Dyna Systems Solo Starter
Dyna Systems Solo Starter
CW EVALUATION
What you see isn't what you get
CHRISTMAS WISH LISTS HAVE BEEN part of the holiday since St. Nick started making his rounds. Even so, it’s hard to beat getting a present you wanted but didn’t dare ask for.
That’s how this evaluation begins, with a wife who’s seen her husband stage for a flat-track main on a borrowed bike, borrowed because his own machine exhausted the volunteer pushers; a wife who’s noted that hubby likes to pit next to or near a team with a remote starter.
Months before Happy Holidays banners blossomed in stores, she leafed through magazines and found an ad for what you see here. The photo showed a woman on a racebike, with the bike positioned on the rollers, with starter motor and battery, all the components, and the ad said it was a system, close quote.
She called the number and got the owner/designer/maker: Doc Z. He told her his military history and his marital history and said he wished he had a wife as thoughtful as she is. She says now what he didn’t do was listen when she told him what her guy races. It didn’t seem to matter at the time, so she sent the sizable check and when the box arrived, it was gift-wrapped and hidden.
On Christmas afternoon, the box was opened, and giver and getter learned to their surprise that Doc Z hadn’t mentioned that she wasn’t buying an actual system. What she’d bought was a frame, rollers, ramp and switch. No starter motor, no cables, no solenoid.
Doc Z parried the complaint by saying some buyers prefer to supply their own motors, solenoids and cables, which is probably true, but telling the buyer assembly is required isn’t the same as saying all the parts aren’t there.
Next, assembly wasn’t merely required, it was a challenge. The included manual has mislabeled parts, vague instructions and doesn’t show the completed project, so the new owner has to hold this against that until it all comes clear.
At that point, our man discovered that while there are options-as in one motor for smaller engines, two for larger and extra-duty motors for really big enginesthe box didn’t have the linkage for using one motor to drive the two rollers. No problem, Doc Z said during the next call. Anything up to and including 250s can be started with one roller. Wrong. What you do with one driven roller is spin it against the tire while the test machine, a Honda XR100 for mercy’s sake, just sits there.
In that vein, our guy was using jumper cables rather than buy a separate battery. His cables, powered by a standard battery in his farm truck, carry enough power to jump-start his daughter-in-law’s big-block Chevy V-Eight. But they wouldn’t carry enough juice to spin the rollers against a 250cc two-stroke. Off to the parts store again for 4-gauge cables, heavy-duty clamps and new terminals. Another $30.
Doc Z said he’d send the chain and sprockets and tensioner to use one motor and two rollers, and by the way the rollers may have to go to the machine shop because they may not have been machined for the woodruff keys that fasten the sprockets to the rollers. Oh, and you’ll need to mount the tensioner per the pattern in the package.
After some time still no package, so having talked with fellow club members who also got solo starters this season and didn’t get parts, our guy bought a second starter motor. The system was complete, and it worked, filled the shop with two-stroke fumes as hubby danced into wife’s office and interrupted her struggle with the tax forms, as in hugs and kisses. Work began on December 25, 2006. The system worked on February 11,2007 ; you don’t often have a 40-day Christmas season.
To be fair here, every time our man steps on the treadle and easily starts his engines, he’ll be happy his wife went beyond the call of duty and gave him what he wanted, a gesture all too rare. The only drawback is that Doc Z knows too much. He’s like the computer whiz who shows you how easily he can do it, when what you wanted was for him to show you how you can do it. If he’d list the true contents and listen to what the buyer wants and needs, and provide a manual that shows all the parts and clearly describes each step, he’d be doing racers a service.
As it is, the trusting or the unwary will find themselves spending more money and time than they’d been promised. O
DETAILS Doc Z International 2422 Bruce Rd. Bay Village, OH 44140 440/871-7112 www.doczintl.com Price...$667 ^Jps A Complete system works on virtually any motorcycle A Can be transported in a truck or a trunk A Once (if) set up properly, beats the livin’ heck out of bump-starting 'fb owns ▼ Not what the buyer expects ▼ Expensive, even without the extras ▼ Weighs 70-plus pounds, awkward on the ground
