You never forget your first love...

To Every Time, There Is A Motorcycle

   It started when I was 16. I had to have a motorcycle. My friend’s brother, Kurt, just happened to have a ’65 Honda S90 for sale for fifty bucks, including a sparkling, metallic purple helmet and an oil-soaked cardboard box, full of unidentifiable parts. Well, second thought, let’s say it was sort of a Honda S90. You see, Kurt was something of a custom bike builder. He had raked and extended the front fork of the little cycle, added ape-hanger handlebars, a sissy bar, a rocket-shaped muffler, and a grape purple, metallic flake paint job to match the helmet. The “Chopper 90” (which my friends affectionately called it) was about as implausible a looking vehicle as anyone could imagine.

   It had a number of idiosyncrasies, most notably a stripped kickstarter spindle, which meant that in order to start the bike, one had to run along, pushing the bike with the clutch in, hop on, drop the clutch on second gear, and bump start it. It, as a rule, never started on the first try, probably due to my forgetting to set the choke/open the fuel petcock/turn the key/put it in second gear/etc. The second attempt usually offered the best odds of bringing the little motor sputtering to life since I was still hopeful and fairly fresh, but with the third and fourth, optimism, speed, and my ability to impress girls would steadily deteriorate. I’m sure there were times when I had run halfway to my destination before the bike fired up (or I gave up completely). When I did get the bike running, I remember I was very reluctant to park it any distance from a good hill, even if that meant stopping blocks away from my destination. Thinking back, the ten block route to school really might mean me riding only three, but somehow that was still worth it.

   On the other hand, once started, that Honda had the little engine that could. A tank of gas seemed to last forever, and, at 33 cents a gallon, running it was practically free. The Dixie cup-sized piston could rev to scary heights forever, and the crankcase never leaked a drop of oil. Granted, on hills the bike kept you busy downshifting while trying to sustain forward motion, and I also learned to wait for lots of lead time before pulling out on a highway, but that Honda could pull you and your girlfriend just about anywhere, as long as you didn’t care how long it took. We didn’t.

   Although Kurt the customizer obviously had been big on cosmetic changes, he apparently wasn’t too interested in details like the electrics. The tail light, for instance, shown brightly with the bike parked, but seemed to cut out as soon as the bike started to move, which, along with a flickering headlight, could make the Honda virtually invisible from the back at night. The brake light worked though, which, on the nightly rides home from my girlfriend’s, often left me frantically tapping the brake pedal and redlining the engine in an attempt to escape the semi that always seemed to be bearing down on me.

   A little about the girlfriend: she loved riding on the back of motorcycles (even the rolling joke I rode) but hated helmets (which at the time were legally required). She said something about freedom and the feeling of her hair blowing in the wind (it was, after all, the 60’s). She also always wanted to go faster, and had a way of persuading me, which, well, I can’t really describe in a family magazine. Fortunately, my top speed for the S90 hovered around 47 mph. I should mention that same girlfriend lived at the end of a two mile sand road. In it’s original incarnation the Honda could have frolicked off-road, but as a pseudo chopper, it shimmied and squirmed so much through the sand that I had to slog the entire two miles with both legs out to prevent putting the metal side down.

   Preposterous as it was, the S90 lasted through high school and a year of college, whereupon I finally decided to sell it and move up to something more respectable, a souped up, red and white CB350, but that’s another story. The guy that bought the 90 planned to restore it to its showroom state, and I hope he did, but I never saw it again. Many different bikes and adventures were to follow the “Chopper 90,” but, looking back, it had done exactly what a good bike should do: it perfectly suited my bank account, skills, common sense (or lack of it), and lifestyle, all the while getting me to where I wanted to go as fast as I needed to, well, most of the time anyway…

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Ron Davis, Master Mechanic

How To Change Your Oil

 

Why pay those uppity mechanics to do something you can easily screw up yourself?

 

 

By Ron Davis

 

   Satisfaction, Pride, Accomplishment. What can possibly compare with the feelings that surround doing a bit of motorcycle maintenance yourself? Well, probably nothing, except maybe the desperate feelings of anxiety over whether you’ve done something wrong that will leave you stranded on some desolate stretch of highway…at night…with no bars on your cell phone…in a downpour…but, other than that, wouldn’t you like to know how to change your own oil? Yes, you would.

   Let’s get started. First, you’re going to need some tools. A hammer, of course, is essential. Everyone knows you always need a hammer; in fact, I’ve heard that the original title of Pirsig’s famous book was actually “Hammers and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” And, those flimsy, cylinder cooling fins that get broken off so easily? They’re basically just cosmetic anyway.  

   You’ll also need a special BMW oil filter socket wrench attachment, part #GN-555-3398YK2-brgrdn~88Q59-nN-CIA007. Why do you always need some special tool to do anything on a beemer? I imagine there are conversations going on all the time at BMW Research and Development that sound something like this:

    “Hey, Hans, how are they going to get this dinky, little bolt off, if they, say, have to replace this little light thingy in the blinker deal?”

   “Oh, Helmut, they can use any kind of vise grips or pliers, maybe with a hammer, that’ll work just fine, yah.”

   “Ach Du Lieber, Hans, did you forget we need more overtime this week? Let’s make it so they will need this U-shaped, titanium, powder-coated, blind Torx head driver I’ve just drawn!”

   “Ummmm, could we make it metric, Helmut?”

   “Of Course, Hans!”

   “Oh Helmut, You Rock!” (German version of high-five)

   You can get this nifty tool from a dealer, or you can spend a week on ebay and save yourself at least two or three dollars (before shipping, anyway). Or if you’re the gambling type, just use your trusty hammer to drive a screwdriver into the side of the filter. Then you can either simply crank out the filter, or, that failing, trailer your bike to your nearest dealer and try making up a story about how the bottom half of your oil filter got torn off. (Like, they won’t already know.)

    In addition, you’ll need something to catch the oil drained from your bike. Now, you can spend your hard-earned money on a specially designed, galvanized steel drain pan, or you can take the more thrifty route like I did and purchase one of those foil, turkey roasting pans which will work just fine, at least until you actually need to use it,  in which case you’ll find the way you bent it up to fit in your side case has resulted in pinhole leaks you won’t notice until the hot oil starts spreading over your garage floor, but rest assured you can feel good about the fact you have saved another five, maybe six bucks.  

   To remove your drain plug (to use the technical term) you’ll need something called an Allen Wrench, a tool taking its name from the famous German toolmaker, Reinhard Wrench. If you can’t remember where you put yours after you used it trying to unplug that pesky garage floor drain, you can always substitute a big screwdriver, vise grips, and of course, the hammer.

   Warning, don’t start hammering on your bike until you’ve also picked up some oil and a new oil filter. Don’t get me started on what kind of oil to use; recent research shows that 95% of all BMW rally altercations involving fists and specialized BMW tools have begun with seemingly innocent conversations about oil. Really, you can get oil anywhere, just make sure the label says something about “visigosity,” has a seal from the United States Bureau of Standards and Measurements (USBOSM), and above all make sure it has an anabolic-transfat rating of at least 39.5 millibars. If not, you’re in for big, big trouble. You’ll need at least two extra quarts since obviously one will get knocked over, and the other will be placed in your side case for emergencies, but will be lost after you remove it one day to make room for bananas, milk, bread, and olive loaf.

   Now you’re pretty much ready to begin the process:

Step 1: Run the bike until warm, but consider that just running it in your closed garage may not get the oil circulating as freely as it should.

Step 2: Find hammer. (It’s probably still out in the lawn where you hit it with your mower last week.)

Step 3: Remove “drain plug.” Oh yeah, when you pick up the oil filter, part #SN543-UV30-R1600-GARM-?-BRTWRST1, they’re probably going to try to talk you into buying something called a “crush washer.” This is a needless expense, just dreamed up by corporate fat cats in the nuts, bolts, and washers cartels. If you give in and buy one, you’ll find it’s going to get crushed just like your old one.

Step 4: Slide turkey roasting pan under the hot oil stream now pouring onto the garage floor. (If you slide it under there before you begin, the drain plug will fall in there, and, you know, that oil can stay hot for a long time...)

Step 4.1: Frantically start pulling off reams of paper towels to form mini-booms around the spreading oil spill headed for your clogged garage floor drain.

Step 4.2: Begin cursing your yellow lab who, suddenly tired of licking your face, has decided to walk through the growing oil puddle on her way into the house.

Step 5: Grab nearest aquamarine towel to try wiping up paw prints on carpeting before wife gets home.

Step 6: Remove oil filter, burn self, drop filter, spilling contents on garage floor.

Step 7: Replace “drain plug.” You’ll find that in a real service manual for your bike they will give you mysterious directions such as, “Tighten drain plug to 45Nm.” The “Nm” is a meaningless abbreviation mythically referring to torque force, but in actuality it simply means, “one or two light taps with hammer.”

Step 8: Remove oil filler cap and pour in one quart of oil.

Step 8.1: Grab more paper towels to clean up the new quart of oil on the floor since you forgot to replace the oil filter.

Step 9: Replace oil filter after applying a thin coat of oil to the gasket (that rubber part). Note: If it hasn’t happened already, this would be a good time to kick over an opened container of new oil, since it’s going to happen at some point anyway.

Step 10: Continue pouring in oil until the oil reaches the proper level in something called the “sight glass.” There are different schools of thought on exactly where the proper level is. You should probably spend the remainder of the day on one of those online forums to check the indicated levels for your latitude, longitude, elevation, distance from the sun, day of the week, moon phase, time of day, mental disposition, etc.

Step 11: Almost done! Take bike for a shake down cruise. You’ll notice I did not say replace filler cap, since, if you’re like me, you neglected to do that once on your F650 Funduro and had the hot oil spurt up all over your face shield and your new Hi-Vis yellow touring jacket, and from now on, well, that step obviously goes without saying.

Special Note: Upon returning your bike to the garage, make sure to park it out of all that oil spill you spilled, but don’t worry about standing in it yourself. This will allow your feet to slip when you’re putting the bike back up on it’s centerstand, which will cause the bike to fall over on it’s right side, which will necessitate calling your neighbor Wally over to help pick up the bike, which will prompt him to all the while make cruelly hurtful remarks about your prowess as a mechanic. On the upside though, Wally will most assuredly throw his back out.

 

You did it! To sum up then, let’s compare…

 

Oil Change at a Dealer:

Parts, lubricant: $35

Labor: $30

Tax: $3.50

Total: $68.50

 

DIY:

Five Quarts Oil $45

Kitty Litter (for oil spill) $4.98

Foil Turkey Roasting Pan $3.29

Carpet Shampoo $9.97

Dog Shampoo $3.79

Paper Towels (1 cs) $11.99

Aquamarine Guest Towel $10.50

Oil Recycling Fee: $5

Gas (for miscellaneous trips to town for paper towels, guest towel, shampoo, kitty litter, recycling, etc.) $20

Wally’s 12 Chiropractor Appointments: $360

Total: $474.52

Your savings:

 

Well, rather than thinking about savings, best to think about the intangible benefits of changing your oil yourself. The pride, the sense of accomplishment, the humility, the pain, the exasperation, the anger, the marital discord…well, just remember: YOU DID IT YOURSELF!