Letters
LETTERS
MISSING PERSONS DEPT.
The Road Runners M.C. of Fort Bragg, California, would like to know the where-abouts of Allen Schultz of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Allen rode his 50cc Honda from Milwaukee to Alaska, and on the way back he came down through Washington, Oregon and California. He stopped at Fort Bragg where I met him.
GILBERT CHAMBERS PO Box 178 Fort Bragg, Calif. 95437
Milwaukee to Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and back ... on a Honda 50?!! Ed.
TECHNICALLY CORRECT
I like your magazine, especially the technical articles, the latter probably because I am a mechanical engineer. I ride a BMW; I also own a Harley 165 which I use for trailing, enduros, and an occasional sportsman short track race. The 165 is the reason for this letter.
This bike has been modified considerably, including a Jawa swinging arm and BSA rear shocks. The engine used to belong to Roger Reiman. It has the customary hop-up stuffer plates and horseshoe in the crankcase, Topper head and carb, and cylinder ports modified to H-D factory racing specifications. It should really run. However, I’ve always been plagued by an overheating problem. With its low gearing, the bike will run about 60 mph when cold. In only a few miles it would develop preignition and slow to about 45 mph.
I ran the coldest plugs I could buy. Then, along came Gordon Jennings’ article on two-stroke exhausts. It was a life-saver for my 165, as I was ready to trade for a Sprint, but didn’t want to go into the 250 racing class. I used his formula for finding the dimensions. To say I could feel the difference is the understatement of the year. It was like adding another engine!
Best of all, I haven’t had any more overheating problems. I will have to wait for hotter weather to tell if it is cured, though.
For the record, here are the dimensions
Exhaust pipe 1.5' ' dia. x 10" long Divergent Cone 1.5' ' dia. x 3.5" dia. x 13.5 long Spacer 3.5' ' dia. x 3" long Convergent Cone 3.5' ' dia. to 1" dia. x 11.5 long Outlet 1" dia. x 12" long
All of this was formed from 18 gauge steel without special tools and acetylene welded. Quite a bit of work, but it was really worth it. Thanks again.
KEN SALZWEDEL Burlington, Iowa
HELPFUL HINTS
I have a few British magazines that strongly feature owner maintenance and letters from readers giving helpful hints. With the idea that you might develop something like that in CYCLE WORLD I pass along a few things I have found helpful.
Anyone who contemplates a bike as a serious form of transportation in New England must be prepared to face unpleasant weather. The basic items in my cold weather riding gear are; thermal underwear (which can be worn indoors in all but excessively overheated areas), large Beck’s sheepskin lined mittens, and a
heavy two-piece rubber rainsuit. Besides its obvious role of protection in rain or snow, I wear this rubber suit as a wind breaker any time the temperature is under 40°.
Since I work the second shift (four to twelve-thirty), I go to work in what is generally the warmest part of the day, and return in usually chilly early morning hours. To cope with this wide temperature range I use two surplus ammunition carrying bags as saddle bags on the rear portion of the dual seat. In one I carry the rainsuit, in the other, two warm but not too bulky jackets. I also have some lumberjack style woolen shirts that I wear in place of the jackets or to supplement them, as the case may be. The overshoes I wear constantly except during the warmest part of the summer.
The one weak part in this outfit is the opening around the throat that allows a very cooling draft to seep down across the chest and around the ribs. The most effective means I have found of defeating this draft is a woolen scarf wrapped tightly around the neck over all but the outside jacket, which is then buttoned over it with the ends tucked in the armpits if the scarf is long enough — mine is.
With the outfit described I can ride indefinitely without discomfort in temperatures down to about fifteen to twenty above zero; it offers adequate protection for an hour or two down to about zero, and once (that once was enough) I rode 45 minutes at fifteen below in a very strong, gusty wind.
Not an elegant outfit, nor one to compete with some of the deluxe English riding gear (about which I know very little) or a complete leather outfit. But it serves me well and, important to me, was acquired more or less piecemeal over a period of time without any one great expenditure of funds.
Up to now I have worn plastic lens goggles; for the coming winter I have a new helmet with a bubble face mask. Since I must wear prescription glasses at all times, if this becomes too fogged up to be safe I can do what I occasionally did with the goggles — remove them and ride at a slow pace with the glasses only.
Speaking of goggles reminds me that they get dirty, and I ruined several inserts in very short time until I learned how to clean them without scratching. Take any soft brush (I use a discarded shaving brush) and lather them without pressure in soapsuds just as if you intended to shave them, then rinse without any rubbing. Usually a few dirty spots will still remain. Lather and rinse, without rubbing, until clean. Eventually small scratches will fog the plastic, but its life will be extended considerably.
Inevitably leather mitts or gloves and shoes will at times become saturated in a rainstorm. The best method I have found for drying soaked leather gloves is to lay them flat between several sheets of newspaper. If possible, change to fresh paper after about half an hour and at one or two hour intervals after. I have had leather gloves so wet that water dripped from the finger tips dried sufficiently to be worn without discomfort in 35° night air in eight hours by this method.
(Continued on page 64)
Shoes that are wet can be dried more quickly on the inside if small wads of torn newspaper are packed rather tightly inside them. As with the gloves, change the paper a few times, if possible.
Leather gloves that are in constant use tend to become scuffed and dull looking. Any one of several liquid wax shoe polishes (Griffith’s is an excellent one) brushed on periodically will not only help the appearance but will also tend to delay wetting through and reduce the amount of hardening after a wetting.
Another item: I once had a German built two-stroke that for several weeks would not make a thirty-five mile round trip without the plug bridging at least once —usually several times. All the usual remedies were tried without avail — thorough check on carburetor settings, several different makes and heat ranges in plugs, close attention to oil-gas ratio and mixing, etc. The thing still stopped, but started right up again as soon as a knife-blade was run between the plug points.
Finally I switched the brand of oil I was using and a new plug ran over 1500 miles before I had to close a rather wide gap a little to help starting. Moçal: When a two-stroke persistently bridges, try changing the oil used.
BURTON P. NEEDHAM Dorchester, Massachusetts
FREEDOM FOR ALL?
The question stands; shall every single person or group of people have the right to do with or use the public land as they see fit? Or shall these lands be used for the greatest number?
I do not look at the Sierra Club and allied groyps and see a collection of narrow minded and bigoted men and women who seek to have the whole of the United States beyond the city limits for their own. Some of the finest people I know are members of the Sierra Club. In fact, if it were not for these people, and men like John Muir, there would be no National Parks, forests, or wild areas. I am very sorry for the person who cannot do without the aid of a motorized device once and a while.
I respect Mr. Erie Stanley Gardner and we have a great many of his books, but to allow free use of ail the public lands would be a tragic mistake. Some of these lands must be left the way they have always been for man to see what once was. These lands, exclusive of the National Forests, form a very small percentage of our total land and can well be afforded. Most of the National Forests are run on a multiple use concept which includes commercial as well as recreational usage. Note that this is different from the policy governing the National Parks which allows no commercial usage except for the people who run the concessions.
The recreation concept in the National Forests does not seem to allow for much trail riding by motorcycle. The reason for this is seen when one pictures himself high in the mountains watching a pack train wind along a steep narrow trail. They start to make a turn and find a motorcycle and rider coming hell-bent-for-leather around said turn and wham, there would be pack animals all over the mountain-side and what’s worse, some lamed or dead at the bottom of the cliff, maybe with the rider.
With this in mind, along with the increased fire danger of the machine, I think it is wise for the Forest Service to exclude off-the-road devices from some of the areas in this country. As far as damage to terrain I do not think cycles could do much greater harm than some hikers who cut switchbacks and toss trash about like the world was their garbage can. Overgrazing a mountain meadow causes damage that takes years or decades to heal if not longer. As of now the scales are tipped against wilderness travel by motor and rightly so at the present and probably for all time.
Part of the reason motorcycle riders are slighted is simply that they are not trusted by the rest of the Great Unwashed. This is seen less now, as a neater tribe of riders have been hit by the bug and are telling their friends how much fun they have. Anyone who has met up with one of these homo-saps who ride about with their jacket covered by vulture vomit and their IQ’s about 60, riding a machine that is usually pre-war and dipped in chrome and painted over with colors from a psychotic kindergarten painting session, can see why John Q. Public might have misgivings about a motorcycle and the people who ride them.
JIM OSMUNDSON
Topanga, California
You only fortify our rightful stand. Why wasn’t the pack train watching and listening? Why should the cyclist be the burdened party, and why do you exemplify the cyclist as being the fiend in the tale by being a “hell-bent-for-leather” rider? Most of the people we know who prefer trail riding are hardly that type; your reasoning is invalid if for no other reason than that you are generalizing. There is no more fire danger in a motorcycle than in the gasoline lamp carried by the camper whose freedom you cherish. No one has yet successfully proven to us that the exhaust of an internal combustion engine can set fire, assuming of course we are dealing with a fully muffled machine. We have tried several times to ignite grass with the open exhaust of an engine and not succeeded.
You are quite correct in assuming that motorcyclists do no more damage than others who might use the trails. And, as for the people who govern such things using a few poor examples of humanity as the determining factor in deciding who is to use what, we are all indeed in trouble and can soon expect to have all of the public highways closed as well since public officials resent some of us. Lack of trust from the “Great Unwashed” means less than nothing in determining the lawful rights of cyclists, who have just as much business on that trail as the narrow minded and bigoted individuals who want it saved for themselves. Our remarks regarding the Sierra Club stem from the fact that they, and a bunch of similar organizations throughout the country, want cyclists and other motorized sports minded people excluded from all public lands, not simply a small area to he reserved for the prolification of the natural elements. We agree; some parts of our beautiful out-ofdoors should he preserved for posterity and we would be happy to stay out of them, as long as we were not the only ones excluded. And, we notice that even you continue to call them public lands. If 1 am not mistaken, motorcyclists are still dues-paying members of the very same public. Ed.
OUT ON A LIMB
Your magazine is good. BUT I don’t feature the idea of finding the new issue on my motorcycle dealer’s shelf a week before I receive my mailed copy. If this practice is accidental it should be corrected, if deliberate it is a complete reversal of normal practice.
You seem to specialize in going out on a limb and then going to great lengths to justify your position. It would seem much simpler not to get out on the limb in the first place.
For instance, your position on the compulsory wearing of headgear is insupportable. While I would not ride around the corner without my hard hat, and try to convince others to wear them, I don’t believe that the wearing of headgear should be compulsory. While you should be commended for expressing opinions which you must know will be unpopular with many, you should be condemned for your obvious concern for what you think will be good for the industry and the sport at the expense of the individual rider’s freedom.
(Continued on page 66)
You are a far greater danger to me than I am to myself. Don’t legislate to protect me from myself.
M. H. PATENAUDE
Pensacola, Florida
Your magazine arrives via the good old U.S. Mails, a delivery system with numerous faults, few of which we can do very much about. We ship magazines to dealers by either freight, United Parcel, or by mail. We would like to correct the lateness of your magazine hut for the life of us cannot figure out just how to go about it! As for climbing out on limbs, don’t forget that’s where the fruits and nuts are! Ed.
MODERN TERMINOLOGY: HONDA STYLE
Last week I was in a music store and got engaged in a conversation with the lady who was the clerk. She mentioned her son was a senior in high school and that he wanted to get a Honda, which is what I own. Anyway, the high point of the lady’s conversation was, “I’m holding back getting him a Honda because next year he will want a motorcycle.”
I still don’t know what to think. All the time I’ve had my 305 I thought I had a motorcycle, now I find I have a motor bike.
JIM JOHNSON
Miles City, Montana A classic example of the power of advertising we would say, Jim. Like us, you probably care little what it is called as long as you can continue to enjoy it. Ed.
THE BIG SHOW IS COMING
As President of the Drifters Motorcycle Club of San Bruno, let me extend, from every member of the club, our warmest congratulations for the excellent motorcycle show in Los Angeles staged by CYCLE WORLD.
Our entire club and some guests made the trip to the Sports Arena and spent many long hours marveling over the beautiful bikes and complete displays of accessories. We were happy to see some of our club members in your special show edition. We feel it was a highly successful effort and are looking forward to the next one.
RON MARTIN
San Bruno, California Thank you Ron, we appreciate your generous words. April 30, 31st, and May 1st and 2nd are the dates for our next show. We hope you will be able to make it again; it will be even larger this time. Ed.
A REPLY EROM BRITAIN
Regarding your paragraphs on the American International Six Days Trial team, let me assure you that a whole lot of people over here, like myself, took strong exception to the stupid things said in the United Kingdom motorcycling press by one writer in particular. It was extraordinary that he failed to recognize the essential difference between the U.S.A. fellows and the other teams in the way in which they rode and their whole attitude during the Trial. The truth is that Americans brought back to the I.S.D.T. the most important quality which it lost years ago and that is the real spirit of motorcycling sport.
Their approach to the event was essentially that of enjoyment, but with determination which was as dedicated as anyone else’s. It has been a long time since we’ve seen the type of rider and team who make the I.S.D.T. a very friendly though keenly contested event, an international arena of camaraderie and goodwill. The American team showed us once again the real value and ideals which the Trial once meant. And make no mistake about this, everywhere there has been great praise for their riding which showed a whole lot of competitors just how to handle machinery in difficult conditions. You can be quite sure that they have been given fine credit for their excellent results.
Forget the stupid remarks of a couple of press types; as in other fields of sport, they have to create a controversy to keep their jobs. We just want your Team over here again, or better still let us have the I.S.D.T. in the States where they could really teach us a whole lot. The only trouble as far as I was concerned was that the Team was so darned handsome that when they walked through the Triumph plant, all the girls stopped working.
As to the M.I.C.U.S. and A.M.A. questions, why the controversy? By which I mean why the desire for the U.S.A. membership in the Federation Internationale Motocycliste (F.I.M.) anyway? Nobody has yet told me what benefits this would bring to the U.S.A. riders, although I can well understand the advantages to the F.I.M. It seems to me at this range that you are doing very well in America without joining up with anyone else and by my reckoning, motorcycle sport in the States is on a much bigger scale than anywhere else in the world. Maybe the F.I.M. ought to ask wnetner they can affiliate with the A.M.A.
NEALE SHILTON
Triumph Engineering
Meriden, England
Our thanks to the outspoken leader of the progressive elements in motorcycling in England. His evaluation of the character of the American motorcycling spirit is quite accurate; most of us ARE doing it for enjoyment and sport. There will be without question another American Team at the I.S.D.T. in 1965, maybe several, considering the fun had by Ekins, Coleman, Steen, Ekins and McQueen. Benefits to American riders from having an association with an International affiliation are by no means so important that our sport will suffer very much without it, but it DOES open the total competition picture for us to include many forms of international sport not available to us and would thereby even further increase the sport and add a new incentive for our riders. We want to compete in the International road racing, scrambles, trials, and the other forms of competition, and we want the opportunity to stage them in America as well. Ed. 0
