PIP HIGHAM
‘Don’t force it, use a bigger ’ammer!’
Ill-conceived relationships and massively powerful Belgian beers are two things that I’ve tried to avoid in my short, sweet existence: best laid plans etc. In a similar category are good old mistakes, cock-ups, glitches and, for residents of the USA, SNAFUS. At this point I need to confess, I have made many mistakes, and I’ve also consumed various semi-lethal Belgian potions but let’s not go there shall we? I have no intention of fessing up to some of my more horrendous balls-ups, but there are one or two that do come to mind. In our early Suzuki days we sold lots of small single cylinder two-stroke Suzukis, M15s, K10PS alongside many Bloops. Part of the servicing regime involved checking the gearbox oil level, usually a two minute task; simply unscrew a 6mm screw from the outer cover and watch Castrol dribble from the level hole. On the day in question I was up to my arse in alligators (C15 wiring harnesses to be more precise) when in came one of our precious customers asking how to check his gearbox oil level. I explained the process, then I explained it again, then again. Our beloved punter disappeared for a few minutes leaving me to tussle with the vagaries of Joe Lucas, or ‘The Prince Of Darkness’ as he was fondly known and a lifeless C15. As I was in the process of removing yet another fricasseed alternator I was aware of Billy The Punter leaning over my shoulder, ‘still can’t shift that level screw thing, it’s all a bit mashed up.’ I went into full Basil Fawlty mode, picked up a hammer and my trusty impact screw driver. Puffing my chest out and utterly determined to show Billy how it was done I smote the level screw one mighty blow and sure enough the Castrol obligingly dribbled out, in fact it poured out, from the rather large hole in the outer cover where there had previously been an innocent level screw. In its place was now a void about the size of a two bob bit. Before Billy had chance to clock the ventilated cover I whisked his injured steed off into our shed trailing behind a substantial trail of GTX. Fortunately I had a similar motor in pieces on the bench and within 10 minutes Billy was reunited with his little bike, complete with fresh cover and the requisite oil content. I was somewhat perplexed by the amount of oil that had haemorrhaged from the wounded soldier, ‘Did you, er, I mean did you top up the oil in the ‘box?’ Yes, said Bill, in a vaguely self-satisfied way, ‘topped ‘er up, right to the brim I did!’ I kept the cover for a few years as an example of how not to use excessive force or big hammers without due cause. As I intimated earlier it’s okay to accept that we are all human but perhaps best not to dwell for too long on our imperfections. Mind you, I’ve seen a fair few perpetrated by my beloved customers. Cam bearings and rockers turned to mush due to oil starvation on several roller-crank Kawasakis and Suzukis after customer piled on the Kawa Bond in outrageous quantities, or fitted the base gasket the wrong way round (with determination it can be done) or how about the classic loss of oil pressure on a GSX that came our way; everything looked sweet but it had zero oil pressure. The oil pump was fine, the drive was engaged and the dinky drive pin and circlip were all happy. During conversation with said punter he mentioned that he’d recently slung it down the road on some gravel, but on inspection the gen-cover was unmarked. ‘Did you need to change anything, post gravel inspection?’ I offered. Beloved customer said just the gennie cover. The plot was slowly coming to the boil, so I asked him if it was the same sort. ‘Oh yup, GSX, take a look.’ It might have been a GSX 750 cover, perhaps? Customer told me they’re the same ‘it fits perfect, dunnit?’ Ah yes, but what our precious punter hadn’t taken into account was that the GSX 750 had a plain bearing crank with a different oil gallery to the larger GSX 1100’s roller crank deal. The 1100 has an integral boss cast in to the cover that blocks off the end of the gallery which in turn feeds oil to the head, crank and gearbox, the 750 cover has no such boss, the oil from the pump simply circulates from sump to pump to gallery and then back into the sump. Popping the cover revealed the missing boss. Amusingly no beer vouchers changed hands, we’d saved him the cost of head, cams, rockers etc. but he wasn’t happy. He came in the next week to tell me that he’d bought a ‘proper’ cover off his mate and everything was now hunky diddley. Oh good, happy days, joyous... hmm.