I am one of those people for whom mechanical work is challenging. It\u2019s not as if I haven\u2019t done it \u2013 I owned the Shovelhead from Hell, so it\u2019s not like I had much choice about beating it with spanners, hammers and rocks to keep it going \u2013 it\u2019s just that I\u2019m not all that good at it.<\/p>\n
Patience is a pre-requisite for being good at tinkering with your motorcycle. I don\u2019t have that. So are the appropriate tools. I don\u2019t always have them, either. Certainly some vague idea about what you\u2019re doing, or how it\u2019s to be done is important, but I don\u2019t mind a steep learning curve. So I\u2019m running a one-point-two out of three score here.<\/p>\n
But it was relatively early in my motorcycling career when it became clear that no matter how much I wanted to learn about mechanical stuff, I was always going to lack certain fundamental psychological attributes to be successful at it.<\/p>\n
The catharsis came the day I felt, for reasons I can\u2019t quite remember for such was the trauma of the event, the forks on my 750 Katana needed to be disassembled.<\/p>\n
Did I have the tools for such a task? I certainly hoped so.<\/p>\n
Did I have the knowledge for such an undertaking? No. But I did have a manual.<\/p>\n
It was a warm summer day, my fridge had lots of beer, and my girlfriend was sunning herself in the backyard wearing these crazy French-cut bikini bottoms that always made me a little insane. That she had recently taken to shaving her private parts ratcheted my insanity up to almost unbearable levels, so I was probably over-stimulated when I began the task.<\/p>\n
I consulted the manual, and utilising a 12-inch shifter (the second-greatest tool in my not-so-vast array of tools) I undid all of the bolts on the triple trees and my forks made a satisfying \u2018thunk\u2019 sound as they hit the concrete of my driveway.<\/p>\n
I grinned my \u2018piece of piss\u2019 grin and opened a beer. This was easier than I thought it would be, I thought, and consulted the manual about draining the oil from the forks. It told me to undo a bolt that lived in the bottom of the fork boot. For this bolt to be undone, I needed a socket and a ratchet. Luckily I had both, which I immediately deployed, and the first bolt came out with consummate ease. I essayed the second fork and promptly shaved it round because it was irredeemably seized. Like Constantinople when the Turks came over the walls.<\/p>\n
I stared at the newly rounded bolt with mild venom. I was peeved and sweat dripped off my face, but I was not yet intimidated or upset. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my girlfriend oiling herself with some stupidly arousing Frangipani-flavoured sex-butter, but I forced myself to focus on the task at hand.<\/p>\n
I got out my Number One Greatest Tool, a claw hammer, and managed to tap a slightly smaller socket onto the rounded bolt \u2013 and when I say \u2018tap\u2019, I mean bash. I affixed the ratchet and grunted and strained, and even stood on the fork-leg for leverage, but the nut did not move.<\/p>\n
I went inside rang a mate who knew of these things.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have an Ezy-Out?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long have you and I been friends?\u201d I asked him back.<\/p>\n
\u201cSix years.\u201d
\n\u201cHave I ever had an Ezy-Out?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you assume I even know what one of those is?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry. Look, I\u2019ll come over on Wednesday night and give you a hand.\u201d
\nDid I tell you I wasn\u2019t a patient man? Wednesday night would not do. The bolt had to come out now, not then.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll manage,\u201d I said through gritted teeth and returned to the yard. My girlfriend was baking the front of herself, but I didn\u2019t look very much and went to deal with the fork bolt.<\/p>\n
I was pretty mighty back then, but not all of my strength and none of the languages I cursed in had any effect. I tapped at the fork boot, I sprayed WD40 at it, and I heated it on the stove.<\/p>\n
And then I lost my mind and started smashing it with the hammer.<\/p>\n
Thor himself could not have deployed Mjolnir to more effect.<\/p>\n
I pounded that fork boot like supercharged mine-hammer reducing a mountain to dust. It resisted ever so briefly and then the cast aluminium it was made of began to fragment and powder itself in a most satisfying fashion. Bits of fork boot flew about the yard and my girlfriend had to move further away to avoid being injured by one of the shards.<\/p>\n
It took about three minutes of frenzied smashing to reduce the entire fork boot to its primal powdery state, whereupon I could behold the stripped bolt in all its naked, oily glory, lying on my driveway and being my not-so-smart-now-are-you bitch.<\/p>\n
It was a Pyrrhic, and somewhat expensive victory.<\/p>\n
Many of my greatest ones are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am one of those people for whom mechanical work is challenging. It\u2019s not as if I haven\u2019t done it \u2013 I owned the Shovelhead from Hell, so it\u2019s not like I had much choice about beating it with spanners, hammers and rocks to keep it going \u2013 it\u2019s just that I\u2019m not all that [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[219,61,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14628"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14632,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14628\/revisions\/14632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}