How did you learn to maintain your machines......
I consider myself lucky, dad rode bikes, his dad rode bikes, dad raced Hydros for a while. Spanners, screwdrivers, tools always on the garage bench.
Same story me, Old Man a mechanic. Always sheds full of tools, cars, bikes.
in the 80's and 90's my brother owned a motorcycle shop, with all the big 4 japanese brands as well as KTM, Husqvarna and Ducati. I used to work for him in the workshop assisting the head mechanic after school and on weekends. As well as building the bikes out of the crates when they arrived from overseas. Not much I can't do with a bike, but these days, some stuff I just leave to a local bike shop mechanic as I don't feel like wasting money on specialist tools that I might only use once every few years or something like that. Otherwise, I do everything myself, being that I have my own workshop (4 car garage) in my backyard. As well as a 2 car garage for the cars.
Also had several friends who were professional spray painters/panel beaters. They taught me how to professionally respray a bike etc. which is how I ended up respraying the 1400 to what it is now.
Self taught here, ive always been taking things apart and fixing them. Used to help my dad fix things on his farm, he is not mechanical at all. Studied mechanical engineering and been in mining and heavy process plant for +20years.
First car was a '74 holden kingswood, learnt a lot of things about cars on that, first bike was a suzuki GSF Bandit 250 where i learnt a lot about bikes.
Service my cars and bikes myself, have done things like clutches, gearboxes, drive shafts, diffs and suspension struts, but for more complicated things i rely on my independant mechanic.
Self taught, I just like tinkering n doing bits. Ya learn a lot that way, mostly it works out alright, never had any catastrophes - yet. I'm fairly reasonable on electric stuff & am comfortable re-wiring my boat & installing whatever electric things I may need.
Fixing things just interests me, & because it interests, you tend to do it & learn more. Mainly you learn how little you actually know! :rofl3: :facepalm:
Learnt everything from this forum !! My Dad hadn't a clue with anything practical, we never had a car. First bike at 16 for a year then cars and it always went to garage - so a big thanks to you guys :clapping: :clapping:
My dad always maintained his own cars so I picked it up as a kid. I used to rebuild my pushbikes before maintaining my own cars & then just did the same with bikes when I started on them.
Workshop manual, box of tools & off you go. If it's already broke then you can't make it any worse...
My dad had no interest in anything he couldn't drink, smoke, pick a fight with or shag so I got nothing from him but my granddad and uncle were good at fixing anything so I caught the bug for fixing stuff from them. When I was 15-16 I used to help out a couple of hells angels (I suspect they were just prospects when I knew them) but I would fetch and carry, run to the shops for fags and beer etc and fix, rebuils build from scratch bikes so I learnt a fair bit more from them but the rest is just self taught. I was an engineer in the RAF for 30 years so I picked up a bit more there but when it comes to bikes I am not afraid of having a go, I've made a couple of mistakes but nothing too serious and have always managed to keep my bikes running. Next big operation will be to tackle the valves and belts on my Ducati 1200, but that's at least two years off.
My old man had some really great tools in his garage at home. He was an artificer in the Navy during WW2 and loved seeing new places. When the war ended him and Mum went to live in Nigeria and ran a car showroom and maintenance shop absolutely loved it out there. They came back after 5 years as Mum was pregnant and they wanted my eldest sister to be born in the U.K. and never went back.
I learnt hands on along with my mates (with help from my Dad) mending our push bikes from very early age. Then aged 10/11 moved on to any old wreck of bikes we would occasionally acquire and somehow get running such as Bantams, Tiger Cubs, mopeds and Honda 50/90's. Rode them on a disused railway and station yard, bloody great fun. Loved my childhood. Never ending Football, cricket, and bikes 😍 I also know my way around electrics as I trained as an electronics engineer when I left school. I have to say though, like others, modern bikes aren't my thing so I stick with the relative simplicity of older bikes. Hence why both my 14 and SRAD are 20 years old.
Guess i was lucky also. Thinking today, have never put a car or bike into repair shop except wrty,GT750 seized i did, brand new, wrty. Z1 Kawa also, glazed bores, they supplied parts, even shim set to do valves. Fixed myself. My Dad was a Wizard, restored lots of cars n bikes. Did that for his last 30 yrs. Could paint, weld, repair, made parts he couldnt buy, was his whole world, day n night. Drove me crazy talking to him, no other subject except his projects. He won best Chrysler in Oz for his 1947 Dodge, picture on both covers of their magazine. He had a perfect 1951 Chev. 1942 Indian, so many . Id have to search for pics, prob bore you lot. Only pic on phone is 350 BSA he built from rust parts.
So many good stories on here, just brilliant
My dad did all his own stuff on cars and I helped a bit when very young .
Once I got my first motorbike I started hanging about a local bike shop and ended up giving them more and more of a hand with bikes to the point I was doing basic stuff on my own .
A guy down my street worked at a different bike shop also took me under his wing a bit and helped me when I was working on my own bikes when I got stuck .
The bikeshop I helped out I'm still friends with the owner 40 years later even though I left Nottingham 35 years ago .
Like a lot of you , myself and mates learned from our dads , starting with bicycles and then moving on to any old thing we could lay our hands on ( mostly c50's/70's/90's) or if you were really lucky a proper 70's scrambler to ride on. We were lucky enough to have a massive piece of wasteland to play on ,(it's a housing estate now). Out on the wasteland if you broke down you fixed it yourself , everybody helped. Moving forward to the 90's I became a despatch rider and if you broke down at the side of the road , which happened quite a lot you diagnosed the problem and fixed it with the tools you carried with you in spare topbox strapped to the rear seat, if not you had to go and find a telephone (no mobiles back then) and arrange recovery, very inconvenient!. So me and my mates would discuss the problems we had, how we fixed them, so if it happened to someone else they would know what to do. Now we have the internet and forums like our brilliant 1400 site (thanks fellas) we are never stuck for a solution to a problem.
Like a lot of us Im mostly self taught - I hate not knowing how to do things for myself and with a bit or research it can be done (except plumbing it can F##k right off) - Spray Painting and Welding were things that were very expensive to have done and so slowly over the years Ive managed to get not too bad at both of them
I do prefer to be shown how to do something as I seem to pick it up easier that way
From dad - how not to do things! Tore apart my first engine, a straight six, I was 13.
I`ve always been practically minded, so that together with a great bunch of likeminded mates and a few grubby workshop manuals, there weren`t many Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha`s that would beat us. That said, they were `Strokers, so easy stripdowns and fixes were the norm.
My biggest challenge in the early days was diagnosing what the problem actually was. I vividly recall stripping down my H1E Kawa engine in one of our spare bedrooms one winter to get at the crank. Mum wasn`t overly happy as I recall, being extremely houseproud. I had carefully laid all the components on a sheet on the floor so I knew which order to refit them, only to arrive home from college to be told she`d put them all in a box so she could hoover......after spending the entire evening in panic mode, I eventually managed to get the thing rebuilt and the bike went on to give me several thou trouble-free miles before I sold it! Sadly the bike is long gone - HCB 270N - but incredibly I still have a handful of bits from that engine, and yep, you`ve guessed it - in a box, but in my garage this time! :salute:
The disillusionment of paying for things to be done that were either not done , done poorly or done for no reason except to pad out the bill, lots of examples, but the main one was having a 750 GT Ducati engine rebuilt at great expense back in the early 80`s only to find out shortly after when it shit itself that virtually sweet FA had been done other than extract money from me. Successfully rebuilding it myself in a spare bedroom at the time has led me along the path of doing everything myself. The only time any of my vehicles have seen a dealer was when they were still under warranty. I`ve built up a comprehensive array of tools and manuals over the years, including a bike and car hoist and have not had to outsource anything other than machining since.
My Dad and Uncle Jed, they both could do it all.
Their Dad was a master cabinet maker.
My Dad and I rebuilt many supposedly broken motorcycles through out my youth. We paid stuff all for them, a bit of fettling and some second hand parts mostly, they would run like clockwork eventually.
Sadly today we've become adept at throwing out stuff that doesn't work.
Great memories of times spent with Dad in the garage talking about all subjects. :clapping: :clapping: :clapping:
17 I knew nothing, started with chain tensioning, then oil & filter change, then brake pads etc, until 4 years later I had the Katana 1100 stripped back bare to get the frame nickel plated.
I learnt how not to fuck things up by....fucking things up!
Great stories lads, to bring back memories of times spent with dad or your mates in the shed getting stuff done, often just so you could go out that night.
When my son was 7ish we set about going RC car racing. Tools everywhere but making sure it was well maintained, fast and finished. I've always been lucky and able to associate myself with some good race teams. So often we hear "oh your just lucky." Yep sure, the harder you work the luckier you get !! Its called preparation.
Enjoyed teaching my son that philosophy. I recall he got an after school job in a factory that involved plastic injection moulding machines. In the holidays he worked there full time and ran pĺĺĺ of the machines. Boss says to him why have you stopped the machine, he says because it didn't sound right. They checked it, it was ready to break the tooli⁰⁰ng. They offered him an apprenticeship. But he wanted to work outside not in a factory. Have to say l was pretty chuffed he had the confidence to trust his knowledge at such a young age.
These days you have to be trained to understand the chainsaw is sharp, a grinder is good at removing stuff and don't put your paws near a revolving lawnmower blade.
My Grandfather was my biggest influence as he was a wartime soldier based in the vehicle pool as a mechanic and I spent most of my free time with him working on old school cars like Morris 1100,s and Mini's and his old BSA as well as the garden tools and house repairs
When I got a bit older you bought a bike rode it broke it and as you were broke you learnt how it worked and fixed it or broke it some more
Today most kids have next to no Idea with most concepts of fixing or re-purposing something that is broken
It seems that wasteful consumerism has taken over
Quote from: Kiwifruit on Friday, 30 April 2021, 07:32 AM
How did you learn to maintain your machines......
I consider myself lucky, dad rode bikes, his dad rode bikes, dad raced Hydros for a while. Spanners, screwdrivers, tools always on the garage bench.
Hydros a boat that's goes around corners like a crab.
Yes Irish, but a quick crab :onya: