So I was deep into the project of re-torquing the head on my 750 and one of the last nuts to be torqued down just started spinning. I pulled off the torque wrench to see some lovely steel threads spiraling up and out from the top of the nut. "Crap!" (that's not really what I said...) My first fear was that the stud itself had stripped out, but it was the nut. Well, I knew that the local Honda shop was closed when I saw this and I would not have the time to go there when they were open for at least a week - even when they are open they are often less than helpful. The local hardware stores will look at you funny when you show them a specialty nut like that in metric. I thought that I was screwed.
As it turns out, several years ago, when I was tearing apart his engine the first time, or possibly even my F1's engine (a bike which I sold four years ago), I was on the look out for some new head stud nuts (hence my knowledge of the above nut sources) and I had brought one of the old nuts with me - in the pocket of a really cool fall coat that I own. For some reason, this nut has never made it out of the coat pocket. This nut has traveled more miles in the pocket of that coat in the last few years than my K8 or F1 have traveled combined.
As I was freaking out about the stripped out nut, I thought about this nut hanging out in that pocket. I ran (okay, I walked) into the house, dug out the coat and dipped my hand into that pocket and pulled out just the nut that I needed.
Laziness wins again. And my wife wonders why I never throw anything out.
