I recently heard from good buddy Steve Seidner over at alma mater CSC Motorcycles that the new 2020 RX3 colors have arrived, and the colors are sharp! Take a look:
Steve told me that the new 2020 RX3 includes substantial refinements and that the bike has steadily improved since its 2015 introduction. I thought the 2015 version (the one I ride) was impressive; to hear that it has improved makes the RX3 even more desirable. The 2020 RX3 motorcycles are in stock now, and the price has dropped to $3995. That’s a hell of a deal.
The RX3 story makes for an interesting read and if you’d like to know more about these motorcycles, pick up a copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM.
When you don’t run a carbureted bike for a while and it runs rough or won’t idle, it’s probably because the slow jet is clogged. It’s not from dirt or contaminants getting into the fuel; it’s from the fuel itself. The fuel congeals when the bike sits for an extended period (we’re talking months here), the jet clogs, and your bike just won’t idle or run well at small throttle openings. That often occurs if you let your bike sit over the winter. One way to potentially avoid this is to close the petcock and run the bike out of fuel when you’re done riding. I don’t do that, though, mostly because I don’t want to let the bike idle for an extended period and, truth be told, I’m lazy.
I wrote the CSC maintenance tutorials for the TT250, so I had a bit of a leg up doing this myself on my TT250 when I had the problem recently. I hadn’t ridden my TT250 in a few months, it was hard starting and I couldn’t get it to idle when I finally did get it to start. I knew what was going on immediately: It was the slow jet clogging. All carbed bikes will do this (it’s not a problem unique to the TT250).
Everything I’m showing you here is right out of the CSC TT250 carb maintenance tutorial. That tutorial covers everything about the carb. This blog is specifically focused on cleaning the slow speed jet to address the idling and slow speed roughness issue.
I find the best way to do this is to pull the carb off the engine. To do that, you’ll need to remove the bike’s side panels. Close the fuel petcock and remove the fuel line from it to the carb (you’ll spill a little gas, so don’t do this around open flame or heat). Like a lot of maintenance actions on modern motorcycles, half the job is just removing stuff that’s in the way first.
Disconnect the duct that goes to the airbox and pull it off the carb.You don’t have to disconnect the duct at the airbox end; just take off the end that attaches the carb.Unscrew the top of the carb.Remove the slide from the carb.Working from the left side of the bike (opposite the carb) remove the bolt securing the rear brake fluid reservoir and let it hang free. You need to do this to get to the carb mounting bolt on the left side.Unbolt the carb from the cylinder head. The nut on the right is easy to get to; the nut on the left side of the carb is a bitch to get to, which is why we moved the brake fluid reservoir out of the way.
At this point, you can remove the carb from the bike, and then the float bowl from the carburetor. This will provide access to the jets. Some folks might think that you can remove the float bowl with the carb still on the bike, but I’ve not found a way to do that. It’s best to do it the way I describe here.
Undo the three screws securing the float bowl to the carb.Remove the float bowl. You’ll spill a little gas here, so be careful.
After have removed the float bowl, you’ll be able to see the jets. The one we’re interested in here is the slow jet. Remove it with a flat-bladed screwdriver.
The slow speed jet is the main character in this “won’t idle worth a damn” story.
After removing the slow jet, clean it thoroughly. This involves cleaning all the orifice holes on the sides of the jet, and the main hole through the inside diameter of the jet. You need to use a thin wire to do this. Just blowing it out with carb cleaner or WD 40 won’t dislodge the tiny bits of congealed fuel. There are tools to do this (CSC Motorcycles sells them). I used a small diameter brass wire and it got the job done.
Use a wire to clean the slow jet and then blow it out with carb cleaner or WD40.Looking down the bore of the slow jet.Make sure you use the wire to get everything out of all the holes.
Once the slow jet is clean, reinstall the jet in the carb. There’s no adjustment here; just screw it in taking care not to overtighten it.
After you’ve done the above, assembly is the reverse of disassembly. Your bike should start easily, idle, and run well at small throttle openings.
As many of you know, good buddy and motojournalist extraordinaire Kevin Duke is now a Brand Manager with CSC Motorcycles, which is good for CSC and good for Kevin. Kevin and CSC recently released this video on the new 450cc RX4 motorcycle, and it’s the best one to ever come out of CSC (the video and the motorcycle). But don’t take my word for it…check it out yourself!
If you’d like to see more about how the RX4 compares to the RX3 (and to the KLR 650) please check out our RX4 pages.
This is the next installment of our series on Death Valley, and it’s about the Hell’s Loop Rally organized by Alan Spears and the Motor Scooter International Land Speed Federation. We rode it in November of 2011, and while it was sunny that day, it was plenty cold. It was a scooter endurance run of 400 miles in a single day. You might be thinking that’s not too many miles. Try it on a 150cc scooter and tell me if you still feel the same way.
I was working with CSC Motorcycles at the time and the thought was we could ride the event with our 150cc Mustang replicas. The team included good buddies TK, Arlene, and yours truly. It was grand fun and CSC garnered good exposure from that event. I had a blast, and for me, it nailed three birds with one stone: A great motorcycle ride, another chance for a ride through Death Valley, and a chance to get more cool stuff to write about (and photograph) for the CSC blog.
With that as a backdrop, here’s the story.
A Cold Day In Hell
Arlene B (of Go Go Gear fame, and a California Scooter rider) and TK. TK and I both worked at CSC Motorcycles. That’s my red CSC 150 motorcycle.
Hell’s Loop, that is…the Motor Scooter International Land Speed Federation (MSILSF) and Alan Spears’ latest event. You’d think an event named after a place known for warmer temperatures would offer toasty riding, but it sure was cold!
The Death Valley Loop
This event was all about endurance riding, and Alan and the MSILSF team sure outdid themselves on this one. The route took a big round trip from Barstow, California, east on the 15, north on the 127 along the eastern edge of Death Valley (think Ronald Reagan, the old Death Valley Days television show, and 20-mule teams hauling borax), west on 190 through Death Valley, a long loop down through Death Valley’s center to a delightful little town called Trona (just kidding about that one, folks), back to the 395 south, and then Highway 58 back to Barstow.
The Hell’s Loop event was billed as an endurance rally, but in actuality it was a race. You and I both know you’re not supposed to race on public highways, but on scooters and small motorcycles, “racing” is not what it would be on bigger bikes. We ran this event with our throttles wide open a good 95% of the time. No kidding. The twist grips were pegged. That doesn’t mean we were speeding, though. Sometimes a wide open throttle meant 65 miles per hour when we were on the flats with no headwinds, and sometimes it meant 35 mph when we were climbing a long grade. Another aside at this point…the bikes performed flawlessly. This was another event in which we beat the, uh, Hell’s Loop out of our California Scooters, and they ran great.
The guy who won the event, Tom Wheeler, won it on a 49cc Kymco motor scooter. Yep, you read that right. 49 cubic centimeters! We’re sure not in the business of publicizing other brands, but hey, we’re more than happy to give credit where credit is due. Tom drove out from Arkansas for this event and he finished first on his 49cc Kymco, beating machines with nearly 10 times the engine displacement.
The Ride
The weekend started with TK and I rolling into Barstow Friday afternoon for a great lunch at Del Taco. Those of you who know Del Taco might be tempted to laugh (it’s a fast food Mexican chain not usually known for their fine food), but the Del Taco restaurants in Barstow are different. Ed Hackbarth is the entrepreneur who started Del Taco, and he did so in Barstow. Ed sold the Del Taco chain to a conglomerate after building it up into a huge business, but he kept the original three Barstow restaurants. Here in southern California, we know that if you want good Mexican food, Barstow’s Del Tacos are unlike any others. Everything is fresh, everything is bigger, and it’s not unusual to see Ed himself working in the kitchen preparing your lunch. Trust me on this one, folks….if you’re ever passing through Barstow, you need to stop for a meal at Del Taco.
Our Motel 6 room…where old Tom Bodette left the light on for us…$35 a night, and it might have been the most expensive hotel in Barstow! It was raining and we didn’t want to leave the bikes out in the cold, wet weather. A lot of the Hell’s Loop riders slept with their bikes Friday night.
On Friday we had a bitter cold rain, but the forecast was for sunny warm weather on Saturday. Well, they got half of it right. I once heard one of those radio political talking heads say that the reason economists exist is to make weather forecasters look good. I think that guy might have had it backwards. It was sunny, but wow, was it cold when we woke up on Saturday morning. I wasn’t too worried…I had my California Scooter motorcycle jacket, a pair of warm motorcycle pants, and my Haix Goretex boots (they’re made in Austria and they’re great), but it was still cold. Really cold.
After a great 6:00 a.m. breakfast at IHOP Saturday morning, we rolled out onto Interstate 15 on our California Scooters and headed north. Wow, was it ever cold!On California 127, headed into Death Valley. We rode under beautiful blue skies along Highway 127…it was a glorious day to be out on a motorcycle!
It sure was cold Saturday morning. As in maybe 40 degrees. Teeth chattering cold. I know all of our friends on the east coast would view this as something of a heat wave, but I gotta tell you, when you do 400 miles in one day through this kind of weather, it’s cold.
Before I get too much further, let me give you a warning about the photos. They’re not my best ever. We didn’t stop to smell the roses on this one, boys and girls, and most of these shots were from the saddle of my CSC motorcycle at high speed. That’s why a lot of the angles are off, and it’s why they might be a bit fuzzy. This ride was all about getting back to Barstow first. We stopped for fuel and restroom breaks, and that was it. We didn’t even eat. 400 miles on a motorcycle, in 40-degree weather, with no messing around. Riding…that’s what this run was all about. And in the cold weather, our CSC motorcycles were running strong. We thought we were gonna set the world on fire, until we heard about Tom Wheeler on that 49cc scooter. But I’ll come back to that. So after rolling along on Interstate 15 for about 60 miles, we took a left at Baker and headed toward Death Valley. The skies were clear, the riding was glorious, and we froze our tootsies off.
A 60-mph shot from the saddle…riding through the Mojave Desert!
We weren’t too sure about where we’d be able to buy gas, so we each carried a spare gallon or two. Turns out we didn’t need the extra gas, but we stopped nearly every place we saw a gas station just to make sure.
When we rolled into Shoshone, I was blown away by the gas prices. Believe it or not, these were not the highest gas prices we saw on this trip! I was sure glad I was riding a 100mpg California Scooter when I saw those prices. Ah, the glory of price gouging.
Every time I see something like what the photo above shows, I want to confront the owner and ask him if his mother knows what he does for a living, but I know it would be a futile gesture. And another 100 miles up the road, we paid prices that made what the photo above shows seem cheap.
Barney Fife
While we were topping off in Shoshone, I saw a National Park Service HumVee that I thought was pretty cool. I had never seen one of these in use by a law enforcement agency, so I snapped a quick photo of it while I was on my California Scooter. I guess the NPS ranger who was in it didn’t like that. As I kid, I always had a mental image of park rangers as pretty cool guys who took care of the bears and stuff like that. This guy was decidedly unfriendly…there’s no nice way to say it. Maybe it was a slow day for him and he wanted to harass some rough-looking bikers like me, Arlene, and TK. He wanted to know about Alan, who rolled through Shoshone earlier on his two-stroke Kymco burning “exotic fuels.” A park ranger. I chalked it up to another instance of our tax dollars at work. Go figure.
A National Park Service Hummer.
Continuing the Ride
After the fuel stop in Shoshone, we were on the road again. Here are a few more shots from the saddle.
On the floor of Death Valley, about 100 feet below sea level.After we climbed out of Death Valley’s floor, it was a fast downill run west…you can see the flare from shooting into the sunHeading west to Panamint on the western edge of Death Valley. The bikes were running just great in the cold weather. Here’s a quick shot of my speedometer as we rolled through Death Valley. Smoking right along on the Baja Blaster!Arlene’s California Scooter ticked over the 9,000-mile mark on this ride, and we stopped for a quick photo.
9000 miles, including great California Scooter rides up and down the California Coast, the Sierra Nevadas, the entire length of Baja, and Death Valley! Arlene may well be our highest mileage California Scooter rider.
Our next stop was Panamint. There’s a gas station and a convenience store out there (but not much else). This place set a new record: $5.79 per gallon! It’s the most I’ve ever paid for gasoline in my life!
$5.79 a gallon….but what a cool photo op!
Wildrose Canyon Road and Trona
While we were stopped, I pulled out an extra T-shirt and added it to the several layers of clothing I already had on under my California Scooter motorcycle jacket. To my surprise, that one extra layer did the trick. I stayed relatively warm for the next 130 miles back to Barstow. After our Panamint gas gouging, we turned the bikes east for a quick three miles back down the road to Wildrose Canyon. That was our route out of Death Valley, and here’s a shot looking east across the valley floor.
Death Valley’s floor, as seen from the saddle, looking east from Panamint
We negotiated Wildrose Canyon Road, fought the wind downhill, and then we rolled into Trona. Trona is a mining town (they mine potash or some other such chemical), and there isn’t too much else out there. And I gotta tell ya, when they built “no place” they must have centered it around Trona (because that town sure is in the middle of no place). It’s an interesting place, though…a collection of white chemicals, brown hills in the distance, blue skies, and industrial processing equipment.
A late-in-the-day, shot-from-the-saddle photo of Trona. Some day, I’d like to ride out to Trona just to take photos.
Returning to Barstow
After Trona, we cranked the bikes wide open for the run home. It was a burst out to the 395, a speed run down to Highway 58, and then a left turn for the last 32 miles back to Barstow. We pulled in to the Motel 6 parking lot just after dark. And it was even colder. Did I mention earlier that it was cold?
Alan Spears, his friend Kathleen, and Dennis did a great job organizing this event.
When we returned to the Motel 6 rally headquarters, the good folks from MSILSF had good food and drinks waiting, and that was a good thing. We hadn’t eaten all day, and I was hungry. And cold. It sure was nice to return to a warm welcome. And it sure was interesting to learn about the winning bike and rider…that would be Tom Wheeler from Arkansas.
Tom Wheeler, a Kymco dealer from Arkansas, accepting one of his trophies for the Hell’s Loop Endurance Rally.
The Winner: A 49cc Kymco!
As I mentioned earlier, Tom won the event on a 49cc Kymco. Good Lord! A 49cc Kymco! My first thought was that the bike had to have had a couple of superchargers and maybe it was running on nitro, but no, that wasn’t it at all. Tom is obviously an experienced endurance rider, and he had the problem sorted. When I asked Tom about the top speed on his 49cc sizzler, he told me that it might see 45 mph on a flat road under ideal conditions. We sure didn’t have ideal conditions, and what that meant to me is that Tom ran a lot of the day’s 400 miles at something between 30 and 40 mph. The trick is to not have to stop. Tom had an auxiliary gas tank on his Kymco, and he only had to make one stop for gas.
Alan and crew sure did an outstanding job pulling this event together, which didn’t surprise me at all. MSILSF is the same outfit that organized the November 2009 Land Speed Record trials and last year’s Salton Sea Endurance Rally, and both of those events were wonderful.
I am more than a little intrigued by all of this, and by MSILSF. You might be, too, folks. Think about it. Motor competition. Real competition. Speed trials. Endurance rallies. All with scooters. You can get into it, real motor competition, for peanuts. And a California Scooter is a great way to do so.
Here’s a shot of Tom Wheeler’s winning 49cc scooter. 400 miles in one day on a 49cc motor scooter! Can you imagine!
So that was it, folks. 400 miles in one day, we won the 150cc class, and we had a great time.
We just returned from a trek through Death Valley a few days ago, which prompted our series of blogs about prior Death Valley trips. You can read the first two Death Valley blog installments here.
And, oddly enough, the Los Angeles Times ran a story in 2017 about a trip that almost exactly described the ride you see in this blog. You can read that one here.
I stopped by to visit with the boys at CSC Motorcycles yesterday morning and the TT250 Supermoto setup you see above stopped me in my tracks. This, my friends, is one seriously good looking motorcycle. Seriously good looking, seriously well equipped, and seriously inexpensive. Think new hubs and aluminum wheels, custom tires, new disks, a matching red anodized sprocket, anodized red footpegs, and red grips. Don’t like red? CSC has a bunch of colors you can order the Supermoto package in to suit your tastes. But that red and black is going to be hard to beat.
I own a TT250 (one from the very first shipment) and I like it a lot. I played a minor role in helping to configure and bring that motorcycle to the US, and I’ve toured Baja on it. It’s a grand bike and it sells for just $2,195. And to close out the last of the 2019s, CSC is knocking $200 off that. You’ll make up that amount and a bit more configuring it with the Supermoto option shown above, but you’d still have a brand new motorcycle for something around $3,000 (roughly the price of a set of BMW saddlebags).
A CSC motorcycle is one of the best values in the motorcycle world. I’ve maintained that from Day One, and I’ve got the miles under my belt in Asia, America, South America, and Baja to back it up.
Take a look at some of the details on this bike:
Here’s the tab on all of the above:
Red and black always work for me. Those are my school colors (go Scarlet Knights!), they just look good, and the bike kind of matches my Gear’d Hardware ZX2 wristwatch.
Red and black works on a lot of things, one of them being this Gear’d Hardware ZX2 watch!
Hey, I spoke with good buddy Baja John yesterday. I’m still thinking about a quick run down to his place in Baja next month. I need to get my knees in the Baja breeze. John is like me…he rides a TT250 and an RX3, too. Maybe I can talk Gresh into a ride…that would be fun!
Want to read about the TT250 and other bikes in Baja? Give a click here!
My 3FC19 RX4 motorcycle on the road last night. It’s a great motorcycle.
I’m getting excited about the upcoming Southern California Motorcycle Association’s Three Flags Classic adventure and the CSC RX4 I’ll be riding on this epic rally. I’ve been putting a few miles on the RX4 CSC graciously provided and I thought I would fill you in on a few of the specifics I’m discovering on this bike.
I have a measured mile by my home and I was happy to see that the RX4 clocked it at exactly 1.0 miles. I think that’s pretty much what all the motorcycles do these days for obvious reasons. If the odometer read more miles than you actually covered, the manufacturer would be cheating you out of a portion of the warranty, and if the odometer read fewer miles, they’d be warranting the bike for longer than they intended to. The point is moot with a CSC motorcycle; their bikes are warranted for unlimited miles. But it’s nice to know that whatever distance it says you’ve gone is the real distance.
Command central and my high-tech data bank. The ergos on this bike are good.
The next thing I checked was fuel economy, and I did so based on a mix of freeway, city, and mountain road riding. The bike I rode, with roughly 1200 miles on the clock, returned 66.34 mpg. I think CSC advertises 60 mpg for the RX4; I did 10% better than that with the one I’m riding.
Next up was motorcycle speed indicated by the speedometer versus GPS indicated speed. I found that the speedometer was 15% to 8% optimistic, depending on velocity. At higher speeds, the speedometer error decreased to the 8% range. It’s pretty common for motorcycle speedometers to be about 10% optimistic. It’s also very common for the percentage difference between actual speed and speedometer-indicated speed to not be constant (the error percentage changes with speed).
Indicated versus Actual MPH on the RX4 I’m riding in the 2019 Three Flags Classic. Speedometer error, as a percentage, decreased as velocity increased. The bike will do way more than 80 mph; I just didn’t want to go any faster for this test.
Next up was a quick look at engine RPM versus indicated speed. The RX4 cranks way less RPM at every speed compared to the RX3. Here’s what it looks like on the RX4…
Velocity versus RPM on the RX4. The RX4 engine runs at lower rpm for any given speed than does the RX3.
The RX4 has a torquey motor, and I was surprised at how low the RPM is at any given speed compared to the RX3. I know on my RX3, 80 mph is somewhere near the redline at 9000 RPM. On the RX4, the engine is just loafing along at a meager 6000 RPM. The RX4 engine pulls strongly from anything above 3000 RPM. You can downshift to move away more quickly, but you don’t need to on this bike.
And hey, because I know you’ll ask, here’s what the bike sounds like…
Another area in which the RX4 excels is its lighting. The headlight does a fantastic job; I was impressed riding it at night.
Up above the Pomona Valley with the sun going down. An orange bike photographs well, don’t you think? And hey, Orlando, what’s the fastest color?
That’s it for now. I’ll have a lot more info on the RX4 and the 3FC19 ride, and I’ll be posting from the road every day. Make sure you sign up for our automatic blog updates so you don’t miss anything!
Want to learn more about the RX4 motorcycle? Take a look at our comparisons of the RX4 to the RX3 and the KLR 650 here. And don’t forget to visit CSC’s website, too, for more information on the RX4 and CSC’s other motorcycles.
Yep, it’s going to be the CSC RX4, and I’m pumped about the ride. There’s not a lot of information out there on this bike yet other than here on the ExNotes site, and I’ll give you the link for that at the end of this post.
Steve Seidner (President and CEO of CSC Motorcycles) and good buddy Matt (motorcycle maestro extraordinaire), the two guys who are prepping my RX4 for the 3FC19 ride.
I’ll be the first guy to take the RX4 on a major road trip in the US, and I’ll be the first guy to ride it internationally on a single ride. I think that’s pretty cool.
Steve and Matt prepped the bike for me by changing the oil, adjusting the valves, installing spotlights, installing the cell phone holder so I can use Waze to navigate, and more. It was cool visit, and I enjoyed seeing the guys at CSC again.
Down to the frame, just to make sure everything is ready for my 4,500-mile epic international journey. It wasn’t necessary. The guys found nothing wrong.These are going to turn night into day for me. I like them!Check out the double disks, and hey, Orlando…look, it’s orange…the fastest color!A subfender. Cool!A new rear tire and chain lube. It’s going to be a great ride.I spec’d out the Tourfella aluminum luggage on this bike…I’ll be carrying my laptop and all my camera gear, and like always, I’ll be blogging from the road every night. You’ll be able to follow the entire trip right here on the ExNotes blog. Hey, do you think the top dawgs at Harley or Honda personally prep bikes for their rally riders?
So, about that additional RX4 information…you can find it right here on our RX4 page! And hey, check out the CSC Motorcycles site, too!
What? You haven’t signed up for our automatic email blog updates yet? Hey, you can do that right here!
Want to read about some of our other epic rides on CSC motorcycles, Royal Enfield motorcycles, Janus motorcycles, and the odd Harley or two? Take a look at our Epic Rides page!
Wow, was I ever surprised when a young guy in a pickup truck held up this note as we rode south on Highway 101!
The photo you see above popped up in my Facebook feed this morning letting me know it was 4 years ago that I posted it, and that meant it was four years ago that we finished the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride. Here’s what I originally posted on the CSC blog about that “Hi Joe” sign:
We are in Santa Maria tonight. It was an easy roll once we got past San Jose, but the traffic on the 101 leaving San Francisco and all the way down past San Jose was rough this morning. After that, we basically put the bikes on cruise control and ran 75 mph all the way down.
Here’s a cool thing…on the 101, just past San Luis Obispo, a couple of guys in a gray pickup truck pulled up alongside our convoy and starting beeping and waving at us. When they were alongside me, one held up a sign that said “Hi, Joe!” Cool stuff. I have no idea who those guys were, but it’s a safe bet they’ll read this. Guys, when you do, shoot me an email. It made my day seeing you today. I had a good laugh over it.
I mentioned the above in the CSC blog, and later that same day I received this email from my good buddy San Marino Bill:
Joe:
My son just called me (3 pm) from the Paso Robles area and wanted to know where the CSC group was riding today. He is up there picking up his son. He was following a group of good looking bikes (10 or 12). I told him to make a sign that said HI JOE and show it to the leader. I hope it was you.
Bill
That was a pretty cool experience, and it kind of wrapped up how well the ride was received and how much good it did for the RX3 motorcycle and our efforts to show the world it is a great motorcycle. You can read more about that in 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM, the book about bringing the RX3 to America and the Western America Adventure Ride.
My 4-year-old RX3, with its Western America Adventure Ride decal. I still own the bike. It’s in my garage right now, just a few feet from where I sit typing this blog.
We sure had a blast on that ride, and people were following it on the CSC blog all over the world. I remember Pioneer Day in Idaho on that ride, where we literally rode in a parade and people lined the streets awaiting our arrival on the CSC motorcycles. I’ll post that story in another day or two.
Another grand adventure is a little less than a month away. I’ll be riding the new RX4 from Mexico to Canada in the Southern California Motorcycle Association’s 2019 Three Flags Classic. I last did that ride in 2005 (you can read the story about that here), and I’m looking forward to doing it again on the RX4. I’ll be blogging the ride daily, I have a commission for two magazine articles on it, and I’m toying with the idea of a short book on the ride, the RX4 bike, the SCMA, CSC, and Zongshen. That’s going to be good for CSC, Zongshen, the SCMA, and the Three Flags Classic event. It will be another grand adventure. Stay tuned, because I’ll be posting much more here on the ExNotes blog.
That was my reaction when the photos you see below popped up on my Facebook feed, telling me it had been four years since I posted them. Yep, it was in July of 2015 that yours truly, Joe Gresh, and riders from China and Colombia descended on CSC Motorcycles to christen the RX3 with a ride through the great American West. So Cal to Sturgis, due west to Washington and Oregon, and then a run down the coast home, hitting every National Park and site worth seeing along the way. It was an amazing adventure, and truth be told, I was shocked that it has been four years already. That meant it was about four years ago that CSC brought the RX3 to America, it was four years ago that I first met Joe Gresh in person (a living legend, in my mind), and it was four years ago that we took a ride that made the entire motorcycle world sit up and take notice. A dozen guys, a dozen 250cc motorcycles fresh off the boat from China, 5000 miles, and not a single breakdown. Tell me again about Chinese motorcycles are no good? Nah, don’t waste your breath. I know better.
It was a hell of a ride, and good buddy John Welker did a hell of a job as our very own Ferdinand Magellan, defining the route, making all of the hotel reservations, keeping us entertained with great stories, and more. These are the same photos (I took them all) that popped up on Facebook. They represent only a small portion of the ride, but they give you an idea of what it was like. It was grand.
Somewhere along Highway 89 in Arizona. The guy in the foreground is our very own Baja John Welker. That’s Joe Gresh way at the other end of this row of motorcycles.Same location, with Hugo out front. Hugo is the Zongshen factory rep. He’s a great guy who kept us constantly entertained.Mr. Tso, posing for me in Zion National Park. This guy makes for a great photograph. He rode with us in China, too!We stayed in Panguitch, Utah, the night before we visited Bryce Canyon National Park. Dinner that evening was at the Cowboy’s Smoke House. I liked it so much I later returned with my wife just to have dinner there.Tony and his mascot inside Cowboy’s. Great times.Bryce Canyon National Park. Everyone was captivated by this place. It was awesome.Kyle, one of the Chinese riders, and Big John, our chase vehicle driver. Good guys both.Tony and Kyle, posing at Bryce.The crew when we returned to So Cal. From left to right, it’s Juan from Colombia, Joe Gresh, Tony from China, Mr. Tso from China, John Welker, Lester from China, Kong from China, Big John Gallardo, Hugo Liu, Gabriel from Colombia, and Kyle from China.The obligatory photo at Roy’s in Amboy, somewhere in the Mojave Desert. God Almighty it was hot that day.The guys at the Grand Canyon…Lester, Kong, Tso, and Hugo.In Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, at an impromptu photo stop.I grabbed this photo of Joe Gresh along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It looks like he’s Photoshopped into the picture, but he’s not.Same spot, different guys: Gabriel and Juan from Colombia. Juan later invited me to ride with him in Colombia, and I went. That, too, was an incredible ride.
So there you have it, or at least snippets of what was one of the greatest rides I’ve ever done. I’m hoping Facebook has more of these anniversary photos pop up for me, as the ride lasted 19 days and I know I posted more on that ride. Good times. Great riders. Superior camaraderie.
As always, there’s more good stuff coming your way. Stay tuned!
Hey, the whole story of that ride is here. You can get the whole nine yards by buying your own copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM. There’s a lot more good information in there, too, like CSC’s no-dealer approach to market, how we dealt with the Internet trolls who tried to hurt the company, the first CSC Baja trip, the RX3’s strengths and weaknesses, and much, much more!
First up today…our good buddy Gary’s Vintage Yamaha Enduro site. Gary alerted me to it a few days ago, I’ve enjoyed poking around on it, and you will, too.
This is a cool site about cool bikes. Spend some time here; you’ll be a better person for doing so!
I’ve always admired those vintage Yamaha enduros. Gresh has one and it’s one his favorite motorcycles. I remember the maroon 360 Yamaha offered back in the early 1970s (I was still in college then). I always wanted one, but it’s an itch I haven’t scratched yet. Maybe someday. I’m still young.
Good buddy Buffalo, a world-class artist who rode with us on one of the Baja rides, created a line art RX3 motorcycle and it’s available in several formats. Buffalo loves riding and he loves his RX3. Hey, what’s not to like?
This is muey cool, and it’s from a muey cool dude.
Buffalo is a very cool guy who’s done some very cool things. We’ve written about Buffalo before here on the ExNotes blog. Buffalo also has a very cool blog (MotoFritz.com), and it’s another I recommend you visit. Buffalo (along with his cousin and niece) recently toured Vietnam on motorcycles, and there are cool videos on the MotoFritz blog from that trip.
I’m going hunting. Deer this time, in Idaho. Good buddy J invited me to head up north with him later this year to chase Bambi, and I’ll be posting about that here on the ExNotes blog.
Good buddy J and the Power Wagon on an earlier Baja expedition.
I mentioned J recently when I described his new website (Sierra Mountain Passes), but J and I go back a few years. We first met when we were involved in manufacturing high performance sails for ocean racing yachts. Think a million bucks for a set of sails for one boat (and the sails are only good for one season). Good times, those were.
Whoa! Talk about adventure!
But back on the deer quest…I’m starting to research venison recipes (yeah, I know, it’s a little early for that and I am counting my chickens before the eggs have hatched). I’m really looking forward to this adventure. We may get a deer, or we may get skunked. Either way, it’s going to be fun. I’m thinking I’ll take my .300 Weatherby Vanguard. It’s way more power than I’ll need, but we’ll be in some rugged country, the Vanguard is my only composite-stocked rifle, and the thing is a tack driver.
The Weatherby Vanguard in 300 Weatherby Magnum.
More cool stuff…you’ve seen the series we did on the 2005 Three Flags Classic Rally from Mexico to Canada. I rode with good buddy Marty, and it was a hell of an adventure.
Good buddy Marty on the left and yours truly at Lake Louise in Canada during 3FC05. There were signs warning us of grizzlies in the area!
The 3FC is one of the world’s premier motorcycle events, and it’s sponsored by one of the world’s premier motorcycle clubs: The Southern California Motorcycle Association. As it turns out, the SCMA is one of our biggest ExNotes fans. They’ve run our ExNotes stories in the SCMA newsletter and they follow our zany ramblings daily. Good buddy Gonzo, their president, suggested that I join the festivities again this year for the 3FC19 rally, and you know what? I’m going. I’ll be on a new CSC RX4 (one from the very first shipment), and I’ll be blogging the hell out of the ride the entire way from Mexico through the United States and on up into Canada. And then I’ll do the same thing on the way home, for which I’ll take a different (to be determined) route.
The CSC RX4 up in the San Gabriel Mountains.
The CSC RX4 is an exciting motorcycle. There was a recent article on this bike in Adventure Motorcycle magazine, but I thought that review was a bit on the short side. (How about that? A review of a review!) You can read a lot more about the RX4 right here on ExNotes, and you’ll see a whole lot more when I do the 3FC19 on one of the new CSC 450cc RX4 adventure bikes.
This is the next installment of our series on Death Valley, and it’s about the Hell’s Loop Rally organized by Alan Spears and the Motor Scooter International Land Speed Federation. We rode it in November of 2011, and while it was sunny that day, it was plenty cold. It was a scooter endurance run of 400 miles in a single day. You might be thinking that’s not too many miles. Try it on a 150cc scooter and tell me if you still feel the same way.
I stopped by to visit with the boys at 
