Tag: Bonneville

It’s Always About The Motors

By Joe Berk

For me a motorcycle’s appearance, appeal, and personality are defined by its motor.   I’m not a chopper guy, but I like the look of a chopper because the engine absolutely dominates the bike.  I suppose to some people fully faired motorcycles are beautiful, but I’m not in that camp.  The only somewhat fully faired bike I ever had was my 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200, but you could still see a lot of the engine on that machine.  I once wrote a Destinations piece for Motorcycle Classics on the Solvang Vintage Motorcycle Museum and while doing so I called Virgil Elings, the wealthy entrepreneur who owned it.  I asked Elings what drove his interest in collecting motorcycles.  His answer?  The motors.  He spoke about the mechanical beauty of a motorcycle’s engine, and that prompted me to ask for his thoughts on fully faired bikes.  “I suppose they’re beautiful to some,” he said, “but when you take the fairings off, they look like washing machines.”  I had a good laugh.  His observation was spot on.

A 1200cc Harley Panhead motor I photographed at the Rock Store in Malibu.

My earliest memory of drooling over a motorcycle occurred sometime in the 1950s when I was a little kid.  My Mom was shopping with me somewhere in one of those unenclosed malls on Route 18 in New Jersey, and in those days, it was no big deal to let your kid wander off and explore while you shopped.  I think it was some kind of a general store (I have no idea what Mom was looking for), and I wandered outside on the store’s sidewalk.  There was a blue Harley Panhead parked out front, and it was the first time I ever had a close look at a motorcycle.  It was beautiful, and the motor was especially beautiful.  It had those early panhead corrugated exhaust headers, fins, cables, chrome, and more.  I’ve always been fascinated by all things mechanical, and you just couldn’t find anything more mechanical than a Big Twin engine.

There have been a few Sportsters that do it for me, too, like Harley’s Cafe Racer from the late 1970s.  That was a fine-looking machine dominated by its engine.  I liked the Harley XR1000, too.

A 1000cc Harley Cafe Racer photographed at one of the Hansen Dam meets. When these were new, they sold for about $3,000.

I’ve previously mentioned my 7th grade fascination with Walt Skok’s Triumph Tiger.  It had the same mesmerizing motorrific effect as the big twin Panhead described above.  I could stare at that 500cc Triumph engine for hours (and I did).  The 650 Triumphs were somehow even more appealing.  The mid-’60s Triumphs are the most beautiful motorcycles in the world (you might think otherwise and that’s okay…you have my permission to be wrong).

A 1966 Triumph Bonneville and it’s 650cc twin-carb engine. My Dad rode a Bonneville just like this one.

BSA did a nice job with their engine design, too.  Their 650 twins in the ’60s looked a lot like Triumph’s, and that’s a good thing.  I see these bikes at the Hansen Dam Norton Owners Club meets.  They photograph incredibly well, as do nearly all vintage British twins.

A late1960s BSA at Hansen Dam. These are beautiful motorcycles, too.

When we visited good buddy Andrew in New Jersey recently, he had several interesting machines, but the one that riveted my attention was his Norton P11.  It’s 750cc air cooled engine is, well, just wonderful.  If I owned that bike I’d probably stare at it for a few minutes every day.  You know, just to keep my batteries charged.

Andrew Capone’s P-11 Norton. You can read about our visit with Andrew here.

You know, it’s kind of funny…back in the 1960s I thought Royal Enfield’s 750cc big twins were clunky looking.  Then the new Royal Enfield 650 INT (aka the Interceptor to those of us unintimidated by liability issues) emerged.  Its appearance was loosely based on those clunky old English Enfields, but the new twin’s Indian designers somehow made the engine look way better.  It’s not clunky at all, and the boys from Mumbai made their interpretive copy of an old English twin look more British than the original.  The new Enfield Interceptor is a unit construction engine, but the way the polished aluminum covers are designed it looks like a pre-unit construction engine.   The guys from the subcontinent hit a home run with that one.  I ought to know; after Gresh and I road tested one of these for Enfield North America on a Baja ride, I bought one.

The current iteration of Royal Enfield’s 650cc twin. I rode this bike through Baja and liked it so much I bought one when I returned from Mexico.  Here’s more (a lot more) about that adventure.

Another motorcycle that let you see its glorious air-cooled magnificence was the CB750 Honda.  It was awesome in every regard and presented well from any angle, including the rear (which is how most other riders saw it on the road).  The engine was beyond impressive, and when it was introduced, I knew I would have one someday (I made that dream come true in 1971).  I still can’t see one without taking my iPhone out to grab a photo.

A 1969 or 1970 Honda CB 750. This is the motorcycle that put the nail in the British motorcycle industry coffin. I had one just like it.

After Honda stunned the world with their 750 Four, the copycats piled on.  Not to be outdone, Honda stunned the world again when they introduced their six-cylinder CBX.  I had an ’82.   It was awesome.  It wasn’t the fastest motorcycle I ever owned, but it was one of the coolest (and what drove that coolness was its air-cooled straight six engine).

A Honda CBX engine photographed at the Del Mar fairgrounds near San Diego. The CBX was a motorcycle that added complexity where none was required. It was an impressive machine.

Like they did with the 750 Four, Kawasaki copied the Honda six cylinder, but the Kawasaki engine was water-cooled and from an aesthetics perspective, it was just a big lump.  The Honda was a finely-finned work of art.  I never wanted a Kawasaki Six; I still regret selling my Honda CBX.  The CBX was an extremely good-looking motorcycle.  It was all engine.  What completed the look for me were the six chrome exhaust headers emerging from in front.  I put 20,000 miles on mine and sold it for what it cost me, and now someone else is enjoying it.  The CBX was stunning motorcycle, but you don’t need six cylinders to make a motorcycle beautiful.  Some companies managed to do it with just two, and some with only one.  Consider the engines mentioned at the start of this piece (Harley, Triumph, BSA, and Norton).

I shot this photo at Hansen Dam, too. I always wanted a mid-’60s Moto Guzzi. Never scratched that itch, though. They sound amazing. Imagine a refined Harley, and you’d have this.

Moto Guzzi’s air-cooled V-twins are in a class by themselves.  I love the look and the sound of an air-cooled Guzzi V-twin.  It’s classy.  I like it.

Some motorcycle manufacturers made machines that were mesmerizing with but a single cylinder, so much so that they inspired modern reproductions, and then copies of those reproductions.  Consider Honda’s GB500, and more than a few motorcycles from China and even here in the US that use variants of the GB500 engine.

The Honda GB500, Honda’s nod to earlier British singles. It’s another one I always wanted.

The GB500 is a water cooled bike, but Sochoiro’s boys did it right.  The engine is perfect.  Like I said above, variants of that engine are still made in China and Italy; one of those engines powers the new Janus 450 Halcyon.

The Janus 450 Halcyon I rode in Goshen. That resulted in a feature story in Motorcycle Classics. It’s engine is by SWM in Italy, which is a variant of the Chinese copy of the GB500 engine.  I liked the Janus.

No discussion of mechanical magnificence would be complete without mentioning two of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made:  The Brough Superior SS100 and the mighty Vincent.  The Brits’ ability to design a visually arresting, aesthetically pleasing motorcycle engine must be a genetic trait.    Take a look at these machines.

The Brough Superior SS100. Its engine had a constant loss lubrication system. This is the same motorcycle Lawrence of Arabia rode. One of my grandsons is named T.E. Lawrence.
The mighty Vincent. This and the Brough Superior above were both photographed at Hansen Dam.

Two additional bits of moto exotica are the early inline and air-cooled four-cylinder Henderson, and the Thor, one of the very first V-twin engine designs.  Both of these boast American ancestry.

Jay Leno’s 1931 Henderson. He told me he bought it off a 92-year-old guy in Vegas who was getting a divorce and needed to raise cash, and I fell for it.

The Henderson you see above belongs to Jay Leno, who let me photograph it at one of the Hansen Dam Norton gatherings.  Incidentally, if there’s a nicer guy than Jay Leno out there, I haven’t met him.  The man is a prince.  He’s always gracious, and he’s never too busy to talk motorcycles, sign autographs, or pose for photos.  You can read about some of the times I’ve bumped into Jay Leno at the Rock Store or the Hansen Dam event right here on ExNotes.

A Thor V-twin photographed at the Franklin Auto Museum in Tucson, Arizona. You almost need a four-year mechanical engineering degree to start one of these. Thor made the first engines for Indian.

Very early vintage motorcycles’ mechanical complexity is almost puzzle-like…they are the Gordian knots of motorcycle mechanical engineering design.  I photographed a 1913 Thor for Motorcycle Classics (that story is here), and as I was optimizing the photos I found myself wondering how guys back in the 1910s started the things.  I was able to crack the code, but I had to concentrate so hard it reminded me of dear departed mentor Bob Haskell talking about the Ph.Ds and other wizards in the advanced design group when I worked in the bomb business: “Sometimes those guys think so hard they can’t think for months afterward,” Bob told me (both Bob and I thought the wizards had confused their compensation with their capability).

There’s no question in my mind that water cooling a motorcycle engine is a better way to go from an engineering perspective.  Water cooling adds weight, cost, and complexity, but the fuel efficiency and power advantages of water cooling just can’t be ignored.  I don’t like when manufacturers attempt to make a water-cooled engine look like an air-cooled engine with the addition of fake fins (it somehow conveys design dishonesty).  But some marques make water cooled engines look good (Virgil Elings’ comments notwithstanding).  My Triumph Speed Triple had a water-cooled engine.  I think the Brits got it right on that one.

My 2007 Triumph Speed Triple. Good buddy Marty told me some folks called these the Speed Cripple. In my case, that turned out to be true, but that’s another story for another blog.
My 2015 CSC RX3. Before you go all nuts on me and start whining about Chinese motorcycle quality, I need to tell you I rode these across China, through the Andes Mountains in Colombia, up and down Baja a bunch of times, and all over the American west (you can read about those adventures here). It was one of the best and most comfortable bikes I ever owned.

Zongshen is another company that makes water-cooled engines look right.  I thought my RX3 had a beautiful engine and I really loved that motorcycle.  I sold it because I wasn’t riding it too much, but the tiny bump in my bank account that resulted from the sale, in retrospect, wasn’t worth it.  I should have kept the RX3.  When The Big Book Of Best Motorcycles In The History Of The World is written, I’m convinced there will be a chapter on the RX3.

The future of “motor” cycling? This is the CSC RX1E. I rode it and liked it. The silence takes some getting used to.

With the advent of electric motorcycles, I’ve ridden a few and they are okay, but I can’t see myself ever buying one.  That’s because as I said at the beginning of this blog, for me a motorcycle is all about the motor.  I realize that’s kind of weird, because on an electric motorcycle the power plant actually is a motor, not an internal combustion engine (like all the machines described above).  What you mostly see on an electric motorcycle is the battery, which is the large featureless chingadera beneath the gas tank (which, now that I’m writing about it, isn’t a gas tank at all).   I don’t like the silence of an electric motorcycle.   They can be fast (the Zero I rode a few years ago accelerated so aggressively it scared the hell out of me), but I need some noise, I need to feel the power pulses and engine vibration, and I want other people to hear me.  The other thing I don’t care for is that on an electric motorcycle, the power curve is upside down.  They accelerate hardest off a dead stop and fade as the motor’s rpm increases; a motorcycle with an internal combustion engine accelerates harder as the revs come up.

Wow, this blog went on for longer than I thought it would.  I had fun writing it and I had fun going through my photo library for the pics you see here.  I hope you had fun reading it.

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A Visit With Andrew

By Joe Berk

This is another one of those blogs that almost had another title.  I considered simply calling it The P11.  Hey, if you know, you know.  And I know.  So does Andrew.

Sue and I were on the East Coast last week (as in literally on the East Coast when we stopped for lunch in Point Pleasant, New Jersey) when I gave my buddy Andrew a call.  Andrew is the guy who runs British Motorcycle Gear, a company whose ads grace these pages.  You’ve also read reviews by Joe Gresh on some of the top quality gear Andrew offers, including Rapido gloves, the Mercury jacket, and the BMG Adventure motorcycle pants.

Andrew is a true Anglophile (a lover of all things British), although like me, he grew up in the Garden State.   We had a nice visit in Andrew’s beautiful home, and then he took us into his garage to see the toys.  I was blown away, not just by the motorcycles Andrew parks in his garage, but at how closely they tracked with my list of highly desireable motorcycles.

Andrew’s Norton P11. It’s awesome.
No one has ever outdone Norton when it comes to fuel tank style. Triumph comes close. So did Harley in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. This tank is perfect. And those exhaust pipes!

One that caught my eye instantly was a Norton P11. That was the ultimate hot rod motorcycle in the 1960s.  Norton shoehorned their 750cc engine into a 500cc Matchless desert sled frame.  When I was a teenager, the word on the street was that nothing was faster than a Norton P11.  Norton only made a very few of these motorcycles (I think the production total was less than 2500).  Truth be told, Andrew’s P11 is the first one I’ve ever seen in person, but I knew what it was as soon as I saw it.  It’s parked on the other side of the garage, and my eye skimmed over a bunch of motoexotica when I saw the P11.  Man, I would love to own that motorcycle.  I don’t necessarily need to ride it; I would just look at it and keep it immaculate.  Which, incidentally, is the condition in which I found all of Andrew’s motorcycles.

A late ’60s Triumph Bonneville. How could these guys have been overtaken by Japan?

There was a silver and burgundy 1968 Triumph Bonneville that looks like it rolled out of the Coventry plant yesterday morning.  Andrew told me that the Bonneville is sold.  Not to me, unfortunately.  It’s another I’ve love to own.

Andrew with a few of his rides. Check out the Honda GB500 just behind the Daytona. Just 535 miles! That’s an MV Augusta behind it.

Andrew has a Triumph Daytona, and it’s the rare one…the 900cc triple with a bunch of goodies (think triple caliper disks up front, carbon fiber front fender, and other similar go fast and stop fast bits).  It is bright yellow (Triumph called it Daytona yellow), just like the Daytona 1200 I owned about a decade ago. But my Daytona was but a mere commoner’s motorcycle.  Andrew’s Daytona is the limited-edition version.  Like the P11 Norton mentioned above, it’s the first one I’ve ever seen.  I live in southern California; I’ve been to a bunch of moto hangouts (like the Rock Store in Malibu) and numerous Britbike events (for example, the Hansen Dam Norton get-togethers).  I’ve seen Jay Leno, I’ve seen pristine vintage Indians (real ones, not the current production stuff), I’ve seen four-cylinder Hendersons, and I’ve laid these eyeballs on other similar exotics.  But I’ve never seen a limited-edition Daytona Super III or a P11 in person until I visited Andrew.

Another one of Andrew’s bikes that caught my eye was a near-new-old-stock Honda GB500.  It has to be one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made.  Honda offered these 500cc singles in the mid 1980s.  It was a modern nod to (and refined version of) the British Velocette. They flopped from a sales perspective back then, but that’s only because of our unrefined palate and our then-fascination with conchos, wide whitewalls , and beer bellies (think potato-potato-potato exhaust notes and you’ll catch my drift).   Like a lot of things, I should have bought a GB500 back then.  Andrew’s GB500 is literally in like new condition.  It has 535 original miles on the odometer.

A BMW…and more Triumphs.

There was more…a modern Triumph Thruxton, another modern Triumph, even a Lotus Elise sports car.   My eye, though, kept returning to the Norton P11.  It really is a visually arresting motorcycle.

At the conclusion of our visit, I asked Andrew if he would consider adopting me.   Everyone enjoyed a good laugh about that.  They all thought I was kidding.  But I wasn’t.

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Salt 8

It seems like tents get larger the more time they spend exposed to sunlight. But the thing is, man, camps were made to be broken. As much as I liked the hot sun, dusty gravel lot and 4-mile walk to the KOA facilities, we had to go.

I’m good with the two days we spent on the salt. I feel like we got a really good idea of the situation and the Southern California Timing Association had their hands full. They didn’t need me prowling around stirring up the troops. The salt was in no mood to be trifled with and we left it to bake and heave, a different salt from a few hours ago and different from that salt in a few more hours.

There’s no good route east from Bonneville except for the hard slog on Interstate 80. From there it’s a long hot day south and the Husky beat out a steady tune all the way to Moab, Utah. The place was an endless parade of tourists, every one one of them healthier than the last. Their bodies were so chiseled they looked like they subsisted solely on finely ground pumice. Their smiles were stretched over perfectly dazzling teeth. I felt like Quasimodo lurching among this mob of Fits.

We swung through Monticello, Utah, a place where 11 years ago me and Hunter left Dave at a motel room with a broken foot and two hamburgers on his night stand. The past days and present days are crashing together on this ride. If you let your mind wander it’s easy to lose track of where you are on the continuum. The hamburger place where we stocked Dave’s nightstand is still there. Maybe Dave is still in that room. 11 years has gone-and-went representing one tiny tremor of time. What happened?

I rode away from Monticello on Godzilla back then. It was a hard pull up the grades.  Sometimes the old two stroke held 55 mph. Now I rip up the same hills with the Husky spinning free. So much air pumping past 500 CC’s of modern 4-strokery. I’d still rather be on Godzilla. You earned a hill with that bike, man.

Tonight we’re giving Switchblade, the panhandler with a pickle, another shot at my ribcage in Window Rock. I wonder when I will be back to remember this place, to remember Switchblade. I wonder what the last place will be?

Get it while you can, boys.

Salt 7

During Bonneville Speed Week enterprising teens set up salt washing stations.

The rough wet salt did not bode well for the speed trials this year. After seeing how the situation unfolded yesterday Mike and I were in no hurry to get out to Bonneville and in fact it was almost 11:00 a.m. before we paid the SCTA man another $20 entrance fee.

The ticket man told us to avoid the start area as it was getting churned up and the competitor’s vehicles were getting stuck. It was kind of a pain because the start area was where we wanted to go. One thing I’ve learned in my short life is that there’s no sense in railing against mushy salt.

My hamburger-stand-at-noon meter told me there were fewer spectators and contestants than yesterday. Bonneville isn’t spectator friendly to start with as the courses are far in the distance. You pay to be surrounded by the ambiance: great things are happening just over the horizon.

The pits are very open, you can go bug the racers all you like. They really seemed to appreciate my helpful suggestions for grabbing that final 1/10 of a mile per hour.

I don’t know why my motorcycle brothers were being so obtuse on the track today. They consistently failed to clear off the course after their run much to the dismay of the hundreds of waiting competitors.

Even without the motorcycle guys gumming up the works wait times between runs stretched to 15 minutes. Multiply that by 100 or more competitors and you start to get at the immensity of the problem caused by Mother Nature shutting down three courses.

Bonneville is one of those events where it’s easier to compete in than spectate. After one really lengthy pause in the action we decided that racing may be over for the day. We headed back to camp feeling ill-used for our $20 entrance fee but it all goes to a good cause: The pursuit of speed.

Unrelated to anyone’s efforts on the salt, one of the bolts holding the luggage rack to the Husqvarna had fallen out somewhere on the trip to Bonneville. I removed the opposite side bolt for a sample and took the thing to Ace Hardware where they had no metric bolts. The next place I tried, CarQuest, had two of the small, 4mm bolts.

As soon as I located the correct bolts I should have known I was in trouble. The Husky uses those captivated-nut type of deals where a threaded nut is crimped into the aluminum frame tube. It gives you something sturdy and steel to screw into.

When the sample bolt was removed the captivated nut became a free range nut and it wandered off into the frame tube. Of course I had no idea any of this was happening.

I kept trying to screw the sample bolt back onto the Husqvarna. The thing would not start. As I became more confused I became more irrational. It was hot, Mike was making suggestions and I was not wanting to hear them: “I just took the bolt out of the F-ing rack minutes ago! Why won’t it start?” Semi-blind from sweat I removed everything off the back of the bike and it became clear that the bolt was never going to thread into the hole because there was nothing to thread into. It was a void, man.

Back to Ace hardware for a $35 drill motor, a $14 drill bit set, and assorted 1/4″-20 bolts and nuts. That bastard rack was going to be secured by any means necessary. I drilled all the way through the frame tube and into the plastic inner fender. Now the longer bolt was slotted through into a locknut on the other side.

This all sounds simple but it took three separate trips to the auto store and hardware store to achieve. I gave Mike the new drill motor hoping the shiny bauble would make him forget all that he had seen earlier. I spent the remains of the day sitting by the KOA swimming pool and drinking gin & tonics. Tomorrow we break camp and start heading back to God’s country: New Mexico.

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Salt 6

A Ukrainian guy crashed his 900-volt electric bike at 150 miles per hour. He’s okay but the bike is a bit bent. It’s been a hard day on the salt for motorcycles and not much better for the cars. The course is rough and soft.

I hear the grumbling as I cruise the pits. “No records this year.” “We might as well go home.” “They should call the whole thing off.” Conditions have restricted the racers to one course for experts and one course for rookies. At the start area the blue course lines are close together and they get wider apart the further down course you go.

A Buell rider was 5th from the start line when racing was called for the day. He’d been in line since 7:00 a.m. and the line is a mile long. It takes patience to go fast.

The Bonneville speed trials are spread out over 8 miles. There are thousands of rebars pounded into the salt and miles of yellow plastic tape denoting areas but it all seems so random. We ride over and under the tape. No one bothers us. The tape is just to give your mind something to work on in the featureless white plains. Mostly the pit area is near the middle and the course is a quarter mile away. Bring binoculars or all you’ll see is a tiny object speeding from your right to your left.

Walking the pits is a 6-mile proposition. It’s huge and the blinding white salt burns your skin from underneath. You really need two hats: one on top as normal and one with the center cut out and the brim circling your neck like a Queen Elizabeth collar.

The place is solid enough where compacted. Out towards the edges and further north the salt gets crunchy and damp. It feels like the water table is a few inches down.

2:30 p.m. and racing is over; spectators and racers wander away from the salt in dribs and drabs. It’s a slow exodus with a heavy flat head V-8 feel to it.

Old Salts tell me attendance is down this year but that guy who waited all day for his run thinks that there are plenty of people. I’m a rookie so it looks fine to me.

The track radio announcer who is from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is also in charge of the Porta Potties. There are 74 plastic potties spread around the 8 miles. I told him number 68 out by Mile Marker 7 was not sitting level and could he shim the thing properly. He wants to set a record with a ZZR Kawasaki but has run out of money. Announcing is a slow business with 75% of the track closed but he makes a good job of keeping it interesting.

I met a chick with a turbo CB125 Honda. She was in the empty impound area where the record setters await a second pass to make it official. She said the track was rutted and bumpy but she managed 57 miles per hour. Somehow that was a record. The soft salt sucks power. It’s like racing through sand.

On the ride back to town you’ll pass hundreds of campers parked alongside the road. It’s a free camp area but the facilities are zero. It’s primitive but for the guys watching TV in motorhomes it all looks the same.

My buddy Old Iron says that to find a good restaurant in West Wendover look for salt in the parking lot. The more salt, the better. If there’s a turbine powered car parked up you’re golden. It works, my brothers.

Salt 5

West Wendover, Nevada.

Where else can you find an old flathead Ford Hot Rod and a 27-foot long turbine powered Liner parked up at the cafe?

So many talented builders are in Bonneville. The trailers are works of art, their suspensions complex links and air bags. It’s like a superior race of mechanics from another planet has landed on Earth.

We can’t go a block in the mini-casino town of West Wendover without stumbling on something cool, something Rod-ish.

Right now, in this town, the combined brain power could accomplish any task. And it would be accomplished with glossy paint and many, many holes drilled for light weight.

Salt is everywhere. The cars are covered in it. It falls off in fist-sized chunks and then the salt chunks are pulverized by passing cars.

But back to camping: my tent has changed shape in the 6 years since I last propped the thing up. The poles are all the wrong length and I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to cut large sections out of the walls to assemble the thing.

The tent is standing but it looks more like a pile of dirty laundry rather than a house. All these geniuses surrounding me. How do I tap into that knowledge?

The Husky is getting a bit cranky. At low speeds It’s stalling frequently. The clutch is dragging a bit and with no flywheel the thing will just pop and die. I think I’ll check the intake manifold rubber for tightness.

Had a great dinner at the Prospector Cafe: fried chicken with salad, bread and iced tea, cheeseburger and a Modelo dark beer totaled $20. A guy could get used to casino living.

Salt 2

I like going camping with a truck. You’ve got plenty of space to load your gear and when you get there you can set up a nice little spot. I guess I’ve already told you how much I hate carrying camping gear on a motorcycle and that motels near Bonneville, Utah are expensive. But it seems I can’t stop myself, I just keep complaining. I see those BMW earth-roamer types with all the gear piled up over their heads and I think, “Oh, Hell no! I’m cool as an ice cube, that’s not me.”

Yet here I am. Here I am piling camping junk over my head like a Starbucks-sipping, Hi-Vis wearing, midlevel manager-who-mistakenly-thinks-corporate-values-his-efforts, Beemer rider. The shame, it burns hot.

That’s not the worst of it. I just know the flimsy aluminum sub-frame on the Husqvarna is going to break. It has to. This bike was designed with two things in mind: to pop wheelies and flee from the Po-Po. Because I don’t have a running street bike I’ve turned the Husky into a single cylinder Gold Wing. It burns, man.

No way was I going to get all the camping stuff onto the Trophy Rack that the Husky was wearing. I had to dramatically expand capacity and the only way to do that was with saddlebags. To do bags I needed some infrastructure in place that would prevent the bags from tangling in the rear wheel and melting to the high mount, noisy, life saving, public opinion destroying, Arrow exhaust can.

I have no way to weld stainless steel but I have a lot of stainless tubing so I chopped it up and took the sticks to Roy’s welding (out by the mini goat farm) and the fine crew at Roy’s stuck it all together.

Next I needed a few plastic bits to fit the existing rack and give my U-bolts something to tighten against without bending the metal straps. I knocked these out of some thick plastic I had left over from a boat job 35 years ago.

My Safety Exhaust on the Husqvarna is high and tight so I riveted a metal heat shield on the left side of the Super MoTour bike. My buddy Mike loaned me the saddlebags, I don’t want them to catch fire in front of him. You’ll be hearing more about Mike, as this Bonneville ride is his idea. All told, I’ve probably doubled the poundage of the featherweight Husky with this jungle gym hanging off the back.

Unrelated to the luggage situation but still needing sorting was the Husky’s headlight. The normal bulb is an incandescent 35-watt, both high and low beam. The bulb works ok in the daytime but it casts a feeble light for night use. It’s like having a Black Hole on the front of your motorcycle. The pattern reaches only a few feet into the gloom. On moonless nights it struggles to illuminate the front fender. It’s so dim bugs fly away from it. Hey, I’m here all week, invite your friends.

The other problem with the stock bulb is that it constantly blows out. The tiny filament shatters and when that happens you get an intermittent headlight that turns on and off as the filament shakes around making contact now and then. Sometimes the bulb will self-heal, the wire re-welds itself and the light may stay on a few hundred miles. Despite all this, the inside of the bulb is usually broken into a million pieces by the time 1000 miles rolls past.

I tried a bunch of different bulbs. LED, Halogen, HID, and incandescent; most of them ran too hot for the Husqvarna’s plastic reflector. For this trip I’ve settled on a cheap LED bulb with no watt rating or any information stamped into the metal housing. It is a very crummy bulb, perhaps even weaker than the incandescent bulb but I’m hoping it stands up to vibration better. A strange side effect of the LED electronics is that the high beam indicator light stays on all the time. I’m sure the bulb won’t short out and fry my electrical system.  What could go wrong?

That’s it. I’m leaving in a few days so I’ll be blogging from the road like Berk taught me to do. See you in Bonneville.

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Table Salt – Prepping a Husky for Bonneville

Selecting A Bonneville Ride

It amazes me when guys post photos of their garages full of motorcycles and every one of them runs. You can hop on any motorcycle they own and it’ll start right up and function perfectly, like the day it left the factory. I’m amazed but unaffected. Those people might as well be from Pluto. Here on earth, my motorcycle collection continues to fall apart faster than I can put it back together.

Your hard-working ExhaustNotes.us correspondent is headed to the Bonneville Salt Flats in a few weeks and since I don’t want to try and mooch a loaner motorcycle on such short notice that means I’ll have to ride one of my clunkers.

The obvious choice would be one of the big Kawasaki street bikes except neither the Z1900 or the ZRX1100 are close to running. I could take Godzilla, it always runs, but this ride will have some high speed sections and while Godzilla can run 70 mph on the highway she gets 30 miles per gallon doing it.

The Husqvarna 510 SMR

So that leaves the most uncomfortable bike I own, a Husqvarna 510 SMR for long distance touring. The Husky is not without its problems, though. The fork seals are puking oil all over the front tire and if they didn’t hold ¾ of a quart in each leg I’d just let the forks bleed out and ride the thing as is.

Husqvarna Fork Repair

Amazon had the seal kits I needed and after watching a few how-to videos on YouTube I took apart the upside-downies. The forks came apart easily. I’d say no harder than the right-side-up forks I’m used to. Man, they do hold some oil!

Pressing in the new seal required a custom PVC seal tool that I copied from a YouTuber and you’ll need to remember to pre-install all the parts in the correct order or you’ll have to start all over. After reassembly I dumped some 5wt fork oil inside and primed the damper rod to get all the air bubbles out. I was dreading this job but it was easy as pie.  Don’t fear the new style forks, my brothers.

Husqvarna Chain Replacement

The Husqvarna’s chain had 11,000 miles on it and it was still in fair shape. I think I could have easily gotten another 3000 or so miles on it but I’m not riding solo on this trip and I don’t want to be That Guy. The RK chain I ordered came with one of those rivet-type master links. The kind of master link that I hate.

I’ve got it half-assed riveted but will need CT to hold a backing hammer against the pins while I do a more through job of peening over the hollow head of the link. I know I should use the correct chain riveting tool but at some point you’ve got to stop buying every tool for every job. Don’t make your loved ones last memories of you be bitter resentment for having to dispose of your junk. I’m bringing along the old, clip-type link just in case.

Husqvarna Lever Repair

A while back I broke the clutch lever when I dropped the Husky on a muddy trail at Big Bend Park in Texas. The little stub lever was working ok mostly because the clutch itself had quit working due to a bad O-ring on the slave cylinder. You know me: I keep my stuff in top shape. I priced a new lever and they were more than a Mini Motor top end overhaul kit, my new gold standard of affordability.

I had a donor lever in stock and hacked it to the proper length. Next, I used some of that Harbor Freight aluminum-welding rod that works with a regular torch. It’s odd stuff. You have to scratch and push the rod to get it to stick to your base metal and the work tends to fall away without warning. The rods work great on flat welds but things did not go too well with the lever. After melting two sticks of the welding rod I had a nice, tumorous blob to cut away and grind smooth. It looks like hell, there’s no two ways about it.

The fault line on the repaired lever matches the pre-cut, breakaway slots that came from the factory. We will see if the chewing gum will hold. I may be forced into buying a new lever but not today.

Since the Bonneville area does not have many motel rooms and the few they do have are expensive we will be camping at the KOA. I hate camping on a motorcycle because all the junk you need to carry makes the ride so much less enjoyable. My next project will be fabricating a pipe cage to fit around the Husky’s existing luggage rack. This will give me a secure place to strap all the camping gear: right before it catches fire and falls into the wheel.

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