Tag: Tinfiny Ranch

The Wayback Machine: Welcome to the Show

By Joe Gresh

I’ve been so busy with home-nesting projects my motorcycles have succumbed to time’s crumbling embrace. I parked the ZRX1100 Kawasaki after the carburetors clogged up and it began running on three cylinders. Since it has been sitting a few years naturally the brake pistons seized. Followed by fluid leaking out of the calipers. Followed by me robbing the battery to start the generator that powers the nest. In any event, it needed tires, a chain and sprockets and the throttle cable repaired. So the big green Eddie Lawson lookalike has suffered the indignity of being dragged across the countryside on a two-hundred-dollar Harbor Freight trailer.

Even worse, the mini bike my pops built for me when I was a wee lad is on the injured reserve list. Forty-eight years idle, Mini has untold issues although the Briggs and Stratton engine still turns over. I’ve lost a few critical, hand-made parts and since the Old Man has shuffled off I’ll have to re-make the stuff myself. It’s not easy handling such a precious thing. The mini is lousy with my father’s engineering and artistic skills. The welds and frame geometry are a direct, tangible link to happy times working together in the garage.

The 1965 Honda 50cc went under water in one of Florida’s many hurricanes so I took it apart and threw everything into boxes and plastic tubs. It’s been apart so long the tubs have crystalized into the finest, most fragile parts bins in existence. The slightest touch turns them to dust. Dry, chalky plastic oxide mingles with 4mm JIC screws and yellowed wings. The sheet-metal swing arm rusted completely in half so I’ll have to rig something in aluminum to secure the rear wheel to the frame and lower shock eyes. I do have a good engine for the Honda: a fire breathing 140cc Lifan clone that clears the front fender by a quarter-inch.

The newest dead-bike I own is a Husqvarna. On the last, long-ish motorcycle ride I took to Big Bend Park way down in south Texas the Husqvarna SMR510 lost its clutch release. Bit by bit, little by little the clutch action faded away until finally pulling the clutch lever had no effect on events. The headlight also broke off but on a dirt bike that’s hardly worth mentioning. We were doing some trail riding down there and the Husky did ok shifting motocross style. Starting out was the main problem as you had to push the thing, jump on, and pop it into first. The bike would either stall or roar off on a wheelie. On the ride home I would circle the backfield waiting for traffic lights to change. Sorry, everyone in El Paso.

At least the Z1 Kawasaki never ran for me. I bought it from the owner of the property we now live on. I had to get it out of there because things were disappearing and I felt someone was going to pilfer the Z before I could. The Z needs all sorts of stuff but I get the feeling this bike will be a keeper. The lines are so clean and simple compared to modern bikes. It sits damn near perfect, doesn’t feel heavy and I know from following David Howell through the Everglades, Z’s do well in the dirt.

Which leaves us with the only motorcycle I own that works: a 360cc, 1971 Yamaha RT1B. Fondly known as Godzilla to dirt riders far and wide, the old Yamaha just keeps popping along. Analog everything, smoky, noisy, sweating petroleum from every pore, this is the bike that will not die. Even with me maintaining it.

Everything around us is constantly falling apart. Even the Great Pyramid in Egypt will be a sand dune one day. I just hope that when it finally falls to the ground replacement parts will still be available on Ebay.

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Fighting Mud With Mud

By Joe Gresh 

ExhaustNotes readers may think I pour a lot of concrete but that’s not really true. I do pour concrete frequently but only a little at a time. My limiting factor is how much total work I can get done in one day. That number dwindles as I grow older. I pour 30 to 40 60-pound bags of 4000 psi concrete on average. Any more and I start to have problems keeping up the finish work and any less is not worth getting the tools dirty. Cleanup takes a lot of time and if you don’t wash everything each time your tools become encrusted with dried concrete. It’s never fun to work with heavy, dirty tools.

Take my latest project, the driveway in front of the little shack we call The Carriage House.  In an attempt to class up the place I am removing the existing driveway, which consisted of remnants of old rugs thrown over dirt. We acquired the rugs from a Physical Therapy training center. The PT rugs were in great condition and very sturdily constructed. Best of all they were free. The rugs served us well for many years by adding a semi-pervious layer between our feet and the dirt below. Engineered earth is the technical term, I think, for fabric-supported fill.

Of course, old rugs aren’t the most perfect solution for driveways or everyone would be using them. You’d see them in Beverly Hills or New York City, not just in poverty stricken rural areas. After several years the rugs become impregnated with dirt and are impossible to vacuum, much less shampoo. Being semi-pervious you still get mud underneath the rug although you don’t sink in as far as you would if going bare earth.

For this driveway I’m using a decorative finishing method called No Need To Square.  No Need To Square means just that: the concrete is formed and finished in a random pattern giving the illusion of being made from many individual pavers. No Need To Square frees the concrete from The Man’s rigid, conformist hierarchy. It allows the finisher to follow the jagged contours found in the crystalline structure of cast Iron like you see in those electron-microscope photographs. The only constant is the slope that steers water runoff towards the drainage ditch running alongside The Carriage House.

Just as a cubist must master fine arts before experimenting with abstract art, the concrete finisher must master the square before leaving it far behind. Unfortunately, I am neither an artist nor a concrete finisher so things can go pear shaped quickly if you don’t mind your grades.

I’ve purchased a new tool for this driveway project: a belt-mounted tie wire spool. Tie wire is used to tie rebar together so that it doesn’t shift position when the concrete pours into the form or clumsy finishers kick it around when striking off. I owned a spool many years ago when I was a construction worker. My old one was more open, like a cage. You could see the wire in the spool, unlike this new one. I don’t know what happened to that old spool.

You’d think as often as I do little concrete pours I would have bought a wire spool sooner and I would have except for the price. The things are like $47 at Home Depot for an off-brand spool. I found a Klein brand spool on Amazon for only a dollar more than the clone version at HD. I’ve seen cheaper, plastic versions and they probably work fine.

There are basically two types of ties for re-bar: the saddle for tying re-bars that cross at right angles and the plain old loop for tying straight pieces together. I like to make up a bunch of each type before starting to tie. Real iron workers make up saddles and loops as they go so because it’s faster and they don’t have to carry a bunch of little, pre-made bits.  I’m never in a hurry. Sitting in a chair with New Mexico’s warm, winter sun shining down on me gives the pre-tying process a sort of Zen-like quality. Sometimes I fall into a trance and end up making 600 of the things.

If you’ve tied much wire you know how easily an unspooled roll of wire can unwind and get tangled up. Pulling wire from the center results in a pig’s tail that you need to straighten out before using. I always double up my wires, as a single strand is easy to break when twisting the rebar tight. The doubling method uses twice as much wire but it makes for a secure grid of rebar. It’s also easy to get stabbed with tie wire and the spool allows you to wind it back inside for the safety of everyone involved on the project.

I’m going to tackle the driveway in two parts: the southern and northern wings. I’ll do the southern (higher) side first. That will give CT somewhere to park while I work on the northern (lower) section. I expect to be working on the southern section for a month or so before the weather gets too cold and I take a break and go back to tying up loose ends on motorcycles.

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Water Security

As mentioned in a previous ExhaustNotes story titled “Guilt Trip,” our water well at the ranch has become unreliable. In order to quickly bring some stability to the situation we decided to install a storage tank and re-shuffle the way water is delivered to our shack.

After pouring a slab to support the new, 3000-gallon water tank we had the local Tank Guy deliver Big ‘Mo to the ranch. Big ‘Mo cost $2800 delivered to our door and that’s a bit expensive but it seems like everything costs more since the Covid crisis eased up. Home Depot has a 2500-gallon tank that is slightly lighter construction for $2300 plus $80 delivery plus tax so the per gallon price is comparable. Buying local means the Tank Guy will spend his money locally. Anyway, I don’t like the way our local Home Depot stores their tank inventory. They put the tanks on their sides instead of the bottom. This makes it easier to move the tanks with a forklift but I suspect it does the tank no good having all the weight where it’s not designed to go.

The Tank Guy stores his tanks upright, just north of Tularosa in a big field across from the railroad overpass. Our tank showed up securely strapped to a trailer…on its side. But only for the time it took to arrive at the ranch. These tanks look huge but they are rotocast plastic and are not that heavy. The 3000-gallon tank weighs 500 pounds. It took the Tank Guy, the Tank Guy’s wife and me to slide the tank up a ramp I handily screwed together earlier for pouring the tank slab.

I installed two ball valves in the bottom of the tank, one ¾-inch for the output and one ½-inch to fill the tank. Tank filling can be done three ways: by water delivery truck, gravity fed from the upper level shed storage tank, or by pumping well water into the tank. A jumble of shut-off valves can be juggled to pressure feed the house from the well, from Big ‘Mo via a centrifugal pump or by gravity from the upper level storage. I’m into redundancy when it comes to water.

If you live in areas that freeze you’ll want to add a pipe heater and insulate any exposed pipe. The black tank helps keep the water from freezing and when the sun comes out we rarely get days under 40 degrees so water freezing in the tank has not been an issue so far.

I took this re-plumbing opportunity to eliminate the water softener and reduce the size of the very old well pump expansion tank. The water softener periodically runs a flush cycle and being on a fixed water supply we can’t waste water like that. The bladder inside the big expansion tank became porous over the years and water had migrated to the dry side causing rust. Plus it was too damn big. I’m thinking it will make a great stand alone fireplace or smoker.

From Big ‘Mo water is piped through a mesh screen filter, a one-way check valve and into a centrifugal pump that provides 40psi of pressure to a large 5-micron filter and on to the house plumbing. The pump has its own small expansion tank that seems to keep a fairly steady flow of water to the fixtures. You can see the flow increase a bit when the pump cycles but nothing a rough, tough, couple of pioneers like CT and I can’t handle.

Since we’ve moved from hot, humid Florida to a colder climate I’ve learned that PVC plumbing is not ideal in freezing conditions. Going forward I’m trying to use PEX plumbing in all my projects and I’ve been happy with the results so far. PEX uses a more flexible pipe that is crimped onto brass PEX fittings with brass/copper-ish crimp rings. You’ll need a special PEX crimp tool to compress the rings onto the PEX fittings. Once crimped, you can spin PEX pipe on its brass fitting (within reason) without causing a leak. I haven’t had one PEX-related leak yet, even when tight working conditions result in a less than optimal crimp. I wish I could say the same for the PEX-to-threaded-pipe connections. One thing to keep in mind is that PEX pipe is not UV resistant so cover any pipes that will see sunlight.

Like most plumbing systems PEX has to be cut and pipes replaced if you need to change anything. You’ll need a PEX removal tool if you want to reuse the brass PEX fittings and why wouldn’t you want to reuse them? The ability to reuse PEX fittings is a big deal. When is the last time you were able to reuse a glued PVC fitting or soldered copper fitting? The removal tool cuts the crimp ring without cutting into the PEX barb. Once the ring is out of the way you can crimp V-shaped depressions around the bit of PEX stuck on the barb. Crimping the Vee’s causes the PEX pipe circumference to expand and the pipe will slide right of the barb without causing undue stress.

It’s a bad feeling when your well runs dry. All of a sudden your shack becomes unlivable. But by building in a little extra infrastructure we have water security even if it means buying water from our local water delivery service. And I have plans on the table for catching much more rain during the next monsoon season that will nearly eliminate our reliance on bought water.

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Joe Gresh’s Tinfiny Toys

A recent road trip took us to New Mexico, and that meant a stop at Joe Gresh’s Tinfiny Ranch.   The word “ranch” has a nice ring to it, but Joe’s ranch is more of a cool toys repository than a place where cattle range freely (the toys more than make up for the missing cattle…the stories they hold are better than any Bonanza episode).

When walking up the hill from Joe’s home to his shop, you can’t miss his powder blue MGB GT.  The MG came with the property.  At one point Joe was going to get it running again and he started a resurrection blog series on it.  He’s now thinking he may sell it.  I’d like to see him finish this one for a lot of reasons, mostly centered around my belief that any British motor vehicle is inherently cool and there would be interesting blog content accompanying the effort.  Time will tell.   And so will we.

As you can see from the above photo, it was raining a bit when we visited.  The rain gave the MGB a nice look, a hint of what it would be if it was running again with the original paint buffed out.  The MG would be a cool resurrection project.  If you agree, leave a comment here on the blog.  I’m trying to start a “Keep the MG” movement.

Joe has a  bunch of equipment in his Tinfiny Ranch shop, including a sandblast cabinet, a drill press, all manner of hand and power tools, and a lathe.  “You can make anything with a lathe…you can even make another lathe,” Joe once said.   You can read more about that here.

The photo at the top of this blog is Zed, Joe’s original 900cc Kawasaki, and it is the first resurrection story Joe wrote for ExNotes.  In my opinion, this is the coolest bike on the planet.  I especially like the original paint.  The patina is priceless.

Joe had Zed’s carbs off the bike when we visited.  Zed needs Joe, and I think Joe needs Zed.  He’s talked about selling it; I hope he doesn’t.  If you agree, leave a comment here on the blog.  You know the drill.

Joe’s well worn Zed shop manual.

One of Joe’s more famous vintage bikes is Godzilla, a Yamaha 360 he rode on the Trans America Trail.   It’s a delightfully original machine with a lot of stories, a few of which have appeared here on ExNotes.

I wish Yamaha still made these bikes. I always wanted one, but I’ve never ridden one. Someday.

Joe is one of two guys I know with a Kawasaki KLR 250 (the other guy is also named Joe, but it’s not me).   Joe has a few stories about the KLR 250 here on ExNotes.

When I first met Joe on our CSC Motorcycles 5000-mile ride through the American Southwest (with our friends from China and Colombia), Joe told me he would really love to install the 250cc RX3 engine in his KLR 250.   Joe is thinking about selling his KLR.  I get it; I sold my KLR a few years ago.  But I regretted it.   KLRs are great bikes.

I have one of these decals on my motorcycle, too.

Incidentally, if you want to know more about the RX3 and our ride with the Chinese on it through the American Southwest, you might consider picking up a copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM.

Here’s Joe’s mini-bike.   He’s owned this one a long time.

Joe’s famous Husky…with the engine out.  Joe is rebuilding the transmission on this motorcycle.  He’s blogged about it; watch ExNotes for future updates.  I know Joe will have it on the road again.

Joe’s Kawi 1100 hasn’t been started in a decade or two.  He’s thinking about getting it on the road again.  That will make for a bunch of great blogs.

Joe’s most recent acquisition is this stellar Yamaha RD 350.  Joe’s written about it here on ExNotes.

Joe explaining the RD’s merits to Susie.

Joe started the RD 350 for us.  It sounded great.

It was a good visit.  There’s a lot going on at Tinfiny Ranch (living off the grid stuff, concrete stories, tractors, implements, the water wars, vintage motorcycles, and more), and you can read about it here on ExNotes.  Stay tuned, my friends.

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Nobody Puts Baby In A Box: Tractor Supply Box Blade Review

Most people think of New Mexico as a barren, desert state. Much of it consists of broad expanses of high, scrabbly bush land. But that’s not nearly all there is here. New Mexico has two mountain ranges running north to south dividing the land into separate areas each with their own style of terrain, east of the Pecos River you’ll find the flat, oil-rich Permian Basin. This area is New Mexico’s Golden Goose that never seems to run out of eggs. The Permian Basin pays a huge amount of taxes to the state coffers. The odor of salt water mixed with oil is everywhere. It makes me a little homesick for the bilges of boats I used to build and repair in Florida.

Moving west from the Pecos River you come to my mountains, the Sacramento Mountains. Tinfiny Ranch lies on the western foothills of the Sacramento Mountains looking out over the Tularosa Valley. At 6000 feet Tinfiny Ranch is both wetter and cooler than the small towns down in the flat lands of the valley 1500 feet below.

Tinfiny Ranch has small trees, maybe 20 feet high and all of the plant life is larger and happier than the small shrubs you find at lower elevations. Within Tinfiny Ranch there are two different ecosystems: the relatively damper lower arroyo area where some idiot decided to put the shack we live in and the higher, just slightly more arid upper area where the off-grid trophy shed sits. The elevation change is only 50 feet but the trees are noticeably larger and the undergrowth denser down by the Arroyo. There’s even a little grassy lawn struggling to survive in the lower reaches.

The upper and lower areas are connected by a steep dirt road that is always in need of repair. Whenever it rains the water cuts deep ruts across and parallel to the road. Monsoon season makes the road 4-wheel drive only. UPS and FedX stop delivering when the road gets too bad. They leave packages by the entrance gate instead of at our door.

Tractor Supply’s County Line Box Blade is just the ticket for grading and smoothing out the ruts in our driveway. Five feet wide, the box blade connects to the 3-point hitch on the back of standard tractors and comes mostly assembled except for a few thick bars of steel that make up the top mount. It’s a heavy chunk of steel and I can only lift one side at a time to move it.

Five depth-adjustable scarifying teeth mounted ahead of the leveling blade allow the box blade to break up hard ground. These teeth will catch roots and rocks and rip them out of the ground making it easier for the following blade to level the area. If you didn’t have the scarifying teeth the blade would just bounce over some obstacles leaving behind an uneven grade.

Tinfiny Ranch has a lot of big rocks from softball size to larger than a shopping cart. Running over one of these big boys will kick the box blade into the air with a loud crash. Some rocks you’ll want to dig out of the ground with a pick and pry bar instead of beating up the box blade.

With the box blade it took just a few hours to straighten out the road leading to the upper level. I’ll need to do some more work on it to fill in some low spots and cut down some high spots but it’s still raining so I don’t get too excited about making it perfect. At some point we will either asphalt the road or pave it with concrete. I’m leaning towards asphalt since I won’t have to do it.

I give the Tractor Supply box blade high marks for its low-ish $1000 price tag and high quality. That seems like a lot of money but try to find a used one. If you manage to it will be a wreck and cost $500. This County Line unit is a well built, heavy tool that will last your lifetime and maybe more. Once you get a box blade you’ll start finding all sort of areas that need leveling. Soon there won’t be a plant standing and your yard will be a broad, featureless plain, like some areas of New Mexico.

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ExhaustNotes Shed Slab Review: By The Numbers

I’ve finally finished the new floor in The Shed® at Tinfiny Ranch©. I didn’t really want to mix and pour the floor myself but events out of my control lead to that fateful decision. To understand how the floor ended up like it ended up you have to have an understanding of those aforementioned events.

The first thing everyone asks me is why didn’t I pour the floor first. It’s a valid question. The reason the shed went up on graded dirt had to do with time and money. Money was a problem because we had just bought Tinfiny ranch and our house budget allowed for a building or a slab, but not both.

Time was a problem because we were moving from a 3000 square foot rental house into a 600 square foot garage converted into a one bed, one bath home. All that junk from the big house had to go somewhere and renting a storage shed was out of the question. We were done renting crap.

We ended up buying a 30 X 50 Eagle Building for $13,000. Eagle buildings are the best square foot per dollar on the market and that price includes assembly on your land. The buildings are designed with a continuous steel sill that can be set up on bare ground as long as the ground is fairly even. No foundation needed.

The bad part about Eagle buildings is that they are not super heavy duty. They are a little stronger than a typical metal lawn building but not nearly as strong as a Mueller type building. Mueller buildings are very sturdy but cost twice as much as an Eagle and are delivered to your land on a series of pallets. You have to assemble the building yourself. Muellers also require a pre-poured slab with a foundation and all the attendant costs associated. I priced a 30 X 50 Mueller at $23,000. The foundation and slab was $26,000 from a local contractor. That $49,000 left you with a nice slab and numerous stacks of steel: you still had to build the building. I got a price of $6000 to assemble the Mueller from another local contractor.

Besides the fact that we couldn’t afford the Mueller and all that the Mueller involved, it would have been many months before we had storage for our junk. Three weeks after we bought the Eagle Building it was erected on Tinfiny Ranch and full of the junk we had dragged across country along with furnishings from the big rental.

I tried to get a local guy interested in pouring the shed floor but the job must have seemed too involved what with the building already in place and full of junk. I gave up for a year; just let the situation stay as is for a while. Then mice started burrowing under the edge of the building and wreaking havoc.

One of my Internet buddies is fond of saying, “Do it right or don’t do it at all.” He’s right, of course, but “Don’t do it at all” was not an option. That left “Do it wrong.” Sometimes in life stupid moves are the only moves you have left.

I started shunting junk towards the middle of the shed and pouring small sections whenever I felt in the mood. The solar power junction area was the first section I completed which allowed me to finish the off grid power system and shut that damn generator off.

The shed needed a foundation so I poured 16-inch J-bolts every 4 feet or so and once they were set I could excavate under the edge and pour a section of footer. I may not have needed the support from the J-bolts but the Eagle was flimsy and if the thing sagged or buckled even a little it would be a bear to fix.  I erred in favor of not buckling the shed.

Progress was slow because there was so much stuff stored in the shed I could barely make room for a pour. When she wasn’t working CT and I would go through the hundreds of plastic tubs and each time we got rid of a few. Pieces of furniture neither of us liked were donated to the thrift store. Slowly I made headway and had enough room to build a loft where a couple hundred tubs of really good junk could be moved. The floor space kept increasing and I kept pouring.

The job was not a continuous thing. I might work on it one week and leave it for a month, or 4 months. Mice were a blessing and a curse. Once they chewed up an item or tub full of clothing it was an easy decision to take it to the dump. The dust was incredible; each breeze sent a cloud of fine sand whirling around the interior of the building.

I’ve been sporadically working on the shed floor for 3 years. It was overwhelming at times but as I got closer to the finish line I kicked it into high gear: This last month I could smell the barn if you don’t mind that sort of lame wordplay. It’s funny, I have no common recollection of the work I did. I mean, if I think about it I can remember pouring each slab but I feel no personal connection, the slab is just a slab, like it has always been there or I hired a guy to do the job. It’s enough for me that the floor is done and done wrong. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

    • Number of individual slabs poured: 35
    • Average number of 60# bags per pour: 42
    • Thickness of floor: 4-inches
    • Thickness of footing: 8-inches
    • Thickness of sheer wall footing 10-inches
    • Number of 60# bags of concrete used: 1500
    • Total weight of concrete: 90,000 pounds
    • Amount of concrete in square yards: 22.5
    • Number of loads mixed @ 120# each: 750
    • Number of 16-inch J-bolt piers: 45
    • Estimated man-days to pour slabs: 80
    • Cost of concrete: $4410
    • Number of feet of ½” rebar: 250
    • Number of feet of 3/8” rebar: 1600

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Resurrections: 1974 MGB-GT Part 1

Here at Exhaustnotes.us resurrection projects are leaps of faith. They feel good and inevitable, and promising. You know instinctively it’s the right thing to do and that everything will work out ok in the end. The Kawasaki Z1 was like that. I had no doubt that motorcycle would once again tear great, jagged, 8000 RPM holes through the atmosphere. It just had to, you know?

This 1974 MBG-GT is not that kind of resurrection. Nothing about this car feels inevitable, least of all my ambition to see it through to the end. I’m going into this project fully expecting to fail. “Life’s too short,” my buddy Burns said. “Make a hot tub or a planter out of the thing.” That’s sound advice spoken from the heart. The man is trying to save me from myself.

Anyone in the saving-souls business knows that people tend to bushwhack their own meandering path towards destruction. There’s not a lot well meaning friends can do to stop your sanity from hiking off into the woods. It’s a negative human trait offset by our ability to make music and microwave corndogs. And I still don’t know how to play the guitar.

Here’s the thing: I never wanted an easy life. My dreams are not of leisure. I don’t seek comfort. Fun is no fun to me. Put me on a beach towel in Tahiti and I’ll go stark raving mad. Instead, I choose to make a mess of things. I don’t want to hear the MGB-GT run. I have to hear it run. It’s laid fallow for 5 years that I know of and probably 10 more besides. The little British car parked next to the needle bush has mocked me long enough. I’ll have my revenge.

If you’re expecting a short series on the MGB-GT stop reading now. The car has serious rat infestation issues. Most of the interior is chewed up. There must be 50 pounds of rat guano inside the cabin and engine room. I’m going to take this slowly and spend the absolute minimum amount of cash at each stage.

There will be no grinders shooting sparks, no photogenic noir-arc welding and no artificial deadlines to create artificial tension in the story. This job will be stress free and I reserve the right to walk away any time I choose. The MGB will always take a back seat (get it?) to other projects.

The first thing I plan to do is to get rid of this spiny plant. The thing has incredibly sharp 2-inch long needles that will flatten a tire or stick into your leg bone. After that cleaning out the rat-poo engine room so that I can see what I’m up against. Cleaning rat poo in New Mexico is not as simple as hooking up a shop vac and sucking up the stuff.

Here in New Mexico we get several cases of Hantavirus every year. The virus can lay dormant in rat droppings and infect people when disturbed, so no vacuuming. Instead you spray the mounds of poo with a strong solution of bleach to kill the virus (if it can be considered alive). Next you don gloves and an N-100 mask and shovel the wet bleach-glop into a suitable container.

This part of resurrection is no walk in the park. If you manage to stay alive through this step another shot of bleach on the remaining rat droppings should make it fairly safe to use the shop vac. Follow up the final vacuuming with a pressure washer and engine cleaner. And then you can begin. I’ll start by disconnecting all the chewed electrical circuits and…and…well, you’ll see in the next installment of Resurrections: MGB-GT Part 2.

Gresh’s resurrections reside here!

Skip Duke

Skip Duke lived in New Mexico and died before I got the chance to meet him. I don’t know the exact date he shuffled off. Judging from the condition of Tinfiny Ranch when we first bought it from his daughter I’m guessing five or more years had elapsed between our purchase of Skip’s run-down mountain property and his death.

I never met Skip Duke but I get a strong sense of the man from the junk he left behind. I found boxes of mixed fasteners and some really nice ¼-inch by 8-inch screws with flat-topped heads. The heads are 5/8-inch wide and made so that the fastener countersinks itself like a giant deck screw. These screws are so nice I want to build something just to use them. Skip left behind two really nice red-painted, bottle jacks; one of them must be a 50-ton model. It’s a bruiser, like a foot tall and weighs 40 pounds. Skip was into radios: he was a Ham operator I’m guessing. Tinfiny had several antenna wires strung over the trees and arroyos. In his broken down shop I found a signal generator, watt meter and some other radio test gear that I couldn’t identify. That’s some old school radio stuff, man.

I never met Skip Duke but I think I would have liked him. Skip Duke had multiple uncompleted projects running in parallel when he died and that’s the same way I work. I get bored with one project and switch over to another, never finishing any of them. The 1975 Kawasaki 900 I call Zed was one of Skip’s unfinished projects. In the scattered debris of Skip’s life I found motorcycle magazines from the 1970’s featuring the new Z1900. The bike got universally rave reviews in the magazines, and rightfully so: the 900cc Z1 Kawasaki was a landmark motorcycle.

From reading old correspondence I found that Skip was having trouble with a Dyna III electronic ignition system he bought for the old Kawasaki. A melted wiring harness on Zed and no sign of the electronic ignition leads me to believe Skip sent the rotor and pick up coils back for a refund or tossed them in the bushes. One day I’m going to look for it with a metal detector. I found the original points plate in a box of MG car parts and after I cleaned them up the bike ran fine. I remember when electronic ignitions were novel, high tech stuff. I didn’t like them back then either.

Abandoned for years, Skip Duke’s house was overrun by rats when we looked at it with Ronnie, our real estate agent. A converted garage, the house had one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. Maybe 500 square feet under roof. On the right side of the house was a small garage where Skip kept his tools and his motorcycles. I found a working 4-inch Makita belt sander in there. The bottom garage door panel was broken and the door hung off its track. You could walk inside. Ronnie looked around and said, “There used to be more motorcycles in here.” Next to the garage Zed was sitting outside in the weather, leading me to believe thieves had made off with Skip’s better motorcycles. As if there ever was a motorcycle better than a Z1.

We gutted Skip’s house. Every night after work I would put down 5 of those green rat poison blocks. Every morning they would be gone. Eventually the pace slowed until one day I found the poison untouched. The rats ate a total of 3 gallon-size buckets of poison but I won the war. I spent a pleasant two weeks hauling out dead rats and disinfecting the entire place with a solution of 50/50 bleach and water. My lungs burned and my vision blurred but at last the place was clean and rodent free inside.

We replaced the siding, drywall and insulation, and rewired most of the the electrical system. Skip’s little garage area is now my wife CT’s walk in closet. The concrete ramp leading to the garage has been leveled off and is a 5’ X 14’ office and storage room. We re-plumbed the bathroom and redid the kitchen eliminating any appliance that hinted at being a stove. We named the little house in the arroyo “The Carriage House” hoping to boost the little shack’s confidence. New paint and tile made The Carriage House look fresh inside. Skip’s old fiberglass shower stall was hard to remove and we were running out of time so it still serves, the last remnant of a bygone owner.

Skip Duke was not satisfied with the little Carriage House and had bigger plans in the works. Further up the property there was a graded area where Skip was going to build a structure. Two large, wooden sawhorses held 8-foot x 20-foot sheets of a composite material consisting of 6” white Styrofoam sandwiched between two layers of glued-on, exterior grade, 1/2’’ oriented strand board. There was enough paneling to build a 20 X 40 insulated building. Unfortunately, death has a way of messing up the best of plans. The 20’ X 40’ structure never got built. White plastic sheeting covered the composite panels but the relentless New Mexico sun crystallized the plastic. The sheet lay in tatters and it would crumble when you tried to pick it up. Without protection the panels fell victim to the elements.

Oriented strand board is fairly weather resistant but you can’t let it remain wet for long. Stacked horizontally on the sawhorses, the panels couldn’t shed water and the pooled moisture between the panels rotted the OSB. I’m sure if Skip Duke knew he was going to die he would have stacked them vertically allowing water to run out from between the panels. I managed to salvage enough panel material to build the walls for another of Skip’s unfinished projects: the pump house.

The original pump house was a 55-gallon metal drum over the wellhead. Inside the living room was a 40-gallon pressure tank to smooth out the cycling of the well pump. I can’t figure why anyone would want a gigantic pressure tank in their living room but Skip was not a man who trifled with cosmetics. The amount of paneling I could salvage determined the size of the well house so I poured a 6’ X 10” slab with a central drain and built a small shed over the well. I moved the 40-gallon pressure tank to the new well house and installed a water softener next to the pressure tank. With 6” thick Styrofoam walls the pump house is so well insulated a 150-watt chicken coop heater keeps the pipes nice and toasty in winter. Too bad so much composite paneling was ruined; it would have made for a super energy efficient house.

When Skip Duke died he left behind a 24-foot motorhome without an engine, an 18-foot Hobie Cat sailboat on a trailer, a 1974 MGB-GT hardtop 4-seater, a 4-person Jacuzzi with seized air and water pump motors, two large dog houses and a backyard chicken coop with camouflage netting over the top. Skip was a man who was into everything cool. I got rid of the junk except for the MG. Those hardtops with their Italian, Pininfarina-designed hatchbacks are rare. I might get it running one day.

Life is funny. I have an Internet buddy also named Skip Duke. He is very much alive and a Kawasaki Z1 guru. The living Skip Duke’s Kawasaki advice has saved me untold woe in the long restoration process of dead Skip Duke’s motorcycle. I bet the two Skips would get along famously (either that or they’d kill each other).

I never knew Skip Duke. We’ve remodeled and reused his vast pile of junk in ways he could not have foreseen. I wish he had left details of his future plans, like notes stuck to each project describing what he saw as success. I hope he’s looking down (or up as the case may be; Skip might have been a real jerk) and smiling as he sees his old Kawasaki motorcycle (now my old Kawasaki motorcycle) roaring down the highway full of life and power. I hope whatever becomes of that soulful part of a man after death is aware of the happy life CT and I have built atop the 5-acre spread he must have loved dearly. And I hope he finds joy in all that we have done.

Follow the complete Z1 resurrection here!

For more on Tinfiny Ranch and the Tinfiny Summit, check out the YouTube videos here!

The Wall

Here at ExhaustNotes.us we are all about the motorcycle, with a smattering of gunplay and interesting adventure destinations thrown in to keep the place hopping. But what if there were no bikes, adventures or bullets? What then? Keep reading and I’ll tell you what then, Bubba.

Concrete, my friends, and the mixing of it is the solution to a lackluster moto-life. Dusty and powder soft with an aggregate backbone, believe in it and concrete will provide. Trust in it and it will repay you a thousand times. The grey dust keeps me going because lately I haven’t been riding motorcycles or watching Emma Peel on YouTube so there’s nothing to write about except the grey dust. The grey dust keeps me hoping for some far-off, much better two-wheeled days.  Think of this as an ExhaustedNotes blog.

Situated in the steep-ish foothills of the Sacramento Mountains, Tinfiny Ranch is slowly bleeding into the arroyo, you know? You put down your cold, frosty beer and the next thing you know your Stella is halfway to White Sands National Monument. On the lee side of The Carriage House we’ve lost a good 18-inches of mother earth because while it doesn’t rain often in New Mexico when it does rain it comes down in buckets. This sudden influx of water tears through Tinfiny Ranch like freshly woken kittens and sweeps everything in its path down, down, down, into the arroyo and from there on to the wide, Tularosa Valley 7 miles and 1500 feet below. Claiming dominion over the land is not as easy as they make it sound.

So I put the motorcycles away and took a cudgel to Tinfiny. I pounded, I dug, I formed and I poured. I am building a wall and Mexico has not stepped up to the plate with the promised assistance. The thing has grown to 70 feet long and varies in elevation from a foot to 4 feet high. Repetition has honed my skills: I can do 8-feet of wall every two days and the days stretch on and on. I figure I’ll stop when I run into the Pacific Ocean.

After the wall is up the resulting divot will require filling with dirt. I have lots of dirt on Tinfiny Ranch; the conundrum is where to borrow it from without causing even more erosion. I’m hoping that leveling the back yard will provide most of the needed fill.

I’ve made the wall porous to keep water from backing up behind it and poured L braces in an attempt to keep the wall from toppling over. The beauty of the wall is that it will work in any orientation. I’m nearly ready to start the slow process of dumping dirt and compacting it 6-inch layer by 6-inch layer until the land is even with the top of the wall. At that point the floodwaters should flow over the wall spilling into the arroyo. Unless, of course, the hill becomes so saturated that the entire wall slips into the arroyo. And I become one of those questing specters drifting the canyons wailing my banshee wail, never resting, never finding peace.

Tractor Supply

It seems like I’m always working a pick and a shovel at Tinfiny Ranch. Situated at 6000 feet in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains the place is steep with many elevation changes. An arroyo runs past the house so that when it rains (and it rains a lot in New Mexico) my driveway becomes a short-lived trout stream.

Water, being the universal solvent, plays havoc with Tinfiny Ranch and most of my time is spent trying to bend it to my will. Armed with hand tools and 50-pound bags of concrete I’ve managed to carve out a dry spot to sleep. The landforms here are fleeting, changing and slowly make their way 1500 feet down to the Tularosa Valley where huge dust storms blow the accumulated material back up onto the mountain sides. You don’t own real estate here: you trap it.

When Hunter called me to tell me he had found a Kubota tractor for me my first thoughts were about water. Like a slightly soft football a front loader tractor would give me a leg up on erosion. I was on my way to Stillwater a few days later.

Hunter is my riding buddy. We both like crappy old two-strokes and we’ve run them clear across country following the Trans-America Trail. We’ve passed some impassable routes and had bikes lay down on us in the middle of the desert. I know him as Vinnie The Snake from the dirt and only the dirt but it turns out there’s more to Hunter than a beat up old DT400 Yamaha.

We had a day to kill before I picked up the tractor so we went to Hunter’s Skybox at OSU and watched the OSU women’s basketball team dismantle a team from Kansas. The governor of Oklahoma has a suite two doors down and there was unlimited free food along with all the ice cream you could eat. The suite had a commanding view of both the football field and the indoor arena.

When we walked in the coach shook Hunter’s hand and then he shook my hand like I might also be somebody important. Then the TV and radio guys chatted up Hunter including me in the conversation. It was weird: nobody ever cares about what I have to say but my proximity to Hunter earned a listen. Everyone knew and loved Hunter and they loved me too. Nobody called him The Snake. It’s like there are two Hunters, one that lives in a world unlike any I’ve seen. I’ll remember that other, respectable Hunter when he’s tipped over in a mud hole cussing his two stroke.

The Tractor was a beauty with tires so new they still had rubber bar codes visible. Kubota’s have earned a good name in the heavy equipment arena and this L2850 sported a diesel engine that fired right up.

Underneath the driven front end you’ll find a portal-type axle to give the tractor plenty of ground clearance. Everything is leaking a bit but oil is cheap and Tinfiny can use a little dust control. The steering felt tight and Woody, the guy I bought the tractor from takes good care of his stuff.

When I worked construction in Miami it was rare to see a dashboard unbroken. Vandalism was a constant problem. Lights, tires and hoses were routinely damaged by bored kids. The L580 dash was clean and everything works except the tach needle fell off.

At the rear of the Kubota has a two-speed PTO drive that I will be using as soon as CT buys me a backhoe attachment. Amazon has some cool 3-point hoes costing around $3600. You don’t want to do a lot of side digging with a 3-point hoe because the hitch wasn’t meant for big side loads but as long as you are crabbing in a straight line they will work well.

The transmission has high and low range with low range, first gear being super slow. Top end of the tractor in high range-high gear is around 12 miles per hour. With zero suspension 12 MPH is plenty over Tinfiny’s rough grounds.

This lever engages the front wheels. This is pretty important because the front end loader combined with nothing attached to the hitch means the big rear wheels have little traction.

The Kubota’s grille was bent a bit but Woody had a new grille that he hadn’t gotten around to installing. The rest of the tractor is pretty straight. The side lights need new lenses and the back lights could use some love but all in all I’m thrilled with the tractor. How could I not be? Every boy loves a tractor.