ALT-1 Reflections on Repairing used Motorcycles
Some people relax by playing golf. Others by doing crossword puzzles, or hiking through a forest.
Not me. I'm one of the mildly masochistic souls who would rather take some, rusty, and discarded mechanical contrivance apart and attempt to bring it back to life. Call it a sickness, if you will. Whenever I see an abandoned car or bike I can't help but want to drag it home. Especially motorcycles.
I go to the meetings, just to keep my wife happy. You know, "Hi, my name is,Dave. And I drag home Dead Motorcycles." It makes her accept my little problem a little more.
Of course, the more dilapidated the better. Sometimes they come home in boxes, which ia actually quite convenient. You don't need to borrow your friends pick up if it will fit in the trunk of your car.
There's just something about taking a bike apart. You get to learn what all the components look and feel like. It brings your mind in tune to the whole working mechanism when you know, intimately, what each part looks like and why it works the way it does.
I won't lie, and say that motorcycles don't bring grief. Sometimes the most frustrating thing in the world, to me, is the bike I'm standing next to by the side of the road. Usually in a valley, so the cell phone doesn't work. That's when you wish you could recall whether or not you made an electrical connection permanent enough, or if you made sure to tighten the jets down in the carburetor.
A torn apart bike is really one of the saddest sights to be seen. Even only partially disassembled, a motorcycle looks like a puzzle that needs to be solved. And therein lies the attraction for me. Once apart, on the floor and spread out over a bench, I can't resist cleaning and inspecting all the various parts. Deciding what to paint, or polish. Modifying things to suit my own taste, or an aspect of performance. These processes are akin to art, in my opinion. Making the motorcycle my own two wheeled canvass. A place for me to express ideas and show creativity.
After the disassembly and cleaning. After you've repaired all the worn out and broken pieces, reassembled everything, and the bike is looking better then you'd hoped it would. The sound of the motor is the sweetest music you'll ever hear. But sometimes getting to the sweet sounding part can be the most trying part of all. This is especially frustrating when you're dealing with a bike that's not equipped with an electric starter. Kicking a starter lever just adds that extra bit of physical tension, to keep things interesting and bring fatigue into the equation. Making the experience that much more memorable.
At this point I'll usually sit back and just stare at the bike, with a beer in my hand, and go through what I've done to the beast in front of me, trying to figure out what I might have forgotten to do. There's been a number of times that it's been something incredibly simple. Like the time I changed the throttle cables on my CB750 and, in the process of tearing apart the switch gear and reassembling it, I had turned the 'kill' switch off. I didn't notice this minor detail, for at least an hour. In fact, I had drained the battery and was in the process of charging it, when my brother dropped by and caught my blunder, almost immediately.
But that's the kind of thing that teaches you something about yourself, and about how to look at things. Turning wrenches on bikes has taught me to be patient, and to look at the small details, without losing sight of the larger tapestry of a given situation.
That insight, alone, makes going to all those meetings worth the while. They're a great place to score parts, too.
