Let me introduce you to my motorcycle. There are a few different ways to describe the beast. Pessimistically, it could be called a money pit and a bucket of bolts; optimistically, it could be called a learning experience and the most fun you can have on the road.
I bought the motorcycle, which a 1985 Yamaha xj700, in college. I had wanted one since I was about 16, by my mother wouldn’t let me get one. in retrospect, this was a good decision on her part, because I was in about 4 car accidents before age 18. Fortunately, by the time I got the motorcycle, I think when I was about 20, I had learned that you can’t stop a vehicle in 2 feet and that you have to give everyone else on the road a little room.
Actually, this is a good point, although not explicitly motorcycle-related. The first lesson I learned is
GIVE OTHER PEOPLE SOME ROOM
I’ve been commuting 70 miles or so per day for the last year and I’ve learned that this is just about the most important thing you can do while driving, and almost nobody does it. It’s very easy and it doesn’t result in you getting where you’re going any slower. In fact, I’d go so far to say you could replace “driving” with “living” in the previous sentence and you’d still have a pretty good principle.
Back to the motorcycle. I paid $200 for it. I didn’t have any money and I was desperate for a bike. It was literally in pieces when I got it. A friend of a friend had bought it thinking he would fix it up and he go frustrated and dropped a couple grand on a brand-new sportbike. This illustrates an important fact about me: I’m incredibly cheap. Or frugal, if you like, but I don’t like paying for things I can’t use or don’t need. (Let’s neglect for the moment that nobody really needs a motorcycle in a state like Michigan or Massachusetts, since you can’t use it for about half the year). I knew that I wouldn’t be a good enough rider right away to deserve a nice bike, and I figured if I ever dropped it, I’d be out $200 at most. I dropped it about 4 times. You can’t really tell. Lesson number two is
DON’T BUY MORE THAN YOU CAN USE.
I’d say this goes for house ((ref not so big house)), car ((ref something about SUVs?)), food ((ref something about portion control)), shampoo ((ref how people use more when the bottle is bigger)), whatever you like.
I got a beat up old bike like that because I figured it would be a good experience for a young aerospace engineer just starting a career in propulsion to get his hands dirty on a real propulsion producer. Seven or so years later I can say two things about that: first, I was absolutely right and I think there are things about working with your hands in the real, physical world that aren’t written down in any book. Even if they were, it would very boring and hard to try to learn them that way, and working on a motorcycle is fun. Second, I really had no idea what I was getting into.
For example, I have probably taken the carburetors off of 10 times by now. If I were Dave Barry, I would now explain that “a carburetor is a device used with an engine to make sure that it never, ever, runs exactly right.” On most motorcycles, there is usually one carburetor per cylinder. I have 4 (cylinders and carburetors). Each carburetor probably has 40 or so parts. I timed it and I can completely disassemble, strip, clean and re-assemble all 4 carbs and get them back on the bike in 2 hours. I think that’s pretty darn impressive.
I’m happy that I’ve learned from experience, but much of that work I would not have had to do if I had done things right from the beginning. Partially I can claim ignorance because I didn’t always know the right way to do it. Nevertheless, my third major lesson on the motorcycle has been
DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.
Even if it takes longer. Even if it costs more. Even if you have to wait for parts.
(You can skip this part if you’re not interested in etymology, but I propose a principle in English that if a word seems strange it almost always has a highly interesting origin. For example, a carburetor is something that carburets. And “to carburet” means to make a “carburet,” which is simply the combination of the stem, in this case carb-, with something else, usually a radical, usually oxygen. So, that means a carburet is a combination of a carbon compound, usually a hydrocarbon, with oxygen. Hence, burning of gasoline or other petroleum fuels. This term was borrowed into English from French, where they had lost the t in favor of the Frenchier “carbure,” but the Brits kept the earlier version and very Britishly determined that all the letters ought to be used, and the rest is history. So it’s carb(on) + uret(compound of) + or(agent). Cool, huh?)
I’ll totally admit that I haven’t learned my lesson. I keep thinking it will be ok or that this time I can just to do the quick and dirty way. I’m always wrong. Do it right, the first time.
I thought that the final lesson was going to be “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but then I started thinking about that in relation to vehicles. I guess that saying means that if something is working well enough that it shouldn’t be messed with. (in fact, I could go off on a whole tangent here involving that phrase, but it suffices to say that it most probably originated with Bert Lance. There are lots of things that should be messed with no matter how well they’re working. Examples are brakes and tires. Even if they seem to be working fine, a brake pad can be compromised and not provide enough stopping power and a tire can be under-inflated and blow out on the freeway. It’s obvious that you shouldn’t avoid working on things that actually need constant attention, even though I like the idea that things that are good enough should be left alone. There’s a difference between leaving a good enough solution alone and making sure to check things that could fail.
This brings us to the last major lesson the motorcycle project has taught be so far.
IF IT LOOKS WRONG, IT PROBABLY IS.
Even to an only-somewhat-trained eye, if it looks like something is not quite right, it’s probably true.
Let me illustrate this with a story about a bearing race holder. Just so it’s obvious, let me say that bearings and bearing races usually are made out of very hard, very strong steel. In this case, the part that holds the race is made out of thin, cast aluminum. It has 8 bolts on it. You’re supposed to tighten them in a star pattern to make sure that the forces are evenly distributed and everything goes together straight. I noticed about halfway through that it was getting harder and harder to turn the bolts, but I figured it would work itself out. Nope, It cracked. One entirely new drive unit later, I learned another lesson.
It seems like some things are best learned by experience.