This past couple of days was very therapeutic for me, had a chance to catch up on my thoughts this I was surprised at something and thought I would draw it as an analogy on really how you need to look at maintaining your coach. So read on if you like, after this much time off we need to get everyone here and start the rock pushing again so there isn’t much to report this morning.
So I spent some time with the 1996 Harly I aquired last year 
. Besides being a fun thing to burn fossil fuel with to me it’s a very relaxing thing for me to do but that’s not the biggest reason I spent time with the bike.
It all started last week when I took the bike over to my bike mechanic. You might say heck, why don’t YOU work on it, afterall it’s another great American classic pig! Well I tell you, in general things you don;t do very often usually takes you much more time plus the fact that you learn from repitition and familiarity so just like folks who have a GMC and pay me to keep the ole girl on the road, I look to this guy with a bike business to do things on my bike. I could do it but just like everything there is that pesky learning curve that will usually bite you hard if you’re not really good at what you’re doing you must deal with if you wanna do it yourself.
Now, if you have the time, say you’re retired and piddling is your game go for it, be sure you get a good set of manuals.. read it carefully and do what it says. I maintained my Gold Wing for 25 years myself… and it went from something like this 
to.. well, it fell apart 
and looked like this when the motor locked up. I didn’t pay to have a new paint job, I blacked it out. I didn’t pay to have a new set of 4 carbs cleaned up and fixed. I would let the bike sit until the carbs screwed up so what did I do… I rigged up a VW Solex carb to run the motor 
It worked OK until recently when I got the set up running well on another Gold Wing 
but I originally did it to be cheap!
So in walks thisHarley into my life. Never had one, always felt I just couldn;t do that. A Harley is a very different bike than I had been used too, hard to rig and if you do it looks and probably works like crap so I decided to search out a good local guy to work on this thing… and I did. The guy is great, 2 blocks away and does every turn of the wrench himself. He climbed up that high volume business and decided it wasn;t for him. He drives a very expensive 2 seater Mercedes and is the only guy on his property.
Now right off the bat it sounds like he does for motorcycles what I do with motorhomes… he will work on the Honda but his life is Harley.
So I came over to him Wednesday complaining the timing would go off and it still would not fire up on cold days. This was the first year of fuel injection for Harley and I suggested lets just replace everything as we do on the motorhomes. I mean how many sensors does it have??? Right?
He looked slowly up and me and said with a calm face “have you driven the bike much or do you just ride it once in a while when you feel like it?……BUSTEDI’ll have someone tell me “every time they get into their GMC there’s something wrong” to which I always say “go drive it more!”. ANY mechanism contrived by man left alone will fail!
Same goes for motorcycles as it does on Motorhomes and THAT was the problem with my beloved bike.
See it all ties back together, I was and have done exactly as many do with their GMC, you could do stuff to the coach, when something broke you could muddle through getting it fixed.. maybe rigged as to what you had right then and as the years go on unless you really watch yourself those fixes and rigs build up until there are so many things preventing the coach from doing it’s job you get upset at it. I did the same thing to my first 1975 Honda Gold Wing and out of itstill didn;t learn someone else should have taken charge of it who knew more about keeping it going than me. Yes, it is mine and yes, I have a set of wrenches but do I wanna learn how to fix it on my coach is the question? Sometimes you just have to but when that happens don;t call it completely repaired.. go back later and fix it right or replace every other old part in the system that failed so it won’t happen again… hopefully…
His answer was exactly what I tell someone who is really interested in what’s best for their coach…. “get it up and go drive it”….. lets shake it down and learn how the coach can be used in your life… same thing about this bike, I need to drive it before I complain and guys, I say to you if you want to or have to work on your coach I understand but spend the extra time and what it ultimately takes to do things right…. or… pay someoen who is supposed to know because of repitition how to keep this one motorhome operating….
The takeaway from all this is this is what the Co-op is here to help you do… for you guys who want or have to do it yourself the Co-op can be your source yes for that part but also the expertice you may need to complete the project….. we do our best to help but for those who understand it would probably hurt less if we did the project…. well, that’s what we’re here for and have been doing that for close now to 20 years. We do make mistkes but probably less than you would and we have the knowldge to recognize the issues and do something about them.
The day is on, Shirley just pulled up so I need to get to work myself. Thanks for stopping by and for your support…. we’ll be here, call if we can help….
