In 1966 my friends and I were trying to get a Honda 305 with a Webco 350 kit and trick Yetman trellis frame to run on Dell’Orto carburetors. We had limited experience and didn’t really know much. The engine refused to fire on both cylinders. It was the classic question: Is it the carburetion? Or is it the ignition?
My anthropologist first wife looked on for a long session of our struggle. Then she spoke.
“These carburetor thingies: Do they both serve the same function?”
“Yes,” we answered dully.
“Yes.”
“Well then, why don’t you take them off and reverse their positions? That way, if the problem moves from one cylinder to the other, you’ll know it’s a carburetor that’s at fault, and which one it is.”
We were stupidly speechless before her logic. She was thinking methodically. We weren’t thinking at all.
Motorcycle dealer John Jacobson could hear growing discussion coming from the shop. A bike had an electrical problem and no one was getting anywhere with solving it.
John got up from his ledgers and stepped into the shop. He had no mechanical or diagnostic experience. But he was a homeowner.
“Take the fuses out of the fuse box and then start putting them back in, one at a time, and see where the problem occurs. That way you can isolate the circuit that’s causing the trouble.”
The mechanics stared at his back as he returned to his figures. Why yes. Why didn’t we think of that?
My father always maintained that my mother was much cleverer than he. She learned to drive when she was 12, on an Indian-powered cyclecar built by her dad. He pushed her off, then jumped onto the back of the machine as she drove off around the block.
One day some years later she was driving the family car in downtown Indianapolis when the engine stopped. She decided she should have a look under the hood, just in case she could see something obviously not right. She was not a mechanic but knew that physical reality seems to obey logic. There had been no strange noises or crunches indicating a mechanical problem.
There it was—a wire end, dangling in space. Where was its home? She looked around and found what looked like the right place, and reconnected it. The car started and ran. Business as usual.
One night during my dreary college days I got a call from Bill Dutcher, who has for years run the Aspencade bike rally near Glens Falls, New York. He had a scrambles to ride the following day down at Middleboro, near the Cape, but his 250 Greeves had broken a shift pawl. He had new pawls but could I please come and replace the broken part? The pawls were little Chicklet-like bits of very hard steel. I had no experience with that gearbox but reckoned I’d manage. Dutcher arrived to pick me up in his sporty Corvair, his girlfriend Phyllis in the right-hand seat. Off we went to a dark shop where the bike was. The work didn’t take long and, as I recall, Phyllis kindly held a flashlight so I could find the broken bits and install the new pawl. With the cover back in place we cycled the gearbox and it shifted properly.
The following morning we were off early in the red Corvair, with the bike on a trailer behind. During the afternoon Bill was off riding when a friend of theirs greeted Phyllis.
She said, “Aren’t you riding? I think the 250s’ll be called to the start soon.”
“Naw, blew up my bike, can’t ride.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“Blew up my gearbox, won’t shift.”
“Maybe it’s broken a pawl; Bill’s bike did that.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“We have new ones here, in the car; you could put one in.”
“Nah, I’m no mechanic.”
“It’s not hard,” Phyllis insisted. “I bet I could do it. You could still make your race!”
“Unh-uh, I’m done. C’mon over t’the concession; I’ll buy you a beer.”
Phyllis had paid attention while I did the little job the night before, and understood what she’d seen.
A local lad phoned one spring morning, reporting that when he’d started his Suzuki Titan 500 earlier, it had made a strange thumping noise.
“Bring it over and I’ll have a look.”
When he arrived I could hear the noise. What was interesting was that it was happening a lot less often than something crankshaft-related, like a loose big-end bearing or wrist pin. It was too slow, so it had to be something stuck in the teeth of the slower-turning primary gear.
“There’s tools in the box there. Lay your bike on its left side on that grass—that way you won’t have to drain the trans oil. Pull the screws holding the clutch cover, lift the cover and look at the teeth of the primary gear. You’ll probably see a bit of aluminum or something, packed into one of the tooth spaces. That’s what’s making that noise.”
I went on with what I’d been doing before while he started in. After a half-hour or so I heard him say, “Goddamn, how’d you know that? There’s a piece of aluminum in the teeth, just like you said.”
I explained my theory: Primary gears reduce crank speed by something like two or three-to-one, and the sound we’d heard was slow like that. So it had to be something on the slower-turning big primary gear. He got a chisel and small hammer, tapped the bit of aluminum free, and reassembled. When he started up, the noise was gone.
Again, basic logic, available to us all, revealed where this problem had to be.
Bottom line is that before we decide a problem is beyond our understanding, training, or experience, let the mind loose on it and see what pops out. Methodical thinking and natural curiosity are powerful.
