The rear brake caliper on my bike needs to be released from its mooring before the rear wheel can be taken off. This requires the removal of two M8 allen bolts. In order to reach said bolts, a long 3/8-in. extension fitted with the correct allen socket needs to be threaded through one of the gaps in the rear cast-aluminum wheel from the opposite side of the bike. Unfortunately, the holes don’t line up and it’s impossible to get a perfectly straight angle of insertion into the bolt head. Ponder this: Manufacturer Department A didn’t communicate this to Department B, and now you’re alone in your garage, faced with the problem of having to use the tool incorrectly. For removal, you could cleanly muscle the thing off with an allen key fitted with some sort of power extension (Vice Grips, closed end wrench, steel pipe, etc.) But on the re-install how can you accurately follow factory torque specs when you can’t get perfect purchase on the bolt head? And then, even if you do get it torqued, you’ve now likely damaged the six walls of bolt head, so when the time comes to pull it out again, it strips. Hello pain-in-the-arse.

Which brings us to today’s metaphor: The EZ-Out bolt extractor.

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Allow me to begin by saying that it’s been a long, unrelenting winter for Midwest motoheads, fraught with huge quantities of freezing precipitation, vicious potholes and a disheartening lack of sunlight. Until just this past week, spring seemed as likely as cold fusion, peace in the Middle East or Donald Trump changing his hairstyle. So when the temperature broke the 50-degree mark in Chicago, it was time to go for a ride.

For those of you familiar with the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, try to recall the scene when the mischievous garage attendant and his cohort take the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California for an extended joy ride. Visualize the sheer, unadulterated glee cemented on their faces as they go airborne in the priceless Ferrari, the Star Wars theme song blaring in the background. My analogy might be a bit dramatic, but I’m fairly certain that the expression on my face was a near-perfect rendition of that very scene as I rode my first spring wheelie down Sheridan Road in Glencoe, Illinois.

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Currently, this question has been applied to many kinds of racing as a way to justify removing the use of engineering to make racing machines faster.

Why not apply it to riders, as well? Differences in riders tend to make racing one-sided, and it is not always the popular riders up there on the podium. Quite often, riders with the concentration to win races have little left to give to spectators, despite terms in their contracts requiring so many minutes of autograph signing and so many appearances in press briefings. Frequently, the best-loved of riders have not been those with the most championships. Rather, the hugely popular ones have been those who obviously, grandly, gamble everything in every corner and fall too frequently to win championships.

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In 1925, Georg Hoffmann, a technician, patented a rolling bearing employing long, slender rollers—what in the U.S. has come to be called a “needle bearing.”

It got that name in the most direct way possible: Early producers of such bearings, such as the Torrington Company in Torrington, Connecticut, and Durkopp in Germany, were originally makers of needles for sewing machines. Like bearing rollers, such needles must be strong, hard and precise.

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Being informed you have pancreatic cancer is pretty much a death sentence, right? Well, don’t tell Chris Calaprice. This former U.S. Army Ranger has been undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer for seven years now, a disease he was diagnosed with in 2003 at the ripe old age of 36.

An avid motorcycle enthusiast, Chris took his passion and a Victory Vision on the road three months and 7000 miles ago with the goal of riding a total of 42,000 miles—one mile for each person in the U.S. who’ll be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year. His doctor, oncologist to the stars Dr. William Isacoff, travels from Los Angeles every eight weeks to administer Chris’s chemo treatments throughout the course of his grueling tour through all 50 states. (Yup, you read that right—ride, stop, get chemo, get back on the horse and ride some more. Kinda makes you feel like a slacker, doesn’t it?)

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es, I knew my new-to-me 2000 R1 Craigslist naked bike was losing a little air from its balding rear tire at the rate of a few pounds a day, but I’d only had it a few days. So I thought I could make it to the Hansen Dam vintage ride and back easy. I even shot some SLIME into it, which I was assured (by the SLIME bottle) is just the thing to temporarily seal up leaks, nail holes, etc. By the time we got to Pacoima, though, the rear of my beautiful new 10-year-old bike was covered in the green goo, and things were going flat in a hurry.

God may watch over drunks and idiots, but He also takes the form of curious types who hang around mainly to see what ridiculous thing will happen next. My pal Brad was prepared, as usual, with a plug kit, and shoved one right into the nail hole from which the SLIME was abandoning its post. Perfect, now all we need to do is fill with air—which is when the valve stem snapped clean off. In the billions of tires I have inflated over the eons, I have never seen that happen… Some days we are just not meant to ride. Instead, the R1 and I rode home in friend-of-a-friend Chuck Johnson’s pickup and got a lesson in local mountaineering, which is something I am going to do one of these days. Sure I am. And I fed the eternal flame of those around me who are repulsed and amused by my morally and mechanically haphazard ways.

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It’s easy to tell which books in my collection are most frequently referred to: They’re the really second-hand-looking ones. One of the tattiest-looking is Motorcycle Engineering, by P.E. Irving (designer of Vincents). The specific motorcycle models described therein date to the 1960s, but the principles described are as solid as physics.

The next pillar is Harry Ricardo’s The High-Speed Internal Combustion Engine, recently returned to print by popular demand. This is the clearest treatment of the subject in English, and it presents only the minimum of math. Why? Ricardo was an experimentalist like most of us. For the overall history of how internal combustion came to be, I like Internal Fire, by Lyle Cummins (yes, son of Clessie Cummins, who gave his name to Cummins Diesel Co.). If you are curious about how internal combustion evolved out of steam technology, here’s your meat.

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Paris-Madrid, 1903, marked the end of an era, as well as the end of Marcel Renault in this ditch. The French government stepped in and stopped the race at Bordeaux, and the cars were shipped home by train.

It interests me that electronic rider aids were at first greeted by cries that they were “impure” and detracted from “the true fight” of rider against rider. But now that so many of these critics have personally felt their own skills magnified in test rides of the new electronic production bikes, most have fallen silent.

This is not the first time for this cycle of technology change, traditionalist complaint, followed by mute acceptance.

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Photo courtesy passion-aviation.qc.ca

I recently read a 1960s report, made by an Air National Guard unit, on their experience with the air-cooled Pratt & Whitney 28-cylinder R-4360 radial engine. Much of the report was devoted to the problem of the exhaust valve-seat rings coming loose in the aluminum heads.

As it happens, this has also been a problem with some of the four-stroke motocross engines.

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Motorcycles and small towns have long been portrayed as adversaries, from Brando in The Wild One, to that overrated pile of crap Easy Rider, to my personal favorite of the genre—The Wild Angels—in which Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra and a bunch of other spoiled Hollywood types play “biker.” At one point the “gang” rides to NorCal to bury a friend: Feeling the need to properly say goodbye to the departed, they wind up taking over a small town church for the ceremony, which somehow transitions from funeral into psychedelic-drug-induced orgy. I must ride with the wrong crowd; all we ever seem to do in small towns is fuel up, grab some grub and occasionally bunk (separately) in a local hotel. Over 25 years of riding and not one spontaneous orgy. What am I doing wrong?

Probably best. My wife has yet to squawk about my riding adventures and I assume one reason is that she knows I’m way more into riding my motorcycle than anything else. Though it probably wouldn’t hurt to just ask about the orgies…

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As electric bikes and hybrids seem to take the media’s eye, I wonder if it’s wrong of me to love the simplicity, lightness and power of a two-stroke. Do I need to feel guilty for running a 350cc Twin that might get 25 mpg when I get the engine back in the frame? Where did I leave the frame, anyway? Oh, it’s been a long project, for sure. One of my pals asked, “Where’s the RD?” and the only reply I could think of was, “Where isn’t it?!” because my 1973 Yamaha RD350A is so disassembled and evenly distributed through the places in my life (spare bedroom, garage, office, workshop…).

But I just got the freshly painted engine back from my friend Boris with the paint booth. Even though the engine hasn’t run for years, getting my hands on this little package of dynamite has reminded me that a two-stroke Twin’s sound and fury are wonderful things to behold, and I’m hoping to get my RD back together and making smoke again. Dead dinosaurs ain’t dead yet! Two-strokes are a nice vice. And pass me some of that smokeless tobacco while you’re at it.

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Photo courtesy of Cycle Guide magazine

On a fine, crisp morning in the spring of 1983, Ron Lawson and I climbed aboard two brand-new dirtbikes—a Honda XR350R and a Husqvarna 430WR—and headed for off-road Utopia. Our goal was to spend an entire day, from daybreak to dusk, riding the magnificent trails that lace through the Los Padres National Forest north of Los Angeles.

I was Editorial Director of Cycle Guide magazine (shut down more than 20 years ago) back then, and Lawson—currently the Editor of Dirt Bike magazine—was the Associate Editor, and we were testing those two bikes for an enduro comparison in the upcoming June issue. The trails on our route wended their way through beautiful green meadows and tree-lined single-tracks that eventually seesawed back and forth across a little stream more than a dozen times. Normally, the water in that crossing is only a few inches deep and maybe 20 feet wide; but we’d had an exceptionally wet winter, turning that “stream” into a small river. And it seemed like every time we crossed, it got wider and deeper. By about our sixth or seventh crossing, we were negotiating a raging river, the water burbling and careening like a miniature version of the Colorado River rapids.

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Well, now, here’s a quandary.

My buddy Mike Mosiman called me this weekend and said he’s thinking of selling his Triumph Scrambler because he’s got the hots for another BMW R1200GS. He rode his brother-in-law’s GS last week on a visit to California, and now he’s in love again. He must have a big GS, and nothing else will do. Which I can understand—these are great bikes, and I’ve only missed owning one myself through a combination of bad timing and cheaping out on something else.

Anyway, Mike’s Triumph Scrambler is nice. Typically, he’s thrown about $3000 in aftermarket parts at it. It has a complete Norman Hyde twin-muffler high-pipe exhaust system on it, better shocks, a cartridge emulator in the fork, better handlebars and upgraded dual-sport Avons. He even bought a Bonneville right sidecover and had it repainted with a “900 Scrambler” logo because the heat shield on the stock sidecover didn’t look right with the new pipes. The bike’s also rejetted and runs great. I’ve ridden it a couple of times, and it’s really dialed in.

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We hardly ever think of engines as structures, but we should. Imagine a classic transverse, inline-four-cylinder engine at high rpm. The two outer crankpins, numbers 1 and 4, are moving together, while the middle pair, 2 and 3, move together 180 degrees out of phase with them. Each cylinder’s part of the crankshaft is “balanced” at about 50 percent of the reciprocating weight—the weight of piston, rings, wristpin and the small ends of the connecting rods. Fifty percent of that weight is whirling around, generating a rotating imbalance at each crankpin. One instant, these forces are bending the ends of the crankcase down and lifting the middle up, and 180 degrees later, the reverse is happening.

Big deal—crankcases are rugged, right? Not as rugged as they look. In 1982 Rob Muzzy described cylinder base-gasket leakage that wouldn’t go away on his Kawasaki Z1-based Superbikes (that’s Eddie Lawson pictured above)—until he began using solid-copper base gaskets. Crankcase flex was no problem in normal street running, but at 10,250 rpm the engine forces nearly doubled—becoming strong enough to bend the crankcases, which caused the rubbing of the stock base gaskets up into little balls. Copper resisted this rubbing.

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Photo by Peggy Allen

Everyone needs a hobby, right? One that helps them relax and unwind from the frantic pace of life in The Big City. A little quiet time to reflect and contemplate one’s own navel.

For me, that hobby is the tranquil, soothing realm of sprint-car racing. What could be more calming than a couple dozen 900-horsepower, methanol-burning, wheelstanding, dirt-roosting, sideways-sliding, eardrum-rattling racecars battling wheel-to-wheel on a quarter- or half-mile dirt oval? Why, those things are so pacifying that it’s difficult to resist nodding off when watching them.

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