Related Posts - Motorcycles: A Magnificent Obsession

Part 1   http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=46840

Part 2    http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=47571

Part 3   http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=50371

Part 4  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=51765

Part 5  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=55723

Part 6  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=56994

 Part 7  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=59134

 Part 8 http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=64239

 

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Where we left off: Part 8 ending

…………We had ended up taking a long way around a low fence, but we had now gotten to the place we needed next to get: running and riding the bikes. Were both pretty fair motorcycle mechanics.  Earl was better with cars, but I held my own with bikes.  We may not have been the very best, but we were damned good and knew it.  So what was this growing knot in our stomachs about?

Next: What can possibly go wrong?

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Part Nine

I wolfed down my sandwich, took another swallow of beer and got up, heading toward the kitchen.  Earl followed reluctantly, why he was dragging his feet I didn’t know, but he was following me into the kitchen like a puppy that had been bad. He had put away the first malt liquor in a few gulps, so he grabbed another, held on to the can of beer nuts, and we stepped into the garage.

The bikes actually looked pretty good.  They were small (well, they would look a lot smaller today since I weigh almost 100# more now! ;-) ) but the lines were right and the engine had a nice form, very narrow at the bottom, with closely spaced cooling fins, and tapering to the head and overhead valve cam cover.

There was a lot of air all around the engine that made it stand out as the major feature of the bike.  So many bikes have engines that look like everything is just crammed in, no open space around them to highlight the fact that engines are the heart of any bike.  These bikes looked very similar to the better known Ducati models of the day.

I went over to my bike, turned on the petcock to let the gas down into the carbs, turned the key and straddled the bike. These bikes had no electric starter like modern bikes do.  I rolled it back a bit until I felt a little resistance, put it in neutral and slowly pushed the kick starter down and back until I felt resistance, lifted my body until all the weight was on my left side and kicked down.  

These bikes were only 250cc but since they did not have a compression release and were single cylinder bikes there was always the potential of a violent kick back which I really wanted to avoid.  I went through that drill two of three times, not expecting a tight new engine to start on the first few kicks. I wasn’t really trying to start it, I hadn’t even pulled out the choke.  I was just trying to loosen it up a bit and get the feeling for how this bike felt when kick started. It had a left side kick shaft which was awkward for me, having been used to right side kick starters. I rested a bit sitting on the bike, pulled out the choke, gave the throttle a couple of blips, closed it and then opened it a tiny bit.  Then I stood and readied myself to get that sucker to start.

Meanwhile, during all this, Earl wasn’t doing anything but sitting in an old director’s chair, drinking malt liquor and munching beer nuts, taking two of three in his hand and throwing them into his mouth rather than placing them there. I’ve seen a lot of guys do that but never thought it was the efficient way of eating nuts.  I think it was part of the whole attempt to look “cool.”  It was an affectation that I never used, but I had many others: tapping unfiltered Chesterfields on my watch face, blowing smoke rings, and such.  But I digress.

The point is that Earl always worried me when he acted like that and it was usually up to me to figure what the hell he was up to. This time I didn’t have to.  I reared up, got all my weight on my left leg again, damned awkward that was,  and was in mid act when Earl says, quietly, “It won’t start.”

“What?”

“Well, to be precise, it might start but it won’t keep running.”

So I’m getting off the bike and going over to Earl.  “Why not?”

“I tried both bikes before you got here. I don’t think they are letting the gas down.”

“Do you know why?”

“Sure. I know why but I haven’t figured out what is causing it.”

“Any ideas.?”

“Nah.  You had the last good idea.  I thought I’d see if you can go two for two.”

So we started another trouble shooting game. First I pulled the float bowl on the carb and it was full of gas. But no more gas was coming down even with the petcock wide open.  So that meant that the bike might start and run until the float bowl ran dry and then quit. Now we are talking about a pretty simple physics issue here. Its called gravity. There was no fuel pump because the gas was carried above the carb and was turned on and off by the simple petcock valve. Gravity did the rest.  The problem seemed obvious to me, as did the solution. I couldn’t figure why Earl didn’t see the simple solution.

As the gas emptied into the carb air had to replace where the gas was. Otherwise a vacuum would be created and the gas would not flow.  So air was usually allowed into the tank by a small hole in the gas cap.  Or some bikes had an “overflow” outlet in the tank with a small hose to allow gas to escape if the tank were too full and it got hot in the sun and expanded. That outlet also let air in to displace the vacuum created as the gas was let down into the carbs.

The trouble here was that there was no overflow outlet.  But the cap, a simple one, did not appear to have an air intake.  This prompted a brilliant response out of me: “What the hell?” Earl wasn’t so stupid after all. Something I always knew unless I was ticked because he hadn’t done my thinking for me.

We both looked at the damned caps and could see no way for air to get in.  So I started pulling mine apart something Earl would never do unless he knew why he was doing it. I knew why I was doing it; I was fed up with this Italian crap, Grabbing the rubber gasket to pull it out I turned  it just a bit in the groove that held it, moving it only a few degrees. And there it was, a small cut out on the gasket that matched up with a tiny hole that opened to a tiny vent on the underside of the cap! I showed to Earl and said, “Who’s the genius in this garage now?  Two for two!”

Earl looked at me with a skepticism that only he could convey, “Right. What’s the real story?”

So I told him the truth that it was pure dumb luck.  One thing Earl and I never did to each other was carry on for long periods of time ribbing each other, or bragging how one of us was better than the other, or rubbing in each others mistakes.  I think that is one reason why we got along so well. Both of us had childhoods where we never did anything that pleased, never had a thought or idea worth telling, at least according to people we hoped to please.

We both knew dozens of relationships that were destroyed by so-called “good natured” ribbing.  The truth which we both intuited but never spoke about was that any so-called humor that we said that was at the expense of the other would never be rubbed in. I guess our silence on the issue, and neither being willing to endanger our relationship, was proof in itself that we cared for one another more than either would ever admit.

Incidentally, I think that rubber gasket not being matched to the hole was done on purpose.  I imagine the guys at Benelli felt that it was better not to let air, damp air, into the empty tank that could cause rust and corrosion.  And while I never would know, I bet the Set Up Instructions or the Owner’s Manual, neither of which we had, explained about the gasket being in the “wrong” place. Maybe the Benelli Brothers weren’t as stupid as I thought. That made two brilliant deductions in one afternoon.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty good.  Earl started to get his bike ready to kick over, but I had already gone through that drill – and I wanted to start mine first. So I ran over and jumped on the bike, pulled out the choke again, turned on the key and quickly kicked the kick start.  

And, Oh Sweet Jesus!! I was sure my leg was broken. I half fell of the bike and was writhing around in pain on the floor like I was going to die.  Or rather, like I wished I just would die. Don’t let anyone tell you that a 250cc bike doesn’t have a hell of a kick when you don’t start it right!  The foot rest of the starter arm had snapped back into my leg at about mid calf and slightly to the outside. Within 20 minutes I was left a big hematoma the size of a goose egg on it that would take weeks to go down.

[Ironically, I would not have another hematoma until I totaled my Triumph Thunderbird in 2005 when a deer hit the front wheel of my bike. That one made this one look like a small thing indeed, but that is another post for a later time.]

Earl should have been an EMT.  He always knew just what the patient needed It was pure instinct.  While I was rolling around on the garage floor, Earl disappeared. But he hadn’t run out on me; he had gone into the kitchen to get the medicinal first aid I needed.  He emerged momentarily, walked over to me, and handed me a large, squat glass with about 4 ounces of Dewar’s scotch with half a dozen ice cubes floating in it.

A few sips and I was on my feet, staggering to another of the director’s chairs that were fixtures of Earl’s garage. Earl had disappeared into the kitchen once more and returned with his own glass of Wild Turkey over ice. He grabbed a chair and we both just sipped and said nothing.  A good friend knows when to keep his mouth shut.  What could he have said other than “You dumb ass; you know better than that?” He knew I was already saying that to myself and he would not make me feel worse. True friends are like that.

I calmed down and the scotch was starting to work, but I was still pissed off.  But this time not by the bikes but at my own stupidity.  And I was more determined than ever to get the bike running.

[Sorry, but the ending here is anticlimactic. I would write a powerful or clever ending but it would be a lie.]

After a while the leg wasn’t hurting much; that would come later with a vengeance. I went over to the bike and went through the drill properly – and she fired. And stalled. I tried again and she fired and actually ran for a few combustion cycles. I gave the throttle just a little more twist, stroked and she fired and continued running. I held the throttle in place for a minute. I had no idea if the idle was properly set, or even if the jets in the carb had been set correctly. As she heated  up the idle increased, which was a good sign so I slowly turned back the throttle completely and she held a very good idle at around 1400 rpm.  

[How do I know? Because I can tell how fast most bikes are idling just by listening. I’ve made a little money over the years off of guys who thought there was no way I could do that. I have no idea why I can do that, but I can; and I can adjust the carbs on a bike with four carbs as well as a pro using a manometer to balance the carbs.]

I slowly pushed the choke in and she continued to settle into a solid idle, no missed firing, no coughing or stuttering. With the choke pushed all the way in and the bike heated to normal operating temperature she settled into a steady idle at around 1000 rpm.  Perfect!

While this was going on Earl had gotten his bike going and, using the same drill, ended up at the same place.  I turned the bike off, went over to the chair, picked  up the rest of the scotch and sipped it.  It was mostly thawed ice now and I didn’t want it.  I picked up Earl’s glass, which was, of course, empty except for some ice water in the bottom.  Into the kitchen and back with half sized refills for both of us and fresh ice.

After a few sips of our drinks we put on our helmets, started the bikes and rode them slowly down the drive, into the cul de sac, and out into the cookie cutter streets of Bowie, Md.  

[Bowie was a pothole in the highway until the early sixties. We called the town back then Belair because William Levitt had purchased the Belair horse farm, all 5000 plus acres and developed Belair as the second of the Levittown subdivisions following the one built on Long Island.]

The bikes ran fine.  We never took them over thirty miles an hour, never got out of second gear, and ran them up and down from full stop, then first, then second, and back down again. We were just wearing them in slowly, more slowly than I would normally break in a bike, but you have to remember that we had nothing to go on to tell us how the factory wanted them to be broken in.  So, after about an hour of this we headed back to Earl’s and we were both feeling pretty good about it all.

We put the bikes away, had another half round and I hopped on the Honda and headed home.  It had been a hell of a two and half days and while I would pay for it with a considerable limp for a few weeks I felt it was all worth it. There would be no more working on the bikes until the next weekend. As much as I hated not doing more with the bikes right then I knew enough to know that I had to work to eat – and drink.

Next: Time to see what the bikes will do. And another colossal blunder that Earl thought was the funniest thing he had ever seen!  Bastard!   ;-)

Monte

 

 

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