ORIENTAL ANGLES
We all have skills and abilities, some more pertinent to the world of old motorcycles than others. For reasons I have never fully grasped, I have a ridiculously retentive mind for stuff about old bikes which has served me well for more than two decades whilst masquerading as a journalist.
However, I am frankly rubbish at rebuilding engines and I know it. When it comes to power units I seem to have the memory retention of a newt. This ‘gift’ is curiously married to an almost total inability to solve three dimensional puzzles – read gearboxes! I know how they work and what goes wrong, yet I seriously struggle when theory needs to be melded to practicality. I’m sure I could get my head around this and many more perplexing two-wheeled issues, but there’s generally only so many hours in the day, etc.
One of the big positives about working on Japanese bikes is that there’s generally only one way of doing things. There’s normally an innate logic to how individual items are made and fitted together, so even if they aren’t totally idiot-proof they at least tend to be numpty-resistant. For example, carburettor slides all have a ‘pipand-groove’ arrangement which should mean it’s impossible to get the slide round the wrong way. If you feel overt resistance when dropping the slide back down the carb you most emphatically have something wrong.
And such reasoning is pretty much everywhere on Japanese machines.
Almost without exception, stator plates are ‘pegged’ so that everything goes back in place correctly. Of course, the only way you learn this is to strip and rebuild stuff and, generally at least, a decent workshop manual will give a good enough overview. Alternatively, you could rely on online tutorials which can be useful … or not. Just remember, anyone, regardless of ability, can post on the likes of YouTube and some of what’s out there is simply just plain wrong.
Nothing teaches you repair techniques like a broken-down bike and, providing you keep a level head and refrain from vice grips and large hammers, you’ll get there in the end. We all learn from our mistakes and mishaps – every day has the ability to be a school day but only if you let it be. Finding out about the miniscule fluid return hole in a bike’s master cylinder not only cured a binding disc brake but also taught me to look beyond the obvious, and it’s a key weapon for me when fettling to this day. You learn this stuff and store it away ready for another day.
Many Yamaha two-stroke twins run a single choke cum enrichment lever on the left carb with a link pipe to the right side. Working on the premise, ‘you only know when you know’, many home mechanics rebuilding these carburettors have inadvertently swapped the float bowls over. This apparently inconsequential oversight generally means the bike then won’t want to start. All my Yamaha twins now have an L and an R inscribed inside their float bowls. Ask me how I learnt that one sometime.
It really is worth remembering that not everyone is a mechanical genius and that every single one of us has to start off by knowing nothing or very little, then gradually build up our knowledge base or skills set. Finding a mate who can teach and guide you will give you the confidence to take on more and more jobs. And remember, it’s not the quantity or quality of the tools in your workshop that gets the job, but the understanding and knowledge inside your head. With the notable exception of JIS screwdrivers – you can never have too many high quality, JIS screwdrivers!