Illusion versus reality in doing your own maintenance.
In my Haynes manual, the photos show a latex gloved hand removing a clean bolt. In YouTube videos, you see the guy work through a five-hour job in 15 minutes. Everything comes off easily, and he’s always got the tool he needs (yes, sometimes it’s a she) to get the job done. After watching several hours of these videos and rereading several times the section of the service manual for your job, you go in full of confidence, maybe even bravado. “That looks easy enough,” you think.
But it never goes to plan. Somewhere along the way—it could be Step 1, it could be Step 20—something goes wrong. Usually multiple things go wrong. In YouTube videos, these snags get edited out. Ah, the magic of video editing! In the Haynes manual, they’re working on a brand new bike, one that’s never seen rain, or grime, is not corroded and contains no rust. Their biggest challenge is lighting the bike for the photographs.
“You’re so lucky, you can do your own maintenance,” a club member once said to me. There’s a perception amongst my riding mates that I know what I’m doing. Only my wife knows the reality, and now you, dear reader, will too. I’m pulling back the curtain on home maintenance. The following are some truths of The Hack Mechanic.
1. Bolts have a life of their own.
“You’re going to have your moment of glory, aren’t you? Come on, you know I’m going to win in the end. You might as well give up now. It’s only a matter of time. Why don’t you just save us both the trouble?”
I’d hear my dad muttering these things from beneath our old family car as he struggled to remove a bolt. Yes, he personified his adversary, and I understand why. Sometimes it feels like a piece of rusted steel has not only a consciousness but also a will, and its purpose in life is to thwart you.
And he was right. You do win in the end, although the price in time, sweat, and tears is sometimes a lot. I once watched an experienced mechanic on YouTube describe the steps he took in trying to remove a swingarm pivot pin. He tried (of course) Liquid Wrench, and heat, but that was just getting started. He rounded sockets, specialty removal tools, tried liquid cooling, a 6′ cheater bar, tried drilling it out, etc. etc. In the end, he cut the swingarm off. Yeah, he won.
I had the same problem when I removed the pivot pin on my 650GS. I got the nut off okay but the bolt wouldn’t come out. I tried heat and a drift, but it wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I whaled on it. In the end, I laid the bike on its side, poured a concoction of Liquid Wrench and PB Blaster into the cavity and left it overnight to seep down into the bearings, then used a ball peen hammer upside down as a drift and a sledge hammer to knock it out. I still remember the elation when I saw it first budge.
Once off, those bolts like to hide. Once I “lost” an M10 x 100mm engine mount bolt. That’s not a little bolt. I never did find it. Okay, my workspace (a garden shed) is not ideal, and this leads me to my second truth.
2. I spend more time looking for things than working.
You drop a nut and hear it clunk a fraction of second later. You have to judge based on the sound and the length of time it was falling whether it’s in the bike or on the ground. You look into the bike beneath where it fell and imagine the probable trajectory, based on engine components. You get out your extendible magnet and start fishing around, but that never works. You should know by now that you have to see it first; vision is our primary sense, unlike, say, my dog, who uses his nose to find things he needs. If that fails, you begrudgingly have to start removing components, digging deeper into the engine until the nut (or bolt) reveals itself. “Ha ha, you caught me!” it seems to cry, but you’ve long grown tired of that game.
Sometimes the part fortunately misses the bike and lands on the floor, but that’s little better. Parts like to jump, and bounce, and roll, escaping under the winter tires or into the gardening equipment or worse, right out the shed and into the grass. I’ve found parts nowhere near where I expected them to be, 10 feet from where they fell. They manage to get me literally prostrate, face down on the floor (or grass) in a submissive position like before the Emperor or a god. I have to be sufficiently humbled before they too will reveal themselves.
If it’s not a part I’m searching for, it’s a tool. My tools are in my workshop, which is on the second floor of my house. I try to anticipate what I’ll need for a job and haul everything down to the shed, but inevitably I need to fetch something and so I climb. (My wife doesn’t like me walking up the carpeted stairs in my boots so, as an added annoyance, I have to kick them off first.) She says I must be as fit as I am because somedays—I kid you not—I have to climb those stairs 20 times.
Once there, I start rummaging through toolboxes that are on the floor. This involves spilling tools onto the floor because they are heaped to overflowing and the tool is always at the bottom and it too likes to hide. If the sought-after item is not in a tool chest, I have to factor in another 30 minutes because my workshop is the playspace of entropy.
Basic physics. There is a general order to the contents but, without exerting a countering force to tidy (which I do from time to time), the order deteriorates to chaos. I have a vision of the workspace of my retirement home. It will have a clean cement floor, florescent lighting, a tool cabinet (as opposed to chests), a peg board, a lift, and heat! I’ve told my wife a heated garage or workshop is my number one requirement for our retirement home.
3. Every job requires the purchase of at least one new tool.
The second requirement of our retirement home is that it is within 15 minutes of a Canadian Tire. That’s because I’m forever “hopping in the car” and “zipping up” to the Canadian Tire for a tool. My wife hates the sound of those words. In my latest job, I needed a T50 Torx socket and, later, an oil syringe. Add another hour onto that job (if you can find someone to open the socket cabinet at CT). Amazon is pretty good in a pinch, but then add another day onto the job (if you have Prime). Of course, the more tools you have, the more chaotic your workshop, and mine’s long been over-capacity.
Sometimes the tool is expensive. Then you have to factor in time for domestic diplomacy, and that can take days. “Don’t you know someone who has one that you can borrow?” Who hasn’t heard those words from a much wiser and logical wife? And so you go, cap in hand, to your various mechanical friends, apologetically asking if they have a certain tool, feeling emasculated as if your tool (i.e. the primal tool) is lacking or “absent.” And don’t even get me started on renting.
If you are a home mechanic, there’s a balance sheet constantly running live in your head: cost of tools, parts, and time compared to cost of getting it done at the dealer. If there’s an expensive tool needed for a job, you’re cutting into your profits, so to speak. And if it takes five times as long as getting a professional to do it, you’re cutting into your season, which in Canada is short. This leads me to my next truth, which you’ve probably already guessed.
4. Every job takes five times longer than expected.
Yes, five times. Minimum. A job that takes 90 minutes in theory will take all day in practice. That’s working time, not including searching time, domestic resolution time, and purchasing time. For a big job that may take a professional half a day you might as well clear your week. Often a job feels like it’s two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes it’s one step forward, one step back, which is nowhere. That’s because you are learning as you are working, or as the poet Theodore Roethke said in “The Waking,” “I learn by going where I have to go.” He wrote that in an villanelle, which is a form that repeats lines in the first stanza throughout the poem and creates the effect of always coming back to the beginning in a cyclical manner that is sometimes reminiscent of working on a motorcycle.
Sometimes this back-stepping is not your fault. For example, in my last job, I had to take the swingarm off the bike. To reinstall it, my Haynes manual says to install the rear shock absorber before the Paralever arm. Only once I’d done that, I realized you can’t install the nut on the front mount bolt of the Paralever arm because the shock is in the way! So I had to remove the component I’d just successfully reinstalled, and felt good about, in order to continue.
And if you strip a bolt, or break a bolt, you have to add mental health time to step away from the job until you are ready to continue. This is why I’d never be a professional mechanic; I would end up working for less than minimum wage.
5. I make a ton of mistakes.
This is the big reveal. Yes, to err is human, and I guess I’m more human than most.
I once didn’t install properly the impeller gear of the water pump on my 650GS and it fell off at a rally after a rocky hill climb, leading to the temperature light coming on. I lost the weekend waiting for new parts to arrive. On another occasion, when I replaced the rear shock after servicing, I didn’t drop the subframe correctly and the brake line rubbed on the rear tire and wore through. When I felt the rear brake going spongy, I knew something was up. I’ve installed tires backwards, wheels flipped (“Why am I getting an ABS error?”), a rear wheel askew (forgot to check the alignment marks on the rear swingarm) and, multiple times, forgot to balance the wheel after changing a tire (it usually comes to me in bed after the wheel is mounted). That’s just a few of my many mistakes over the years.
In my most recent job, I decided to remove the rubber boot on the swingarm to give it a good cleaning, only it was impossible to reinstall it afterwards without breaking the retaining clip and having to remove the swingarm, both of which I did. I also lost a spacer on my engine crash bars. I remember thinking as I removed the bars that it was odd that there were only three spacers for four bolts, but instead of pausing and reflecting a moment on this red flag, I continued on, rationalizing that the mounting points must be asymmetrical. The spacer was probably in a recess of the frame and fell out when I rode the bike to warm the gear oil before draining.
Fortunately, these mistakes have only cost me time and money and nothing more. My wife is not going to like reading this and I might lose my 2-up travel partner for this confession, but she no doubt already knows. Sometimes at my nadir she hears me berating myself and calling myself a hack mechanic, and she, bless her, corrects me and says I’m not and instead praises me for my persistence. At times like that, I know I married the right woman.
But here’s the thing I’ve come to see: even the pros make mistakes. We’ve all heard of someone who’s had a car wheel fall off after having their seasonal tires changed. A riding friend of mine had her front caliper fall off and rattle around in the fender and forks after picking up her new motorcycle. Fortunately, the wheel didn’t lock up and she was able to steer safely to the side of the highway. And just recently, when I got the BMW back from my dealer after being repaired from the accident, I noticed that the rear handlebar mount bolts were super loose. Yes, to err is human, and we are all fallible.
Is it worth it?
Yes, it’s worth doing your own maintenance, despite the frustrations, the time, the mistakes, and the unnecessary added expenses.
It’s worth it because you save money—a lot of money. I just finished the major service on my BMW and a friend said he had the same work done at the dealer and there were 10 hours of labour on the invoice. With parts and tax, it was $2,000. Ouch! Mine cost less than $200 in parts, and that’s including the damaged rubber boot.
It’s worth it because you learn about the bike and gain knowledge. This time when I put the swingarm back on, I double-checked the routing of the ABS sensor wire and noticed I didn’t have it right and was able to correct it before the test ride. More importantly, if I encounter problems in the field, I hope that I’ll be able to fix them, and that’s important if you’re an adventure rider going to remote places.
It’s worth it because, contrary to Confession 5 above, generally speaking, when I’ve done it, I know it’s done right. I’ve heard so many stories from people who’ve had unsatisfactory work done by professionals, who are working on the clock. I don’t take short-cuts, and I go the extra hour or mile to do it well. I guess what I’m saying is that I trust myself to do a good job more than a stranger, despite my inexperience. Do I have issues of trust? Absolutely!
But mostly it’s worth it because there is a satisfaction unlike no other when you ride the bike afterwards without issue. You’ve taken something apart and put it back together again, and now it’s running better than ever, the product of your own hands and mind. It’s not always easy, despite popular belief, but it’s always rewarding.
Do you do your own maintenance? Why or why not? Do you have any confessions to add? Drop a comment below.
