Tuesday 12 October 2021

A Worthy Addition To Your Ontario Motorcycle Ride List: Muskoka, Huntsville to Rosseau to Port Carling

https://goo.gl/maps/ss7VMTaf1LVey7j76

If you're up in the Muskokas, this is a nice ride.  It's about 60kms through Canadian Shield/lake of the woods on some very non-southwestern Ontario windy roads.  It started off overcast but then the sub broke through and painted the already incredible October Ontario fall-colours with a nuclear paintbrush.

The Concours and I managed it in about 90 minutes from Huntsville to just outside of Port Carling.  The road is in reasonable condition (for Ontario) and it's never dull.  The initial bit on Muskoka Road 3 is a nice warmup, but it's the 632/7 from Rosseau to Highway 118 that really pops!

It sure is pretty in October...















Sunday 3 October 2021

Taking My Motorcycle Restorations to the Next Level with the help of the Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group

Heavy rain all week made Beaver Valley a
muddy mess.  The Tiger waded through it all,
spinning it's wheels in the deep mud but
always getting me down the track.
Sunday was a long ride up north to clear my head after another week of pandemic teaching where they pile on extra work going on two years into a pandemic and then reduce your ability to do it.  The trusty Tiger was on song and we sailed and sailed, up past Horning's Mills and through Creemore before tackling the Grey Highlands.  I was timing the ride because I had a meeting!

Last week I joined the Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group and then connected with their Facebook page (that part is free - if you're into old bikes I'd urge you to join up!).  By dumb luck the admin who accepted my FB group request happens to live nearby and has a lockup ten minutes from where I live.  He asked if I wanted to see what he had kicking around in terms of project bikes I could buy.  That CVMG membership is already paying off!

Four hours and three hundred kilometres later I rolled up to a farm just south of town and met Brian and his lovely wife Terry.  We drove down to his storage containers out of sight at the back of the farm and he unlocked a hidden magical kingdom!

The bike I think I'm going to do a full ground up restoration on is a 1971 Triumph Bonneville.  This year was the first oil-in-frame model.  There are benefits to this model that suit me, the main one being that this bike has a taller seat than other Bonnies.

The bike in question has been partially 'choppered' with a big sissy bar and king/queen seat.  It also has long front forks - someone was on their way to turning this into some kind of Easy Rider homage, but it won't stay that way.  I'm not stuck on the stock-at-all-costs angle but I like motorcycling for the dynamic feel of it and a chopper isn't about that.  A modernized custom that stays true to the original look but makes use of the bits and pieces that will make this classic a bit more dependable is where I'm at.


Fortunately, Brian has lots of stock spares which he'd include with it so I'll be able to strip it down and begin working out how to put it all back together again without having to start from scratch.  When I pick up the bike I should also be getting some tupperware boxes full of additional parts.

Classic Bike Magazine had a great issue in June about Steve McQueen, On Any Sunday and desert racers.  McQueen himself did a Bonneville desert sled back in the '60s.  I like the stripped down scrambler look of that kind of bike, though I'm not going to go all knobbly tires and brown seat with it, but a simplified, high piped Bonneville for the road?  That's something I could get into!

I'm going to have to wait until after Thanksgiving Weekend to get my hands on it. I 'll also have to figure out how to get it over here, but I'm looking forward to my first deep bike resto after successfully putting a number of early retirements back on the road again.  This one's going to be an engine out, frame up restoration, Henry Cole style!

Brain had some beautiful old bikes - this 1950s BSA bitsa was a wonderful looking mashup.  The only thing that made me hesitate was the 350cc engine trying to move my bear-sized self around.


Back to stock? The '71 was the first of the oil in frame Bonnevilles and an odd duck with
a tall seat height, but it was also a handsome thing!

Here are some other resources and reference images as I bring this old thing back from the edge.





























"The new frame raised the seat height to 32” which meant only tall riders could really get both feet down" - yeah, that's not a problem for 6'3" me.



Environmental Marketing: the shell-game of hybrid electric vehicles

Out for a ride the other day, I had a hybrid car driver go off unprovoked about how un-environmental motorcycles are.  My son and I were two-up on my 2010 Kawasaki Concours 14 when we pulled in to a stop and got unsolicited advice from the ignorant.

There are lighter bikes with smaller motors that get significantly higher gas mileage, but the Connie does a fine job of moving two people through the world using amazingly little in terms of natural resources.  It also has a virtuous manufacturing history compared to many other vehicles, especially ones that move on lithium power.

This proud-Prius driver got his back up when I suggested that my bike gets better mileage than his dual-engined hybrid (it does - his AWD Prius gets 52/48mpg on its city/highway cycles, my C14 is currently averaging 4.5 litres/100kms mostly two up, which works out to just over 52mpg).  That Toyota, like my Kawasaki, is made in Japan by unionized workers who are paid a living wage to build world-class machines.  Being Japanese, they also both lean heavily on locally manufactured parts.  More and more vehicles are being built in developing countries, which can be a good thing but can also be an excuse to force labour on people who could never afford what they're building.  Globalism doesn't like to show the off-shore slavery that makes it run.

Where I think our two vehicles diverge are in the inherent compromises in the design of that Toyota.  Lugging around two seperate drivetrains is incredibly inefficient.  It's impressive that the hybrid drive has evolved to the point where it can post the mileage numbers it does, but it's still having to lug around a gas tank and gasoline powered motor in addition to batteries and electric motors.  Other than the much-vaunted fuel efficiency, the cost of maintenance must be miserable.  By comparison, the efficient shaft-drive and motor on the Kwak are designed to do hundreds of thousands of high-efficiency (or fast if you prefer) miles without any of that overhead.

The most onerous (and hidden) part of that mechanical overhead are the lithium batteries in that hybrid.  I teach computer engineering as my day job and I'm well up on our medieval battery power development.  We are stuck with poor performing, environmentally bankrupt, chemical battery technology from somewhere in the late 19th Century.  Instead of addressing the immanent climate emergency by producing smaller, more efficient vehicles, we're using electric and hybrid electric as an excuse to produce slightly more efficient behemoths.

Lithium batteries are a nightmare.  From a safety standpoint they are a potentially explosive disaster and from a power to weight ratio they are next to useless, but they're the best we have.  The nightmare gets worse though when you look at how we're managing lithium production in a world that desperately needs more of it.  As you'd expect, transnational companies with no real oversight are abusing developing countries (as they have since colonial times) with aggressive economic tactics in order to strip local peoples of the natural resources beneath their feet.  International mining concerns ferment government instability in order to ensure cheap access to in-demand resources.  Money likes to condense where it already exists and the electric car battery market has all the hallmarks of blood diamonds in terms of the distribution of wealth involved.

There are a lot of advantages to electric vehicles and I hope to get into them sooner than later, but these early adopter vehicles are being driven by and for the privileged wealthy and are mined and manufactured by environmentally and socially bankrupt transnational companies chasing dollar signs (as it has always been).

If you're all about leveraging your privilege in order to wander around with your chest out bragging about how much you care about the planet, do a bit of research first.  There is a darkside to rushing electric vehicle sales before we've worked out the tech that amplifies rather than resolves our resource shortages.  The immanent climate disaster needs solutions, not a shell-game where old white guys get to tell everyone about how much they care by driving overweight, compromised designs based more on marketing than actually solving the coming crisis.

That same day we filled up before riding home.  I put $28 of premium in to fill up the bike.  The guy next to me pulled up in a new hybrid F150 pickup truck that looked bigger than a house.  He proceeded to put nearly $200 of gas into it.  I asked him how far that'd get him and he told me about how the hybrid electric was so efficient that he'd get about a thousand kilometers to the tank.  I get just shy of 500 to a tank on the bike, so for what he put in I could cover 2000kms.  I know this is apples to oranges as that pickup could do things the bike can't, like carry loads, except this one with its never used bed and chrome wheels wasn't carrying much of anything, and therein lies the real issue with this hybrid fad; instead of directing us to use less (which would actually help us deal with the climate emergency), hybrid technology is being used by car companies to justify an unsustainable habit of ever larger and improbable vehicles.  If we could all do more with less we might just make it out of this mess.

The Corvette owners club rocked up at the gas station then.  The new Vette goes 0-60 almost a fast as my decade old Connie while using twice the fuel.  With only two seats it makes a more direct comparison with the bike in terms of functionality and usefulness.  The plethora of old white guys who hopped out of their new Vettes all spent 12 to 15 times what I did to buy their toys, the difference is that my gasoline powered recreational decisions aren't burning a hole in the world.

If you really want to help out, get smaller and use less - riding a bike is a great place to start.  Your other option is to keep playing into the enviro-marketing games until we're all watching the world burn to the ground around us.  I won't go into how charging all these electric vehicles on our already overloaded and vulnerable electrical infrastructure is going to poke holes in other aspects of life.  We need people to change their minds about what green is, and the first step isn't to throw new technology at our massive vehicle infatuations in order to make them seem green, it's to do more with less.


Some Research on Battery Powered Vehicles  (in case you can't be bothered to do it yourself)

https://www.varsity.co.uk/science/20401

Starving arid regions of their drinking water to feed the world's insatiable appetite for lithium?  If you know where the technology comes from, it gets difficult to stay on that high horse.

“The ethics of electric vehicles is far more complicated than the expensive car adverts and glowing newspaper headlines would have us believe.”

https://www.thoughtco.com/lithium-production-2340123

Lithium production is a messy business.

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201208/backpage.cfm

Lithium development has stalled and initial optimism is fading.  You're not going to be replacing your worn out lithium batteries with something better in your EV any time soon - but you will be replacing them with yet more lithium.

https://www.ford.ca/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/2022//?gnav=header-trucks-vhp

Instead of immanent climate disaster modifying our driving habits and producing smaller vehicles that use less of everything, we're leveraging hybrid electric vehicles to keep churning out excess.  When people plug in behemoths like this we'll end up having to turn on coal powered hydro plants just to keep the lights on.

With Ontario spending hundreds of millions to cancel carbon neutral electricity production, we all appear more than happy to simply hide our carbon output rather than actually reduce it.

https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/158058/bmw-i3-ad-pulled-due-misleading-electric-vehicle-claims/

Car companies are selling environmentalism hard, even when what they're selling isn't.


Thursday 23 September 2021

The Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group

The Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group: https://cvmg.ca/JoinUs

"The Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group (CVMG) is a not-for-profit organization aimed at promoting the use, restoration and interest in older motorcycles and those of historic interest."

Sounds like my kind of people!

I just joined.  I ran into them at the Toronto Motorcycle Show in 2014 but never followed up, I have now!

Being a member would allow me to participate in classic trials events with the Southwestern Ontario Classic Trials Group.


I'm sure there will be other connections to be made, more to come!



The 2021 Dream Stable

 Some selective motorcycle wishes for 2022:

TRIALS RIDING ON A BUDGET!

1986 Yamaha TY350 Trials Bike

about $2600CAD

A well looked after old bike that comes with lots of spares.  It would also let me tackle the Ontario Amateur Trials Association's season of events and get my head around trials riding.

APEX TRIALS RIDING!

2022 GASGAS TXT RACING 250

$8900CAD

This is the accessible option in GasGas's competition range of trials bikes.  It's a lightweight, 2-stroke competition machine that isn't quite as mad as their 300cc beasts.

OWN A DREAM CLASSIC!!!

about $25,000

This is a tricky one!  Old bikes are vanishingly rare in Ontario so I'd have to go overseas for this pre-war Triumph Tiger 100.   It's £12,000 ($21k CAD) and I'd need to get it shipped over this way which would probably add some more thousands on there in terms of shipping and duties.

OWN AN EASIER(?) CLASSIC!

$?

It's not for sale so this isn't exactly an easier classic, but it's local and it's a lovely 1961 BSA.  I'd have to convince the owner to sell it and I'm not sure what it'd need for the road, but it looks fantastic!


BIZZARRE WINTER PROJECT

$2000 (but I'd offer $1500)

750 GSZ 750 F with 42k kms on it.  Not asking much and it's ridiculous, but I like it for that - it's a full 90's colour commitment!  I'd actually like an 80s Katana but they're hard to find.  It'd be my first Suzuki!  I like the organic shapes, but it's a heavy old bus for the power output.

A MORE BIZZARRE RUN AT A KATANA


¥ 69,878 clip-on set
¥128,667 Katana body kit for SV650
-------------
¥198,545   (that's about $2300CAD, maybe $3k with shipping/customs)

You need a 2016 or newer SV650.  The new ones are $7500.  A lightly used (5200kms) 2018 with some nice extras is $6300.

With a $10k CAD budget I could create a modern special as an homage to the classic Katana.  A bit more on top would get it a period accurate paint job. It wouldn't have that big air cooled work of art on it though.


2004 HONDA CBR600 F4i TRACK BIKE

$2500 (I'd offer $2200)

It's been dropped and has some scratches, but I'd want it to track ride so I don't care about the aesthetics.  It'd get stripped down and ridden only on track.  It's only 167 kilos to begin with and I'd take even more off.  This one's only got 32k on it.  It'd get lightened up and mechanically sorted and then do what CBR600s do best - take corners at speed.


I still need a vehicle that could move this stuff to where I need it, but that's another story.