enter the green room, be forewarned: Having worked in the motorcycle industry, I can tell you that actual freight (what the dealer really pays) is well under $400, and setup on a KLR 650 takes under an hour.  And as point of reference, when I bought my ’06 KLR 650 new, it was $5200 out the door.  Let the good times roll.