CSC Blog

When I stopped by the CSC factory I spotted this gorgeous P-51 bound for Odessa, Texas…

That is one fine-looking motorcycle, made all the more interesting by the ape-hanger handlebars.   I really like the look!

As I was admiring it, I remembered passing through Odessa with my good buddy Marty a few years ago, and you know what?  We were both riding yellow motorcycles at the time, too.   I was on my yellow Triumph Daytona, and my buddy Marty was on his BMW K1200RS.  Both of those bikes were monster roadburners, both had 1200cc engines, and both had no problems swinging the needle way past 160 mph (not with me, mind you,  but I hear Marty may have done that once or twice).

The Marty and Joe Show, snowed in somewhere in New Mexico…

We were on our way to the Annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, and that trip was a hoot.  I’ve mentioned it on the blog before (so I won’t bore you with all the details again, but I will share a photo or two).   If you want to know more about that ride and the rattlers, you can find the trip report right here.

Oh yeah…the stuff of nightmares!

That’s it for now, boys and girls.   I’m drawing down on my departure for another secret mission most-rickety-scosh (an old saying from my days in Korea), and you can bet I’ll be sending some photos back to you via the blog.   Can’t tell you where yet, but chances are good my ride might be an Aston-Martin.  Just imagine the music from Bond.   James Bond.   You get the idea…

Shaken, not stirred…

Oh, and by the way…did you know that this blog entry is our 1000th post?   Yep, 1000 blogs, folks, and they’re still all on line (just look at the listing to the right, and you can get to any of them going all the way back to the very beginning).   1000 blog entries.   Wow!

Ever hear the story about the 1001 tales of the Arabian Nights?    You know…the ancient Persian story about the king (Shahyar) and his new wife (Scheherezade).    As the story goes, ol’ Shahyar planned to execute Scheherezade the day after they married (this was all before the women’s liberation movement and divorce lawyers, I guess), but she got him to postpone her execution with a story that she continued for 1001 nights.

That’s me writing the blog on the right, and Steve listening intently on the left…

That story is kind of like the blog, I guess.   I’m not sure what happened after that 1001st night (maybe she had a pre-nup?), and I’m not sure what Steve’s going to do after the next blog entry (that would be my 1001st).   But I think I’m on pretty safe ground, folks, so don’t worry about me.

Later, my friends.   I think I’m going to fire up the Baja Blaster tonight and put a few miles on her.  Yep, I’m going to celebrate 1001 tales of the CSC blog!

Not quite…but Steve does has some interesting things he’s accumulated.   Things like a collection of mini-Harleys, as you’ve seen in recent blog entries….

And there’s more coming, folks, so stay tuned!

Wow…two vintage Mustangs and a pristine DeliverCycle!   That’s what Bill and Doris picked up at the plant yesterday, and they’re taking them home to Arizona!

Steve started each of the bikes for Bill and Doris before loading them onto their trailer for the ride back to AZ, and it was fun to take it all in!

The DeliverCycle will belong to Doris, and Bill’s going to be running around on the two Mustang motorcycles.  Cool stuff, guys, and thanks for letting me capture it for our readers here on the blog!

I had a nice conversation with these folks at the plant yesterday.  Bill’s a retired mechanical engineer, and he worked with rocket engines at Lockheed.    Just the sort of experience for easing into a Mustang motorcycle, folks…rockets in their own right!

Bill and Doris, you’re going to have a blast on your Mustangs!

One of our good buddies (that would be Carol) recently sent this note to TK…

Hey TK:

I’m not very “blog savvy.”   If I wanted to post a response to a caption post what do I do?  I had one for the last entry:

     Gator….Hey buddy, get off my back. I’m riding here!

Love my new bike : )

Carol

Carol, that’s a great caption, and thanks for sending it to us.   And for the rest of you…if you want to send a caption to us or communicate with us in any way, just shoot an email to info@cscmotorcycles.com!

Thanks, all!

Here’s another interesting putt from Steve’s collection…a 1974 Harley X90.    Like the Shortster we featured a few blogs down, this one was also made by Aermacchi and sold under the Harley banner as the X90.   It’s a “badge-engineered” Harley (someone else’s motorcycle with Harley badges), and it was intended to be a grownup mini-bike.

Cool stuff, folks…a cool bike in a cool color, and sold by Harley from only 1973 through 1975 (and just a few bikes were registered as ’75 models).   Fewer than 18,000 of these ever hit the streets in the US.

The X90’s little 90cc two-stroke engine is another work of art.   I love the looks of these post-war two-strokes, and the ones coming from Europe didn’t change much over the years.

And speaking of things happening over the years, one thing that evidently didn’t happen much was this particular puppy getting on the road.   Check out the miles on this clock!

Cool stuff, folks, and we’ll have more photos from Steve’s stable of mini-Harleys coming up here on the blog.

Ride safe, and we’ll see you out on the road!

On a recent plant visit, our good buddy Lupe was putting a newly-assembled Greaser through its paces prior to delivery.   I had my Nikon with me and, well, you know what that means.   I grabbed more than a few photos.

Lupe, our  master moto maestro and motorcycle model, was happy to cooperate, and I grabbed a few photos of her as well as the brand new CSC-150 Greaser.

I couldn’t decide which of my two photo subjects was prettier…Lupe or the new CSC.   It’s really not a fair contest, as your emails to me asking “where’s Lupe?” would indicate.

To my surprise, the photo of the Greaser was a bit out of focus.  Wow, that doesn’t happen too often, and far be it for me to put a blurry photo on the blog.   So I started playing with the Greaser photos a bit in Photoshop.   Photoshop has a lot of built-in special effects, and after fooling around for awhile, these two emerged as my favorites….the colored pencil effect, and the glowing edge effect…

Now, Lupe…well, she doesn’t need any help at all from Photoshop.  I’ve got a lot of photos of her, and these are a couple of my favorites…

That’s it for now, folks.  I’ll have more photos of another one of Steve’s Aermacchi Harleys coming up soon here on the blog, so stay tuned!

As promised…I fired up the Baja Blaster a little earlier and went for a ride along Euclid Avenue and the base of the San Gabriel Mountains this afternoon…

Great times and great riding.   I’ve had a great Memorial Day weekend and we hope you did, too!

Yep, you read that right…the Shortster (with an “h” and not a “p”) was one of the Harley-Aermacchi attempts to succeed in the small bike market back in the 1970s.   These Italian-made 65cc two-stroke tiddlers were only offered in 1972 (Harley dropped them after that).   They are pretty, though, and Steve recently sold this one from his collection.   I grabbed a few photos before it shipped, and I thought I’d share them with you here on the blog…

Aermacchi, an Italian small motorcycle manufacturer, was Harley’s wistful attempt to make hay as they watched the small bike market in the US explode (while their big V-twins continued to lose market share).   Like they say…nice try, but no cigar.

In the long haul, it didn’t work out for Harley for a number of reasons.  Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha already owned the small motorcycle market in the 1960s US market, and that old saying (“You meet the nicest people on a Honda”) was pretty much true.  Harley really couldn’t reach US consumers wanting a small bike because they couldn’t get them into a Harley dealership.  Today’s Harley showrooms are immaculate, but back in those days…well, I don’t have to draw you a picture.   They didn’t attract the nicest people, and if you were one, you probably didn’t want to venture into a Harley shop.   It’s funny, because during that era Harley did everything they could to distance themselves from the bad boy image.   In the 1980s and beyond, though, they learned to capitalize on it…so much so that at one point Harley actually had a V-twin called the Bad Boy.   Wait long enough, I guess, and you’ll see it all.

There were other factors as well.   The Aermacchi bikes just couldn’t compete with the offerings from Honda and the other Japanese makers.   The two-stroke Japanese bikes, for the most part, mixed the oil and the fuel automatically.   Harley’s Aermacchi two-strokes required the rider to pre-mix oil and gasoline.   The other guys mostly had electric starters…the Shortster used a kick starter (although kicking that little 65cc engine into life could not have been very difficult).    These kinds of things, along with Honda’s stellar reliability reputation, pretty much guaranteed the Japanese small bike producers would remain in the No. 1 spot for a few more years.

Harley (really Aermacchi) offered the Shortster in three colors (yellow, red, and blue).   It’s a cute little thing, and the engine is (in my opinion) a work of art…

The Shortster had a three-speed gearbox (the Japanese bikes had four speeds), and I think the kickstarter is that higher lever on the bike’s left side.   I thought at first the bike had one of those dual-range gear boxes, but I think that bigger lever is actually the kickstarter.  I’ll ask Steve when I see him again.

The guy who bought this one from Steve is certainly getting a low mileage motorcycle…check this out…

Like I said, wait long enough and you’ll see it all.   Small motorcycles from the 1960s and 1970s are very collectible these days.   And the Shortster’s poor marketplace showing and availability for only 1 year (1972) means that there aren’t too many of them out there.   As is always the case, scarcity governs collectability, and folks, the Shortster you see here is one classic and collectible motorcycle.   Pristine and pricey are two applicable adjectives.

So, here I am talking about all of these foreign motorcycles on Memorial Day.   I’m enjoying the holiday, and I hope you are, too.   I’m going to be enjoying it even more in a little bit, when I fire up my American-made CSC motorcycle and go for a ride.  I get on the road every year on Memorial Day, and this year is no exception.

Keep an eye on the blog, my friends…later today I’ll post a photo or two of the Baja Blaster out on the road!

I’ve written on the blog before about the Russian surplus military rifle I bought last year.  It’s a Mosin-Nagant 91/30, a rifle that was first produced in 1891 and then updated in 1930.   The Russians have used them ever since 1891, and when the Soviet Union went bust, they started showing up on the surplus military rifle market.

My first Mosin, a 1940 Tula Arsenal gun that I refinished…lots of fun!

Now, don’t go getting your shorts in a knot about gun control and assault rifles…these are not gang-banger guns…they’re a classy bit of military history, they’re inexpensive (for now, anyway), they’re collectible, and they’re accurate.  Nobody’s going to be robbing gas stations or doing drive-by shootings with these things.   They’re too big to conceal, they’re too classy, and they’re slow firing rifles.   But they sure are fun!

And the history behind these old Russian rifles is fascinating.  I’ve been studying the history and talking the rifles up to all my friends, and several of my buddies bought Mosins as a result.   (Duane and Twin Peaks Steve, are you reading this?   You need to join in the fun here!)   As a matter of fact, we have an informal match about once a month, and the winner (not the loser) gets to buy lunch for everybody.   Usually, that’s me.   Yeah, I’m bragging.   I learned how to shoot in the US Army and I’m proud of that fact.  It’s fun.

So, anyway, back to the story.  After buying, refinishing, and shooting my first Mosin, I decided I needed another one, so I pulled the trigger and then I had two.   Next thing you know, I had that trip up to Big Bear for Motorcycle Classics magazine, and I saw yet a third Mosin that somehow I convinced myself I couldn’t live without.    Well, three is too many, so I told a friend’s son I’d sell the second one I bought to him.  Legally, of course.   Lord knows we have enough rules about owning guns in this country…particularly here in the People’s Republik of Kalifornia.   And yes, you can bet I follow every one of them.

On the road to Big Bear, where I bought one too many Mosins

As luck would have it, the first time we went to the rifle range with Mosin No. 2 (the one I’m selling to my friend’s son) a magazine spring went south.  Now folks, this particular rifle is 80 years old, and if you reach 80 without something going wrong, let me know.   These things happen.   So, I sent away to get a spring, it arrived, I installed it, and then I got the bug to take it out and zero it for my young buddy.   I did that this Tuesday when I was out shooting with the Geezers.   We have a group of Geezers that are on the range pretty regularly…but that’s another story for another time.

The Sniper Mosin, right side.

The Sniper Mosin, left side.

Anyway, I was blown away by this particular rifle’s accuracy.   It shot groups that you could nearly cover with a dime, and folks, that’s threading the needle for any rifle (especially an 80-year old Russian war surplus rifle without telescopic sights).    As I imagine they must have said back at the Tula Arsenal…wowee-ski!

Exceptional accuracy from any rifle, let alone one that’s 80 years old!

When I returned home and cleaned the rifle, I shot a few photos of the rifle and my targets (you know, bragging rights stuff, like the photo you see above), and then I posted one on an Internet Mosin forum.

Whoa…the comments started pouring in!  As it turns out, the experts on the Mosin board started posting comments literally within seconds.   They recognized that this rifle (Mosin No. 2…the one that’s going to my friend’s son) was a Soviet sniper weapon!    And that, my friends, means it most likely saw action in the Battle of Stalingrad (a battle in which snipers turned the tide of the siege, and ultimately, World War II).

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll mention it again…watch Enemy at the Gates.   The real star of that movie is the Mosin-Nagant rifle.  It’s one of my all time favorite movies.

Markings that identify this 1935 Mosin as a World War II sniper rifle…the star means it came from the Tula Arsenal, the date indicates when the rifle was manufactured, and the Cyrillic C and N above the star mark this as a sniper rifle!

The Mosin forum guys explained to me where I should look for the plugged holes that previously held the sniper rifle’s telescopic sight, and whaddaya know, there they were!   They also explained that the Russians test fired all of their rifles and only selected the most accurate ones for sniper duty.    That sure explains why this rifle shot so well.   Looks like those old Russkies knew what they were doing!

Exciting stuff, folks!   And you know the best part?   I’m hoping my young buddy outshoots me this weekend and he’ll get to buy lunch!

And this one, folks, is Steve and his brother from around 1970…

The photo is ultra cool for a lot of reasons…that’s Steve in the yellow shirt standing next to his ’38 Chevy (into which he had wedged a 427 Chevy motor).   Steve tells me he wishes he still had it, and I’ll bet he does.   It had to have been an awesome ride.

The bike is a CB750 Honda, with extended wrought iron girder forks, a coffin paint tank, the period paint job, and a semi-hardtail frame…all touches that were popular back then.  I can only guess at the handling, but it must have been a cool ride back in the day.

Just for grins, I did a side by side of the boss…then and now…and isn’t it something that Steve’s posture and position in these photos (photos that are 40+ years apart) are almost identical?

Looking good, Steve….