CSC Blog

It was snowing when I woke up at 3:45 this morning, and it’s snowing now at 9:00 p.m.   It didn’t snow all day; it stopped snowing when it changed to sleet, or hail, or just plain old rain.  It has sure been a wet day.  That notwithstanding, we had a good time at Overland Expo showing the RX3 to the adventure riding (and driving) community.

There are two kinds of vehicles here…adventure bikes and adventure trucks.   With the exception of the RX3, there’s really nothing new from any of the other motorcycle manufacturers.   The bikes are the by-now standard run of $26K Beemers, $22K KTMs, and (my favorite adventure bike other than the RX3) KLR-650s…

Lots of folks are camping out here.  My buddy J rode his KLR down from northern Nevada and he’s camping.   Paul (who rode in with us) is camping.  You can see a small number of the tents in the background in one of the photos above.   Brave souls…the temperatures dropped to freezing at Mormon Lake last night.  Me, I had my fill of sleeping on the ground in freezing weather in the Army.   Let me tell you, the Marriott Courtyard in Flagstaff is nice and warm.   And dry.

Here’s a KTM with an interesting decal collection.

There were several Urals here, too.   These are interesting bikes.   I think it would be cool to own one, but the reality for me is if I had one I would probably ride it a couple of times and then leave it in the garage.  I still think they are cool, though.   The sidecar wheel on a Ural is driven (they have two-wheel drive), and these things were perfect for getting around in the mud that was Overland Expo today.

I like this.   I am thinking we need to get something like this as an RX3 accessory.   I talked to a guy who made these at the Overland Expo show today, and he told me the BMW GS1200 guys really like them because a headlight on that bike sells for $1500.   $1500!    My first reaction is that can’t be right.   Then again, who knows?

Another Ural.   My photography was hampered by a desire to not let the Nikon get too wet.

Another photo of the same bike.   These motorcycles make good photo subjects.

One of the cool parts of the show are the ultra-high RVs.   Imagine that…RVs based on a Mercedes Unimog chassis and designed for off-road use.  Folks, we are in big boy territory here!

I talked to the owner of this one, and he told me he paid $100K just for the chassis.   He has a temporary camper shell on it while he is deciding if he likes the chassis.

This puppy in the photo below is a cool half million bucks!  I like the color, too.  It matches my RX3.

And my final photo for tonight…a fire-engine red uber-RV.    I can’t imagine me buying one of these, but they are sure cool toys.

I received a text message a few minutes ago from Juddy and Fernando…they braved the snow and the rain and made it up to Prescott on their RX3s.   They’ll be here at the show tomorrow.  I’m signing off for tonight, my friends.  It’s been a long, cold, wet day and I’m calling it a night.

As always, more to follow…

Folks, our new CSC Motorcycles website is up, and you can see it at www.CSCMotorcycles.com!    We’re still keeping the California Scooter Company site for the CSC-150 and CSC-250 motorcycles, and you can visit that one at www.CaliforniaScooterCo.com.   The blog is shared by both sites, and if you’re reading this, you know how to get here.

Our new webmaster Matt put the finishing touches on the new CSC site, and we think he did a whale of a job.   Take a peek around and see if  you agree!

Good times, good riding, and good photos today, folks.  After a night in glamorous Salome, Paul, Duane, and yours truly had a great breakfast at Don’s Cactus Restaurant and Bar this morning.   We ran east to Aguila, and then turned north to head into the mountains.   The ride was glorious…and cold.   Real cold.   But hey, I had my heavy duty Tourmaster jacket and my motorcycle pants, and I was snug as a bug in a rug.   The RX3s were running strong and the riding was great.

We rolled into Prescott (those in the know pronounce it “presskit,” not “press cot”).   There’s a cool gun store on the way into town, and we stopped there to admire the inventory.   Fun times.

We had an awesome lunch in Prescott, and our server (Haley) gave us some good advice when she told us to order the Reuben.   The name made me think of my new good buddy Reuben from the Philippines who rode with us in Baja (that was a great ride, too).   The sandwiches were incredible.

Your probably wondering why I don’t have photos of any of this, and, well, truth be told, I was enjoying the day and the riding too much.   To quote Gus McCrae, we were alive and out in the world this morning.   It was glorious.   If you’re reading this and you have an RX3, you get it.  If you’re reading this and you don’t have an RX3…we can fix that!

After lunch we, grabbed AZ Hwy 89 and then 89A for a grand ride into the mountains, through Jerome, then through Sedona, and then on to Flagstaff.

My first photo of the day…a lookout above Jerome, looking north toward Cottonwood.

Here’s a photo of my good buddy Duane at that same spot.

Duane has the CSC tank bag, and it has a clear pocket on top for holding a map.  I think I need one of these…

Here are a few shots making the descent into Jerome.   Ah, the day was sharp.   The riding was what folks dream about.   The photos only capture a hint of just how incredible it was…

We stopped for gas in Cottonwood.  $2.69 a gallon.   I could get used to that.

While the guys were getting some water in the gas station store, I took this photo of my rear wheel and tire.   Some of Mexico is still clinging to that rim.   My bike has a little over 2500 miles on it now.   I think I am going to get a good 5000 miles out of that CST tire.   I’m liking this bike more every day.

The ride into Sedona…you can’t begin to imagine just how vibrant the colors out here are.

Here’s another shot while we were rolling through Sedona.   It was as if God took this area and said “turn up the saturation all the way.”  There’s no Photoshop magic here, boys and girls…this is what it really looks like.

And one more…the area is breathtakingly beautiful.

We stopped at Oak Creek before finishing the day in Flagstaff, and Duane grabbed this photo of Paul and yours truly.

Here’s a shot of my HJC carbon fiber helmet and Joe Rocket gloves.   I picked up one of the new HJC helmets Ryan brought in (it matches my Tourmaster jacket), and I’ll probably start wearing the new lid on my next ride.   I need a new pair of gloves, too.   Ryan’s on top of it.

I thought I’d share one last “goofing around” photo…a view of Oak Creek Canyon through the carbon fiber helmet…

And that’s about it for today.   The Overland Expo show starts tomorrow.  My presentation is at 10:00 a.m.   It’s going to be fun, and I’ll have a lot more photos for you tomorrow.   I hear this show is great, and the photo ops are super.   Tomorrow, folks…tune in at the same time and same place…

400 miles on the RX3 yesterday, boys and girls, on our ride to Overland Expo.   We called it a night when we reached Salome, Arizona, in the middle of the desert after rolling across the Mojave on CA Hwy 62.   I’ll let some of the photos I captured yesterday do most of the talking…

Paul Smith, Adventure Motorcycle magazine editor, somewhere in the Mojave Desert on a CSC RX3

A truck tire in the Mojave…there’s probably a story here, but who knows?

Highway 62…the pilot’s view

It sure was pretty out there

While we were tearing across the desert, we spotted this fellow out in the middle of nowhere on a recumbent bicycle with a sail.

You see some strange things out in the desert

We stopped to get some water in Vidal Junction after rolling across California’s Mojave Desert before we entered Arizona.   We topped off the tanks, but we should have waited until after we crossed the Colorado River.

Paul and Duane…Duane is one of our CSC tech specialists

Duane posing with a buffalo or two

My obligatory selfie

The biggest horsefly I’ve ever seen, taking a break on my RX3 windshield

Duane and Paul ready to roll across the Colorado River

From Vidal Junction it was a short hop over to Parker.   Here’s a cool shot of the Parker bridge over the Colorado River…

The Parker bridge

We crossed into Parker around 4:30, and then rolled through a few small towns in the Arizona desert.   The first thing I noticed?  Gas is a buck a gallon cheaper.   A buck a gallon!  Whoa!

When we made Salome, we opted for the deluxe accommodations at Sheffler’s Motel.   It was a good deal, as it was right across the street from Cactus Don’s restaurant and bar.   A few beers, a chicken fried steak, and all was well with the world…

Five-star accommodations in Salome, AZ

The view out front after dinner

One last photo of Paul’s RX3 before calling it a night

Funky hotels, a great dinner, Duane paid for the beer…folks, I thought it couldn’t get much better than this…until the ride today!

I have a text message from Juddy and Fernando…they’re out here on their RX3s, too.   I’ll read it and respond in a bit.   There’s some great riding in Arizona, folks.   Anybody want to do a 3-day weekend Arizona ride in the near future?   I’m up for doing this again!

More to follow…

Good times last night and this morning…at 2,034 miles on my RX3 after the Baja Run, I adjusted the valves, changed the oil to synthetic, and when I was all done, there were no parts left over (always a good sign).   The strainers were relatively clean, the bike used no oil that I could tell on our 1700-mile cruise through Mexico, and the magnetic drain plug had only a little bit of dust attached to it (way less than the first oil change, as expected).  My intake valves were very slightly above spec, so I left them there.   The exhaust valves were a bit tight, so I adjusted them to the upper end of the spec.

This puppy is running strong.    The shifting is smoother, the bike finds neutral easily, and I saw an indicated 90 mph on the freeway rolling out to the plant this morning (but don’t tell anyone).  The bike is a bit dirty (the Baja patina, as Steve calls it), and I’m going to leave it like that.   I’m headed to Flagstaff with Paul (from ADV Moto magazine) and my good buddy Duane tomorrow for the Overland Expo.   Today I’m going to focus on getting ready for my Overland Expo presentation on the RX3.

Before I bore into that, though, I want to share another story or two about Baja.   The first is about Mama Espinoza’s and El Rosario.     Do you believe there are spots on the planet that are somehow magical?   I think that’s the case with El Rosario.   It’s the last town before entering the Vizcaino Desert when heading south, and I always bump into interesting people in that place.

Take our first night in Mexico on the recent Baja Run, for example.   We were enjoying a super dinner in Mama Espinoza’s (thanks again, Steve!) when I saw a very attractive woman looking at me through the window.    To my great surprise, it was my  good buddy, fellow writer and moto-traveler Carla King!

Carla was traveling north on her KLR while we were traveling south on our RX3s.   Imagine that…bumping into Carla King deep in Mexico!

Carla loves riding in Baja, but she hasn’t restricted her international travels to Mexico.   Carla has a number of epic rides under her belt.   She rode around the periphery of the United States and Canada on a Ural, and she did a similar ride in China on a Chiang Jiang.   A Chiang Jiang (named after a river in China) is a Chinese copy of a 1932 flathead BMW that was in production in China until very recently.   Once, when Carla was at my home, she spotted a photo of a Chiang Jiang repair center I had grabbed in Beijing, and she knew the motorcycle mechanic in it!    That book you see to the right is Carla’s story about riding a Ural around North America.   You need to buy a copy of it, and you can do so here!

Carla sat down with us for a bit and we had a great visit.   The CSC RX3 riders on our expedition all fell in love with her.   When Carla mentioned that the chain on her KLR was a bit tight, the guys were volunteering left and right to help her adjust it.

We had a cool time on the way back on our last night in Mexico, too.   Juddy, Justin, Pete, Abe, and I stopped at the Pemex just next to Mama Espinoza’s in El Rosario when this really badass digital camo truck pulled in, complete with a rollbar-mounted machine gun!

I snapped a couple of photos and the passenger came over to see what I was doing.   He had the air of a leader, and he noticed my T-shirt.   It was one I picked up at Fort Benning with the US Army Airborne jump wings on it, and that got his attention.    He pointed to the jump wings on his jacket.   A fellow trooper from the Mexican airborne infantry!

I grabbed a few more photos, and when I got home, I looked up the insignia for the Mexican Army.   Folks, meet Colonel Martinez, a Mexican Army paratrooper…

Good times, with many more coming up.  Stay tuned!

I think it’s fair to say that the entire CSC RX3 Baja crew loved Santa Rosalia, and in particular, the El Muelle restaurant (El Muelle means “the dock” in Spanish).   Sue and I ate there when we did our scouting run a few weeks ago, and we were particularly taken with Anna, the restaurant owner.   I commented on Anna’s jewelry, Sue picked up on it, Anna saw us talking about her, and she came over to our table for a most enjoyable conversation.   If I had to pick a single word to describe Anna, it would be “elegant” (in Spanish, it would be elegante).  That’s Anna in the photo above, as captured by Baja John and his Go Pro.

I knew that our RX3 Baja Expedition would dine at Anna’s restaurant, and as I predicted, everyone loved it.   Anna remembered me from our scouting run, and our meal that evening was excellent.  So much so that everyone wanted to return to El Muelle for breakfast the next morning, which we did.

Anna asked us all to pose for a photo in front of the restaurant, and she had arranged for a photographer from the local newspaper to grab a shot of us.  I received a copy of it just a day or two ago…

I think John and Greg are the only two who didn’t make it into that photo, and that’s probably because they were off admiring and photographing the Eiffel church just around the corner.

We sure had a grand time on the Baja Run.

Folks, I’m getting pumped up about the next big RX3 ride!  It’s Overland Expo and we’re leaving from the CSC plant at 11:30 a.m. this Wednesday.   We’ll do some freeway riding and some backroads riding, most notably along CA Hwy 62 through the Mojave Desert.   The event is in Flagstaff, and I’m looking forward to exploring some of the surrounding areas, too, like Sedona and maybe Jerome.

Here’s our latest press release on this exciting event…

If you have a chance, please swing by our booth at Overland Expo, and if you want to ride out there with us, just let me know.

As always, keep an eye on the blog…I’ll be posting lots of photos from the ride to Overland Expo and from the event itself!

For you brave riders on the CSC Inaugural Baja Run, it looks like we timed the trip well.   You may remember that Susie and I did a scouting run in the Subaru about 5 weeks before our adventure ride and we got caught up in a labor riot in San Quintin.

San Quintin, you will remember, is where we turned off the road for the Old Mill Hotel on our last night in Baja.  San Quintin is just north of El Rosario (that’s where Mama Espinoza’s is located).   It’s one of the many little agricultural towns on the way south through the farming region (like you see in the photo above).  On the CSC Inaugural Baja Run with you last week, we rolled through San Quintin on our RX3 motorcycles (both coming and going) with no problems.

It seems our timing was perfect.   The San Quintin labor riots erupted again yesterday.   Here’s a link to an article about that in today’s Los Angeles Times:

Dozens Injured as Farmworkers, Police Clash in Baja, California

I’m glad we went, I’m glad we missed the labor unrest, and I’m already planning the CSC Baja run for next year.    We had to wait for the bikes to arrive this year; next year we’ll make the run a bit earlier so we can see the whales.

I’m changing the oil in my bike later today and I’ll adjust the valves on Tuesday.  I’m getting pumped up about the Overland Expo ride.   We’ll be in Arizona next week, and I’m hoping to see you there!

We rolled up 25,500 miles on the RX3s last week, and we’re learning a lot more about these bikes.   The feedback we’ve received from our riders has been overwhelmingly positive and, like me, you folks love your new RX3 motorcycles.

As is the case on any new motorcycle, there are a few areas where the fasteners have a tendency to loosen, and I want to bring these to your attention.   I’m not making excuses…these kinds of things happen on all bikes and they happen on ours.   My Triumph Tiger’s instrument cluster started moving around on my first trip to Baja with it.   My KLR’s windshield fell off on the way home from the dealer.  My Harley lost one of its very expensive leather saddlebags somewhere on the 210 freeway.

Our recent Baja ride was a good test run…it included high speed freeway riding, lots of twisties, dirt roads, lots of miles, and lots of fun.   In short, it had all the stuff necessary to start the fastener loosening process.  Based on what we found, this blog addresses the fasteners we recommend you check.   My advice is to remove each one, add a dab of Loctite, and then reinstall them.

The first fasteners are the muffler mounting bolts.   These are the only ones that are a bit difficult to get to, but it’s not too bad.   I found that you can remove the front and rear seats, loosen the rear luggage frame mounting bolt on the right side (the one that goes through the rear rack, and you don’t need to take it out), and then remove the Phillips head screws that attach the right rear body panel and the black panel just forward of it.   If you remove the black panel (the one that runs along the lower edge of the fuel tank), you get enough wiggle room in the right rear body panel to get access to the muffler mounting Allen bolts.  You can get a 6mm Allen socket on these to tighten them, as you see in the photo below.

The next ones are the exhaust pipe fasteners (both at the cylinder head and at the exhaust pipe-to-muffler clamp).  While you’re at it, it would be a good idea to tighten the exhaust pipe heat shield Phillips head screws.

The exhaust system heats up and cools every time you run your bike, and that means the metals in it expand and contract.  It’s a formula for loosening fasteners, so it’s always a good idea to check these nuts, bolts, and screws.

We had a couple of front caliper bolts loosen (these are the bolts that secure the front caliper to the fork leg).  You can see these denoted by the red arrows in the photo below.  My advice is to put a socket on these bolts and snug them up after you’ve added a dab of blue Loctite.

It’s usually a good idea to periodically go over your entire motorcycle to check every fastener for tightness.   Sometimes you can just grab things on your bike and feel them move slightly when you know that they should be snug.   It’s part of the ownership experience.

And folks, that’s about it for now.   As we find more things to check on the RX3, you can bet we’ll keep you posted.   I just checked these things on my bike, and even though it’s Mother’s Day, Sue told me I could go for a short motorcycle ride…to Costco to get the stuff I’ll need to barbeque dinner tonight!

Our good buddy Pete, one of 15 real adventure riders who made the CSC Baja Run with us last week, returned to the plant yesterday for a visit before heading back to the East Coast.

Pete is a great guy and I sure enjoyed his company on the Inaugural Baja Run.   Everybody was great.   We had an awesome time in Mexico.

Several of us made the optional “on the dirt” trek out to see the cave paintings in San Francisco Sierra….an awesome place, to be sure, with artwork dating back more than 10,000 years!

We were gingerly picking our way between the rocks and the ruts, trying not to look over the side at the sheer drop on the left, when I thought to myself I was sure glad no one was coming the other way.   There’s just no way we’d be able to get by if a car was coming.   That’s when I noticed it.    A dump truck the size of Texas.   Coming right at us!

I have to tell you, my heart skipped a beat or two when I saw that truck approaching from the opposite direction.    We all got over to the far right edge of the goat trail we were riding (no kidding, there were actually goats up there), and I remember thinking that I wished I had some video of this.   No problem; our good buddy Pete had his Go Pro running…

Good times…and Pete, thanks for a job well done!

Pete let me copy all of his videos.   Stay tuned for more in the coming days!