Mechanical Misadventures

Originally published in On the Level, the magazine of the BMW Riders Association. The other day I was doing what all respectable riders of a certain, advanced age do in their spare time: thumbing through the hundreds of old motorcycle magazines that reside like ancient sarcophagi in the closet of my office. That’s when I saw it, on page 18 of the March, 1975 Cycle World.  There, just opposite the ad for Hooker Headers, was a small announcement for the American Motorcycle Institute in Daytona Beach, Florida. “Go with the LEADER!”, it said. “Become a certified motorcycle mechanic!”

I almost did. In fact, I begged my dad to let me go. He wasn’t opposed, but he did suggest that, if I could stop focusing on motorcycles for one second, I might actually improve my grades enough to go to college. And that, to the great detriment of everyone who has ever read one of my articles, is the path I chose: journalism.

For my personal development, it was probably the right choice. But for my motorcycles, not so much. I’ve performed thousands of hours of repairs and maintenance on my bikes over the last 50 years, and every bit of it was done in a spectacularly hamfisted, self-taught manner—not anything like the way I imagine they did things at the American Motorcycle Institute. In fact, if the instructors at AMI saw the manner in which I repair bikes, they would have put me in a corner of the classroom wearing a large premix funnel as a dunce cap and invited the other students to pelt me with used spark plugs.

Over the years I’ve done hundreds of oil changes, valve adjustments, brake bleeds, and tire swaps. I’ve hunted down and exterminated electrical gremlins, changed fork seals, built and trued spoke wheels, replaced bearings, flushed radiators, and even done nut-and-bolt restorations of vintage bikes. Sadly, along the way I’ve also rounded off a hardware store worth of bolt heads, dropped the errant washer down a spark plug hole, and smashed enough knuckles that my wife doesn’t even comment on the bloodbath anymore. This long and messy apprenticeship has elevated my stature from “incompetent” to merely “hamfisted.”

To wit: The other day I was changing the final drive fluid and lubricating the splines on my late model BMW GS. BMW, in its infinite Teutonic wisdom, or perhaps just to flummox shade tree mechanics everywhere, decided to make the fill and drain plugs the same diameter, with the same thread count, but make the fill plug a COARSE thread and the drain a FINE thread. Somewhere in Munich, I imagine engineers are snickering over the misery they have caused with this minor change. Naturally, I inadvertently switched the two, and though I quickly realized my error, it was already too late. Withdrawing the drain plug resulted in a shower of metal confetti that every mechanic recognizes as an ironic celebration of job gone bad.

Life was changed for the better when, after 50 years, I purchased a lift table, which enables me to strip bolts at eye level instead of while groveling on the floor. I will not confirm nor deny that I sometimes go out to the shop at night, turn on the compressor, and make the motorcycle go up and down repeatedly, for entertainment and as a form of compensation for spending decades groveling on the garage floor in search of split washers. Okay, you win. Last night MAY have been a case in point.

I own an assortment of those beautiful, blue Motion Pro tools. I even know how to use some of them. I also purchased a GS-911 diagnostic tool. Before acquiring it, I rode my old R1200RT 60,000 miles while staring at a service reminder on the dash because I had no ability to reset it. The GS-911 really hasn’t been much use for anything else, but I like having it because it implies a level of technical proficiency that is in complete contrast to my actual abilities. Consequently, I’m always careful to leave it casually on the workbench when my riding buddies come over, to imply erudition.

I try, I really do. I have studied the BMW CANBus system extensively, in the same way I’ve read books about quarks, quasars, and quantum physics, and can triumphantly say that I understand all these topics with equal comprehension, which is to say, not at all. The system used on my 1978 BMW R100/7 makes more sense to me, with a harness resembling a fat snake that goes from the front of the bike to the back, powering everything with individual wires. Much more logical. But guess what? I’ve managed to mess that up, too.

Some of my repairs are in the category of what my mechanic friend Tom, calls “Oops, I fixed it!” This occurs when you spend hours laboriously disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling some broken part, and discover that it now works flawlessly. But you have no idea why! The risk, of course, is that it will break again, and you will have no idea why that happened, either. This occurred with the Slash 7, which started blowing fuses in the headlight nacelle, incapacitating the turn signals, horn, and brake light. I cleaned the connections, re-crimped the spade connectors, and put it all back together. It hasn’t failed yet, but that will likely occur next time I ride through downtown San Francisco—the exact moment I need those things the most. And I won’t have the faintest idea why.

I’ve had help along the way. My late friend Randy, who was a professional mechanic for many years, would watch me perform some mechanical operation and speak in the same slow, methodical manner I used when helping my daughter learn single-digit mathematical equations. Or he might stand to the side, arms crossed, shaking his head in the dismissive way one might regard someone whiffing in slow pitch softball. “Put the crescent wrench down, son, and get a proper wrench. And please, no channel locks. Save those for the farm equipment.”

Once, after performing a routine oil change on my Suzuki V-Strom 650, I noticed a warm feeling on my left boot at freeway speeds. Initially I found this to be a rather pleasant sensation, but that was before I realized that my boot was, in fact, covered in hot engine oil. A quick extrapolation led me to the conclusion that if my left boot appeared thus, then my rear tire was likely in the same condition—and that I was about to die. It was at that moment that the back end immediately started to fishtail like a boat trailer in a hurricane. The reason? I hadn’t noticed that the O-ring from the last filter had managed to embed itself in the engine case, and when I screwed in a new one, I had two O-rings, which promptly blew out when the engine reached full pressure. After a brief coronary event, I was able to get the bike to the side of the road. Years later, my left boot is still a different shade of black, which serves as an unmistakable reminder of my ineptitude every time I gear up for a ride.

There are times, against all odds, that I am clever. Years ago, while touring on my 2007 R 1200 RT, it coughed, sputtered, and refused to start. After a little research, I found the source of this common problem: a faulty fuel pump controller. The temporary solution was to wire the pump directly from the battery, bypassing the controller. A buddy happened to have a spare electric vest cord, which I cut, plugged into the accessory outlet, and wired to the fuel pump. Voila! A solution that would get me home! The challenge was to not get confused over the various wires. If I reached down to turn off my electric vest, but instead hit the switch on the temporary fuel pump cord, the bike would come to a sputtering stop. I won’t admit that this actually happened. Okay, it did.

Please allow me to take this moment to apologize to all the motorcycles I have bodged over the years: for the stripped bolts, weepy gaskets, blown bearings, and miss-timed ignitions; for the wobbly wheels, notchy head bearings, and all the parts that vibrated off on the side of the road. For the incorrect oil viscosities, the improper torque values, and the pinched tubes. For all of it, I blame my father. I really did want to go to that school.