Why Things Don't Fit
WHY THINGS DON'T FIT
UP FRONT
Allan Girdler
No point in even debating this nonquestion. Anybody who's been running around on top of an engine for more than six weeks knows . . . Things Don't Fit. Further, they don't fit in three general ways.
1) Things you buy at the store or from a catalog or through the mail, only to learn that attaching the bolts isn’t half the battle. I’ve been doing this since I got my first set of unbreakable levers and found that every time, I must work on the lever with a file or pry on the pivot with the largest screwdriver in the place. (You may be thinking that a man who needs a constant supply of unbreakable levers should be working on not needing them rather than making them fit. You may be right.) But it’s not just me. We almost never do a product test without commenting on whether the gadget bolts right on or not, or if we can understand the instructions. We do this because frequently they don’t and/or we can’t.
2) Things which seem to have gotten aboard your bike without the factory’s knowledge or consent. My own favorites are the brake pads which came out of what looked like a CB450 brake, but didn’t quite match any of the pads in the dealer’s microfilm file, but which were replaced by pads that weren’t quite like the ones I took out but work fine anyway. Then there are the carbs which have never been completely rebuilt because none of the kits for the model have precisely the same number or style of gaskets and such. This bike, my bitsa, of course, also came with a broken wiring cluster that fitted the bars that weren’t stock. I ordered another cluster. It didn’t match the one that came off, but it works great on the bars that I put on later. All of which makes (made, as we’ll see) me wonder: If the parts all work anyway, why change the numbers and details, or vice versa?
3) Things which can’t seem to be delivered right. Risk here. The ad guys are gonna be on my case anyway for saying that the nice people who sell things to you and me could possibly not be perfect in every way, but that’s business. My favorite example is personal. The nice people who make teflon-lined cables. Far as I know, there’s only one outfit doing that, and they make the best cables in the world. Never broken one, nor have I worn one out. Never need to lube the little wonders. But when I order a set, they always send three 250 and one 125, or the 250 cable has the 350 mounting nuts, or something, and the cables always have to go back after detailed telephone calls and explanations.
Well. You probably have stories of your own, good as mine and just as many of them. Usually when talking about this I make the comment that bike things don’t fit because the people who make them have to worry about money and inventory and tooling costs, so they work out some sort of universal mounting that almost lets you bolt the whatever onto your bike; not quite, but close enough. Why the factories need to make changes without ceasing, why an engine in production for seven years needs seven sets of carb gaskets when the engine itself didn’t hardly change a lick, I don’t know. But that’s another question.
What I have instead is the answer to the original question. I found it by surprise, with the help of, well, jealousy.
All the other guys are getting new bikes. Henry has bought a Velocette in a basket and is happily taking everything apart so he can put it back together. The Desert Crazy has a whopping new Maico so fast his riding buddy The Other Jim wants to change his order from an IT to a YZ and Ron, who has almost as many ravenous and fast-growing teen-agers as I do and thus shouldn’t be able to do this, ol’ Ron has built himself the prettiest dirt racer you ever saw. All red, with custom frame and all-out suspension and full-race motor and on and on ... I won’t give the details as he’s planning a story on it, the show-off.
For the price of a new bike, I get to pay my taxes. Huh, I said, instead I will improve the faithful old 250. It's got seven years on the original engine, after all. So I went to ask Greg and Dallas and Thierry and they said, if you’re going to bore it anyway, why not big? Say, 285? And because the compression ratio is going up anyway, how about a custom piston, 10.5:1? We can get you a deal. Put in my order, I said.
Then I waited. I have been at this a long time and I know as mentioned earlier about Things Not Being Delivered Right. T kept the engine in the bike, intact, running perfectly well, until the day Greg called to say all the parts had arrived, where is the engine?
Although I am good at unbolting things,
I am not good at running boring bars and doing serious machine work, so I did the easy parts and handed the rest over to the pros. After a week I wondered when I could take delivery.
Greg allowed as how there’d been a slip. Because the box said what the piston was supposed to be, nobody opened the box until the barrel was ready. And the piston^ turned out to be the track job, 12.5:1. How did I feel about using Avgas?
Not awfully keen. Back went the piston. Short wait. The new piston arrived.
It was 10.5:1. In stock bore.
Naturally the two weekends during which this took place, the first two weekends in years that I haven’t had the bike ready to go, were the first two weekends of spring.
Greg felt almost as bad as I did, to the extent that he went into the big city, to the piston company, and made the second trade in person, making you-can-bet sure that the third time we had A Part That Would Fit.
It did. With everything assembled and put back in the bike, I pumped it through a few times. Nothing hit. In with the plug, fuel on, and it fired up on the fourth kick.
Because I would like and expect another 15.000 miles on the rebuild, I rode off. carefully. I ran it a few miles, until all the parts had been fully warmed, then w'ent home and checked all the connections, levels, the plug and so forth. Perfect. The next morning, I rode it to work, on the back roads and through the bean fields, never mind that it takes twice the time and running along the road at 40 mph makes it seem longer.
Two ad agency guys came by the office and saw' me checking all the connection: again, and chuckled. “The old ways are the best ways, right?”
“Hah,” I said. “Lurking beneath this w'ell-w'orn enduro tank, crouched inside these experienced cases, is a full 285cc of high compression lightning.”
On the way home, still running easy. I got the answer.
You may not believe this. Not even Greg believes it, and he’s the dealer whose ow n factory says he’s too careful when it comes to taking care of engines.
I felt the rings seat. I heard all the parts become a harmonious whole. Half a mile the other side of Moulton Parkway, just before you turn onto Lake Forest Road, the compression increased and the exhaust note sharpened. From bluff, bluff, bluff to Bark-Bark-Bark.
There’s the answer. Things Don’t Fit because it’s part of the fun. We are presented with these challenges, this confusion in the catalogs and the microfilm, the holes that don’t quite line up. because we can meet and defeat them. Having it right is fine. Making it right is twice times too much better.
I wouldn’t trade the feeling of making my old engine right for two new bikes. 0
