I tend to agonize about things. Its one of my most irritating personality flaws. My inner monologue is something like 99% arguing with myself and or reliving all my various mistakes in life no matter how minor. To that end I usually have plenty of hindsight related minor and major mistakes to relive 24/7. Since I'm a motorcycle enthusiast and don't do all my own tech work I often have lots of things to agonize about with regards to my bikes. Now the weird thing is that because of my line of work I tend to have some short term memory problems; tell me your name and I'll forget it before I even finish introducing myself. But I can tell you all the transgressions imagined or otherwise that I've befallen in relation to getting work done on my bikes by other people!
Lets set the way back machine for 2011. I had this absolutely POS R6 I'd just gotten as my second bike after starting on a Ninja 250. It had an oil leak from the stator cover. I take it to (names have been changed to keep me from getting sued over slander if any of the guilty parties were to read this blog, yeah right) Crapley Motorsports in Grants Pass. He checks it in, tells me he'll call in a week, then forgets about it for a month. I bug him, he says more important jobs (his subie bros with blown turbo engines) were taking his time. I go pick it up and fix it myself, which took two tries because I suck.
The next bike I own is a very nice 2006 CBR600RR. Being that I'm trying to keep it nice, I take it to Frank's Honda in Corvallis, Oregon for the recommended valve inspection service. A week or two later I get a call to pick it up and I show up after work. Its their closing time, their tech has already left, and the man working the desk takes my money, gives me the key, and promptly leaves. I go into the parking lot (its dark, its winter, its cold) and try to start my bike. It starts. Then it dies. Crap. I hit the starter again, it starts then dies. Double Crap. I try a few more times then give it the ol' hold the throttle partly open when starting and it runs! As soon as I close the throttle it dies. Turns out that in pulling it apart they messed up the idle, but I was able to fix that in the cold dark parking lot and get it running again. Oh and the valve inspection? Years later when I had it apart after a crash I notice that the screws on the valve cover looked like they'd never been touched.
So in 2016 I sell the CBR600RR and buy a 2014 VFR800FD. Great fun, comfortable. My stupid ass believes Bert Lambert's Honda in Beaverton when they say they'll key the panniers as part of the horrific cost of buying them, when I come in for the first service. Well obviously that didn't work out. At the first service they told me it was going to be another $250 to key the panniers. I asked them to ship it all to my house and I'd figure that out. Anyways on the way home from the first service (in the middle of nowhere) the lower fairings start flopping in the breeze because they didn't fasten them. When I go to change the oil next I have to use an extension to break loose the oil drain bolt and filter. Come on, who the hell uses an impact gun on a drain bolt? Bert's Honda in Beaverton, that's who.
Since I swore I wasn't going back to Bert's again for service and because I'm dumb I take my VFR to Salem Motorcycle Country for the 16k mile service (which stupidly involves a valve inspection). When I pick it up and look at the invoice I see they had just "inspected" cables and stuff and changed the oil. Well wait, what about changing brake fluid, coolant, and inspecting the valves? To paraphrase the jackass working there "nobody every does the valves they just trade it in". For a roughly $500 service charge I got an oil change. Oh and they used an impact gun on the drain bolt.
Then there's this used car dealership in South Albany that has a motorsports place on campus. They sell used bikes and new Suzukis. Well at one point I need new fork seals on my ZX6R and since Independent repairman Johan won't do forks anymore I call up South Atlantic Powersports and see if they can squeeze me in. They say they can and I drop off my forks, parts, and a bottle of fork oil. I wrote the oil capacity down and put it with the stuff I dropped off. A week later I get the forks back and put em on my ZX6R and go race. If you already read my race blog you know what happened. They emptied half of the fork oil bottle into each fork and hydrolocked them. I raced on forks that had maybe 5mm of travel and zero bump absorption.
There's an Independent Motorcycle Repair guy in the mid valley I use occasionally. Unfortunately he's a sole proprietor and got a good reputation so he's picky. I used him a number of times over the years and he's always done good work. Problem is since he has a line out the door he can pick and choose what he wants to do. I asked him at bike night "Hey Johan, I have a VFR 800 that's due for a valve check at 36k miles, can you do it?" "No, I don't work on V4s".
Since the Honda dealers in my area had left me with a bad taste I go looking. There's a shop near Portland (Let's call them... CycleMusic) that's run by a guy that used to crew for the Honda Superbike team and they say they can do the high mileage service on a VFR. Great! They even offer a small discount for OMRRA members (which I was at the time). Now I should mention, at the time that I was looking for this service the VFR was already experiencing an intermittent power loss issue. I attributed this to the mileage and figured it would be resolved by doing the high mileage service which included spark plugs.
Well anyways I get the bike back and it runs good. I had them do the suspension and steering head bearing and it feels almost like a new bike. I go ride it out to eastern Oregon the next week and guess what, the power loss issue is still a thing. So anyways it goes back to CycleMusic multiple times while we guess at what the issue is. Power commander tune? No. Fuel pump? Well we couldn't get an OEM one because of the pandemic so we use an aftermarket which doesn't supply enough go-juice and makes the problem worse. Cam chain tensioner? No. Finally get ahold of an OEM fuel pump, that isn't the fix. A tank of fuel after I get back from my southwest trip the VFR outright dies (good thing that didn't happen on the trip) because of an electrical short involving the rear brake and rear brake light, which for some insane reason Honda decided to run the power for the fuel pump THROUGH the rear brake light. They fix that and ... still have an intermittent power loss issue.
So at this point I'm ready to ride it off a cliff and claim the insurance but I get a recommendation for a shop in Medford that has a good reputation for electrical problems. So I drop it off with MRP Motorsports at the beginning of April. I tell them all about the problem and what we've done and even a theory that it might be the TPS going out. Then I don't hear back. I pretty much have to hound them to get an update. They took the bike apart then pretty much forgot about it.
Oh and the TPS? Turns out Honda doesn't sell just the TPS because its riveted into the throttle body, which to buy is over $1000! MRP got ahold of a used one, finally got to work and installed it and... that didn't fix the issue. They're continuing to troubleshoot, maybe. Suppose I'll have to hound them more. Since its summer they have a myriad of people wanting last minute stuff and the guy with the old VFR isn't a priority. Probably would have been better just to get rid of the VFR last year when the problem surfaced instead of blowing time and money on trying to make it my forever bike. Which is a real shame because none of the sport touring options on the market these days really appeal to me in a visual sort of way.
"Well Tim just do all your own work". No. I suck at this. I do a lot of my own work and then call in the pros when its something beyond me. Its just so much of the time the pros don't get it right, or in the case of dealerships outright do it wrong! Why is it so hard to find competent help? Dealerships pay their techs shit for wages so nobody sticks around. Independent places can't pay enough to keep good people around, the good ones leave and go start their own shops and then go out of business because they suck at business.
In the vein of "do all your own work" this week I installed new suspension on the Ninja 400. Part of why I don't usually "do all my own work" is because I don't have all the tools and the facility to do it properly. Maybe that's why I'm a tool abuser. I used ratchet straps to suspend the bike while I swapped out the rear shock. On the '400 its actually pretty straight forward to get to the shock, you don't have to take anything off or strip the whole bike down!
The new suspension is a lot smoother feeling, at least in the twenty miles I rode it last night after finishing the work.
Motorcycle electronics are above my pay grade, whern mine go buggy the bike is gone... ha ha. I can still do a lot the mechanical stuff tho.. and get better results than the shpops, or at least i like to think so..
ReplyDeleteNice work on the forks which by all means is t the easiest to do for the average Joe wrench jockey.
ReplyDeleteI can feel your pain on service and service departments but I learned long ago to do my own work, get a service manual like the service shops and have at it.
So far in 40 years working on cars and bikes it's been bliss not having someone else's grubby little hands on my pride and joys.
Nice blog btw and glad I found it. I'll be sure to read more as I go down the pages.