CSC Blog

Just as he did for the CSC Inaugural Baja Run, Steve is having tank badges prepared for all who ride with us on our upcoming western states expedition!

Steve, thanks much for this nice touch!  I like it a lot, and I’m eager to add this new decal to my RX3.

We’re making history here at CSC, and I’m excited about getting out on the road for another trend-setting RX3 ride.   And for all of our RX3 riders, we’re looking forward to seeing you along the way.   Just 6 more days, and we’re in the wind yet again.

How about you?

One of the things I wasn’t expecting on my Utah expedition was to get an email from someone offering me a ride on an RX3!  But that’s exactly what happened…I received a nice email from our good buddy Stephen, who has a beautiful RX3 in the fastest color.   Stephen has been reading about the great time Susie and I are having in Utah, and he offered to let me take his RX3 out and about on some of the great roads in the Park City area.

It was a tempting offer, but I don’t have my gear with me and I’m on a pretty tight schedule goofing around seeing the sights in Utah (and trust me, my friends, this is a state with a lot to see).   Instead of an RX3 ride, Susie and I met Stephen for dinner this evening…and I grabbed this photo after a fine meal…

Susie, Stephen, and yours truly had a fun evening, and after a while, we were laughing as we discovered more and more things we have in common…

• Stephen and I are both former US Army artillery officers.
• Stephen and I both attended the Benning School for Boys (you Airborne types will know what I’m talking about).
• Stephen’s wife is from Fullerton; Susie works in Fullerton.
• Stephen and I are both reloaders.
• Stephen and I both enjoy collecting and shooting old military rifles and 1911 pistols.
• All three of us (Susie, Stephen, and I) are engineers; Stephen and I are both mechanical engineers.
• Stephen and I both went to east coast engineering schools.
• All three of us have worked in the defense industry.
• Stephen and I are both Triumph vertical twin fans; he has a ’69 500 Triumph, I had a ’72 500 Triumph.
• All three of us have parents from the east coast.
• All three of us enjoy world travel, and in particular, travel in Asia.
• Stephen and I both ride the fastest color RX3.

Stephen, thanks for joining us for dinner.   We hope to see you again when we roll through Utah next week with our guests from China and Colombia!

Another hidden gem today…the Hill Aerospace Museum.   Years ago when I was in the cluster bomb business (no kidding, that was a hoot!) I used to visit Hill Air Force Base at least monthly, and back in those days, they had a tiny museum outside the main gate that included just a few planes parked outside.   Fast forward 30 years, and wow, things sure have changed!

Not too many words, today, my friends…just a collection of cool photos.  Enjoy!

I’m in Park City tonight, and Susie and I are having dinner with an RX3 rider…more to follow tomorrow!

Guys and gals, we have heard of a couple of instances in which customers ran way past the mileage for the first RX3 required valve inspection, and we need to point out that you can’t do that.

The first recommended RX3 valve inspection is at 500 miles, and we’re recommending that you check your valves every 2500 miles after that.  We may recommend a longer interval than 2500 miles for the subsequent inspections at some point in the future, but for now, we want you to follow the recommended maintenance schedule.

Look, it goes like this:   New engines usually see the largest shift in valve gap in the first few hundred miles.   When valves wear, the gap always gets smaller.    If the gap goes below the minimum allowed, you may experience hard starting, stalling when coming to a stop, uneven idling, and other symptoms.  If you let the valve gap get too small, you’ll burn a valve.  If the gap gets too small, the valve won’t seat securely and it will overheat.   When that happens, the valve’s heat has no place to go but up into the valve stem.   When the valve stem overheats, the valve will stick in the valve guide, the piston will hit the valve, and your engine is toast.   There’s no rocket science here.   Ignore your valve inspection and adjustment, and ultimately you’ll burn a valve.  If you follow the recommended maintenance plan, that won’t happen.  If you don’t, you may have a serious problem.

We recently read an Internet forum post by a guy who didn’t check his valves until the 3000-mile mark, and then he feigned surprise when he discovered that the gap was below the minimum allowed.  Folks, that’s what happens when you don’t adjust your valves, and that’s why we recommend that first inspection at 500 miles.  Follow the recommended maintenance schedule and you’ll be fine.

You know, we could do a pretty cool adventure ride without ever leaving Utah, and what’s floating around in my mind right now is a special package for a 5 or 6 day ride that goes like this…buy a new RX3, and get a free guided tour hitting the high spots in the Great State of Utah.  You’d pay for your hotels, meals, and gas, and we’ll ride with you on a free guided Utah tour as part of the deal.   Folk, Utah is that good, and I’d love to ride this state on my RX3!

About that photo you see above…Susie and I rolled into Odgen today to visit their museums, and these Ogden motor officers were parked out front.  It was a great photo op, I asked, they said okay, and the photo you see above is the result!  And yes, it was raining this morning…but that never stopped me from riding and it didn’t stop these motor officers, either!

Ogden has four museums and an art gallery in their old railroad station, and it’s one heck of a deal.  For a very minimal entrance fee, you get to see the Browning antique car collection, the Browning firearms museum, the rail road museum, the cowboy museum, and an art gallery.   Wow!

John Moses Browning, who did a lot of his work in Ogden, was perhaps the world’s most prolific arms inventor, and this museum highlights his creations as well as many other interesting guns.   I was in my element here!

There were a lot of interesting firearms on display, and then we migrated over to the car collection.  I took maybe a hundred photos.  Trust me on this…if you’re ever in Ogden, you don’t want to miss this place.

We toured the railroad museum, and then the cowboy museum, and then the art gallery. I grabbed a photo of Susie in the art gallery…

After a great lunch in downtown Ogden, we talked about where we’d go next, and Susie suggested Promontory Point.  We had learned a bit about it in the railroad museum, and we were only about 45 miles away.   It’s where the railroad construction crews completed the railroad that reached across the United States.   The stuff we learned about in our grade school history classes.   Only 45 miles away.

Hey, why not?

Folks, Promontory Point was great….and if you’re ever out this way and don’t go there, you’d be missing a grand opportunity.   Check out these photos of Jupiter and No. 119, the two locomotives that met on this exact spot on 10 May 1869!

Promontory Point is so far out in the boondocks that the place isn’t too crowded.   We were there for a couple of hours and we were about to leave when one of the Park Rangers suggested we hang around for another 15 minutes.  “We’re about to put the locomotives away for the evening, and you might want to see that.”   Whoa!

I can’t begin to tell you how cool that was…but I can show you…

More good stuff…we liked Arches National Park so much we took another quick roll through it yesterday morning.  I grabbed a few more photos just because I wanted to see what the park looked like with the sun in the east instead of the west…

From there, we rode over to Dead Horse State Park.   That was equally awesome….

On the ride in, I even spotted this guy soaking up the warmth from the road…he was non-venomous, of course, or else I would not have gotten that close!

We were on a roll.  Literally.  Canyonlands National Park was just down the road.  In for a penny, in for a pound…

Utah is truly amazing, and I had no idea these parks were here.  I might have heard of Arches; I had never heard of Dead Horse or Canyonlands.   Canyonlands is every bit the equal of the Grand Canyon, and Arches is as breathtaking as Zion.   Grand places, to be sure.

Here’s another hot tip…a couple of years ago I qualified for the National Park lifetime entrance deal.   When I say I qualified, it sounds like I won a contest or something, and in a sense, I guess I did…I turned 62.   When that happens, for $10 you can buy a lifetime pass that gets you into any National Park in the US.  It’s got to be one of the best deals ever.   I’m sure getting my $10 worth.

More good news:  I’m getting lots of emails about the Western America Adventure Ride from you…the people here in the US who want to ride with us.   That’s awesome!  We’re looking forward to seeing you.   We’ll be posting more on the blog in the near future about where we’ll be and when we’ll be there, and for those of you who don’t own an RX3 yet, we’ll be offering test rides at our evening stops.

It’s going to be grand!

I’ve been to quite a few of our National Parks and I had heard of Arches National Park, but yesterday was the first time I had ever visited it.  Arches is on Utah’s eastern side, close to the Colorado border.   It’s right next to Moab, which is where we stayed last night.   Moab is a touristy town (not exactly my cup of tea), but Arches National Park is special.   All I can say is this:  Wow!   Folks, Arches National Park definitely needs to be on your bucket list.

It’s early here, and I’m headed down to the hotel lobby to grab a cup of coffee.

Ride safe, my friends.

I’m on the road poking around in Moab, Utah, boys and girls…but my good buddy Ryan sent this dynamite photo of Arizona Dennis and his new RX3 to me today…

Dennis, you’re going to enjoy your new bike, and if you’re up for it, please join us (along with everyone else along the route) when we do our Western American Adventure Ride!  Here’s our press release on this epic event…

The CSC Epic Adventure Ride!

The invite above is for everyone….if you’re in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, or Oregon, we hope you will ride with us on this grand adventure!

Tough duty, folks, but somebody has to do it!

Susie and I are taking in the sights in Salt Lake City (including the State Capital and the Mormon Tabernacle), and after that we headed south for a ride on the famed Nebo Loop.

That Nebo Loop was something else.   We were up over 9,000 feet, with a super view of Mt. Nebo.   Folks, this is going to be a future RX3 ride!  When I saw these guys riding their KLRs up there, I knew what I wanted to be doing…

After running the Nebo Loop, we rolled back to SLC for dinner at the Red Iguana, the most popular Mexican restaurant in town.  I tried their red pippian (it’s pronounced pippy-ann), and it was possibly the best Mexican food I’ve ever had….

That dish you see above was super-tender chicken smothered in mole sauce, and it sure was good.  It was spicy without being overwhelming (just enough to make my bald spot sweat, a true barometer of fine cuisine if ever there was one), the taste was amazing, and I want to go there again.   The Red Iguana specializes in mole sauces, and for this one, they do something with ground sunflower seeds.   Trust me, it was awesome.   We’ll have dinner there again before we leave Utah; it’s the kind of restaurant you need to visit a few times to try several of their specialties.

And that’s it for now, folks.  Just 10 days until we start our epic RX3 road trip with the Chinese!