Topic: Shop stories!

[Powderman]

I was in the Vintage car restoration shop that was a sponsor on my race car. My car (74 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe)was in there and we were talking about tuning. I was bragging about how I kept it so well tuned that all you had to do was barely hit the start button and it would fire up. I never kept my car in gear. Who ever had parked it there had left it in gear and when I went to show them how easy it was to start I hit the button and fired right up in gear and slammed into the back of a rare Fiat Dino. Thank God it was only about 1-1/2' away and hit bumper to bumper and did not damage. I was extremely embarrassed to say the least.

[bryanj]

Dunno about the oak piston but a hartleys jamjar lid fits nicely on the top of one of the old british two strokes

[Terry in Australia]

My Grandfather told me that during the Great Depression he bought a Panther 600 from a guy who was down on his luck. It rattled a bit when cold, but was OK once warmed up.
Eventually my Grand Dad decided to do a rebuild, and once again, it had a Red Gum (really hard Aussie timber) piston with a tin cap nailed on.

I thought it was all BS until I spoke to my Dad about it, and he confirmed that it was true, he remembered watching my Grandfather pull that engine apart, and he said that it wasn't the first time, back then money was so tight, people were doing all sorts of things to keep their vehicles on the road. Cheers, Terry.

[brewsky]

One more.....

Our ace mechanic was performing final touches on the carb for the shop foremans' custom yamaha, (shown below)

He hollered "hey steve, there's a problem with your carb"

As he approaced, the mechanic pickd up the carb from the bench to show him and accidently dropped it on the concrete floor!

It was a tense minute or so before he realized it was actually a junk carb out of the spare parts bin!

[70CB750]

In Czechoslovakia it was a problem of production and distribution.  Everything was centrally planned within the East Block and even the most elementary motorcycle or car parts (such as brake pads or wipers) were hard to find.   Imagine bribing the clerk in car parts store so he would save pair of windshield wipers for you!  That was everyday reality and my country was much better than Romania, Russia, Hungary or Poland in that aspect.   

Rant off, just explaining why would somebody use oak to make bike run to sell it.

My Grandfather told me that during the Great Depression he bought a Panther 600 from a guy who was down on his luck. It rattled a bit when cold, but was OK once warmed up.
Eventually my Grand Dad decided to do a rebuild, and once again, it had a Red Gum (really hard Aussie timber) piston with a tin cap nailed on.

I thought it was all BS until I spoke to my Dad about it, and he confirmed that it was true, he remembered watching my Grandfather pull that engine apart, and he said that it wasn't the first time, back then money was so tight, people were doing all sorts of things to keep their vehicles on the road. Cheers, Terry.

[bwaller]

One of the guys in our Honda shop had a great pup named Charlie who became our "shop dog". In typical young dog fashion Charlie ingested anything & everything not bolted down. One day we noticed about 4" of string hanging out of his ass.

We jacked him up on one of the tables and while I held him, Danny pulled five feet of string out of his "derriere". The parts man and a couple sales guys came in to watch the operation. I can still see the look on Charlie's face, and the laughter lasted for days.

[Powderman]

My friend Charlie ran the largest Fiat parts salvage yard in the south east. Unlike today's price negotiating you see on the Pawn shows or car and bike buying shows where you go back and forth with counter offers till you end up in the middle somewhere, Charlie didn't work that way. He had 2 ways to put a price on his used parts. he would throw out a price he felt was fair and if you tried to counter offer he would offer you this: "I will look the part up in the book and see what a new one costs and let you have it for half the book cost, how does that sound? Now if the half the book price is more than what I just offered it to you for I will not budge from the book price. Would you like me to look it up in the book?". You were smart to take the original offer because he knew what the book would say and his original offers were normally cheaper.
One day a guy walks in and Charlie was just in one of his moods that day. The guy asks for a wing window for a 1972 Fiat spider. Charlie goes in the back where he knows he has plenty of wing windows and comes back with one. He is holding it up pinched between his fingers and tells the man "That will be $35." The customer say's "$35, would you take $25? Charlie opens his fingers and lets the wing window crash to the ground and brake into pieces. He say's "Whoops, and that was the last one I had.............Wait a minute, I think there might be another one, let me go look." He goes back and a minute later appears with another wing window and say's: "Yep, I found another one, that'll be $45 dollars, would you like to buy it?"
The customer paid it and went on his way. That's just the way Charlie was, he'd rather throw in the trash than haggle with you over what he felt was fair for his parts. I loved the way he did business.

[andrewk]

Summer of 73 a customer came in the shop complaining his CB750 had a wobble at speed. Of course he had a windjammer which I found often often caused handling problems. I tried the bike without issue but went through all the usual bearing, spoke, bushing checks and found nothing. A week later he was back and said it always became "unsettled" at 70mph. This time it did shake it's head suddenly but straightened up with a handful of throttle. I removed the jammer and of course the thing was steady as a rock right up to 90 when I backed out of it for the exit off the elevated expressway. I also then noticed the cop bearing down on me. The exit funneled into one lane and I darted along the shoulder beside traffic figuring he'd get stuck behind, not so. His siren had traffic squeezing right and eventually I ran out of room.....#$%*e!

Long story short the company paid the ticket and the customer decided to keep the windjammer, go figure! Then there was the time I was wiring the guys chopper project and it caught fire.....

Unless I miss my guess: was that one of the "SS" or "Jammer IV" fairings, made of ABS? (Hint: many of them had the "leading edge" lites). The crooked bankers who stole Craig's company from him in 1976 quit the expensive (but excellent) hand-laid fiberglass shells for the flexy-flier ABS plastic-molded fairing bodies instead. Those things wobbled side-to-side and top-to-bottom at 70 MPH, but the US had the 55 MPH speed limit in those days and the bankers didn't care.

I have the hand-laid glass 'Jammer I, good to 120+ MPH, not a bobble! Hard as a rock, too. The bike has fallen on it a dozen times or more, and all it ever did was either bend the frame mount, or scratch the paint.

Unless you've got a phantom, I'm pretty certain all Windjammers were made of ABS.  Craig markets the hotcha ABS repair glue himself.

Most Jammer handling problems come from bent/tweaked/improperly installed brackets, in my experience.  I've got both a II and a IV, both are made of ABS, can be pushed to 100+ one handed, and I don't notice a difference between them at all, other than the inability to mount my lowers on the IV.  They may not be the prettiest, but they sure do extend the riding season.

Just adding some (interesting!) fuel to the fire

Regards

[KRONUS0100]

hmmmmmmmmmmmm  ive got a windjammer III  on my 750F.  its fiberglass.  you can see the layers from the unfinished edges.  never had a wobble out of it at any speed, lowers installed or not

[andrewk]

I'll go look in mine again, but I was pretty certain............. 

EDIT-  I'll start a new thread, but mine (Jammer II) is ABS for sure.

[madScientist]

A couple non-bike ones...I dont own a shop but do a lot of work out of my garage building hipo ford street motors. Anyways...a buddy of mine was telling me about his new to him 67 mustang. Had so much power that the rear end would wobble when you'd get in and off the gas. That didn't seem right to me. I told him to bring it in so I could evaluate how he could better hold the "stroker 428" that was in it. So he brought it up...first thing was that it wasn't a 428 but rather a 351 windsor with heads and a cam (verified by stick measuring the stroke). Still a pretty heavy motor for a car that would have come with an 8" rear. So i start looking at the axle which was a nice 9". I jacked it up from the frame rail and rolled under the car. As I was rolling around i grabbed the axle to pull myself forward a little more and the axle MOVED! Whoever did the rear swap didn't finish bolting the shackles so much to the point where the axle would shift 1/4-1/2". Bolted it down proper and the wobble magically went away.

I built a blown 347 for another guy. Told him about the break in cycle. On his 3rd oil change he came by all pi$$ed off cause the motor started squealing and locked up. I rode over to his place to check out what could have happened cause I take great pride in my work and this one was one of my favorites. The dumb a$$ dropped the oil, changed the filter...neglected to put oil back in it and ran it.

Lastly this one is on me...I was working on my Dads GL1000. Couldnt' get it running with fresh gas so I pulled the carbs off. Noticed that he had broken a couple of the float pedestals. There was enough metal for me to braze the pedestals back together. So without waiting any length of time I broke out the torch and got ready to get to work. I dont think i was 3" from the carbs when the leftover gas ignited a fire ball right at mah face. It took darn near 2 months for my eyebrows to grow back...

[Black 750K8]

It happens to 2 stroke Jawas and CZs often to drain the gas into crankcase.

Friend of mine bought a decent used Jawa 350, it stoped running after 2 month, he pulled the engine and found the piston was made out of oak. It run till it burned hole in the piston.

Wait a minute I'm having a hard time believing this one. Not calling you a liar but was there some Jim Beam involved?

[70CB750]

Look at my post #29 - you would think that once you have it apart, you can just put a new piston in and call it, but it was hard to get parts, back in the day.

[72 yellow]

I used to work in the service dept of a Western Auto store.
One of the general service guys (titled as installers) was mounting
2 customer supplied tires on a gmc/chevy truck. I noticed the installer was wrestling the first one, but he got it mounted. As he started to air it up, he removed the big spindle nut from the tire machine, and
continued to inflate. By this time I had gone back to my job at hand,
and was facing away from him. The tire exploded, the wheel went
straight up, and hit him underneath the chin, instantly giving com
pound fractures to both jaw bones. Seemed like it took minutes
rather than seconds for me to turn around just to see how the guy was. By the time I did get turned around, the wheel had
come back down and was rolling in a circle on the shop floor.
The guy's baseball cap was laying by the tire machine, with it's bill ripped clean off and found two bays away later on. We cussed those "junk" tires for quite a while after the ambulance left.
Until we figured it out..The truck getting the tires had 16.5 inch wheels. The tire that exploded was a 16.0. Workman's comp,
etc, etc. Then after the guy tried to sue the company for HIS screw up, (and lost), he brought racism into the fiasco, and went as far as to imply that the other techs "set him up"....He's lucky he lived. Thankfully, they fired him on a technicality before he ever came back to work.

In the mid 70's I worked for a landscaping and excavating company.  During the winter one of the jobs we had was fixing the large rack filled with 10.00x 20 wheels with the now illegal split rings.  You had to pry the ring off and pull the wheel out of the tire.  After fixing the tube and reinstalling the liner, you pushed the wheel back in.  Then you flipped it over and installed the ring.  When you hooked up  the air hose to inflate the tire you had to tap on the ring to make sure it was seated on the rim.  We never leaned over the tire while it was inflating.  One day I was sitting in the mechanics office talking, one of the other guys came in.  He had left the air hose attached to a tire he had fixed.  A few seconds later there was a loud bang followed by the sound of breaking glass.  The ring had not been seated correctly and had blown off.  It shot up about 16 feet into the air and broke one of the windows on the open overhead door.  A while later I saw a demonstration showing how one of these rings tore the head off a dummy.

[70CB750]

During military service (mandatory in my country back than) I was part of the repair unit for the ?platoon? (1600 soldiers mechanized infantry).

We had quite few trucks and also T-55 recovery vehicle.  It was the platform of a tank but with winch instead of the turret.  One day I saw the technical sergeant perform some kind of  a war jig in the shop.   They pulled of one of the caterpillar wheels and the bearing was missing.  The spindle was half eaten by the wheel, the bearing must been of for quite a long time.

Can you tell we were quite the steel fist of the east block? 

[HondaMan]

Then there was my brother, on his CB500, after buying a Cheapo-est tire from [the original?] Wal-mart in Missouri: it wasn't round, he found out. (Probably a factory second?).

Well, he was unemployed at the time, between college and his first job, and used his 500 to save gas whenever possible, so he REALLY needed the tire to work. So, he c-standed his bike, pulled it up against the wall of the garage, and fired it up. Then he put it in 4th gear and wound it up to 6000 RPM, and gently leaned it back under the tire began chirping on the garage floor. About 10 minutes of this later, there was about 1/2" deep line of rubber flakes behind him, with a [permanent] black mark on the floor and so much smoke that grandma came out of the house to see if the garage was on fire. But, it was round!

...in the middle...

Whenever he leaned over into a turn, it would try to stand him back up again. He hated that summer, wobbling all around the great bike roads of middle Missouri, and when he got a job the first thing be bought was a REAL tire.
 

[ofreen]

Unless I miss my guess: was that one of the "SS" or "Jammer IV" fairings, made of ABS? (Hint: many of them had the "leading edge" lites). The crooked bankers who stole Craig's company from him in 1976 quit the expensive (but excellent) hand-laid fiberglass shells for the flexy-flier ABS plastic-molded fairing bodies instead. Those things wobbled side-to-side and top-to-bottom at 70 MPH, but the US had the 55 MPH speed limit in those days and the bankers didn't care.

I've had an SS on mine since the winter of '77-'78.  It doesn't move around, nor does it cause the bike to wobble or anything else.  I've ridden other bikes equipped with them years ago and never noticed any problems.  The main issue those fairings had were not with the fairing itself, but the mounting bracket that was not up to long term use.  It would flex and break.  I reinforced the one on mine 30 years ago, and it has been fine since.  A good portion of those years were spent living at the end of washboardy gravel roads.

[HondaMan]

Unless I miss my guess: was that one of the "SS" or "Jammer IV" fairings, made of ABS? (Hint: many of them had the "leading edge" lites). The crooked bankers who stole Craig's company from him in 1976 quit the expensive (but excellent) hand-laid fiberglass shells for the flexy-flier ABS plastic-molded fairing bodies instead. Those things wobbled side-to-side and top-to-bottom at 70 MPH, but the US had the 55 MPH speed limit in those days and the bankers didn't care.

I've had an SS on mine since the winter of '77-'78.  It doesn't move around, nor does it cause the bike to wobble or anything else.  I've ridden other bikes equipped with them years ago and never noticed any problems.  The main issue those fairings had were not with the fairing itself, but the mounting bracket that was not up to long term use.  It would flex and break.  I reinforced the one on mine 30 years ago, and it has been fine since.  A good portion of those years were spent living at the end of washboardy gravel roads.

Roger that: the post-1978 brackets were the very worst in this regard. They didn't come with the center-clamp U-bolt mount plate that made the earlier ones so successful. It was considered too expensive, I suppose, by the guys who took over Vetter later and did their own thing.

I have been guilty on several occasions of over-tightening the center U-bolt support, causing it to crack the crossmember. This was on the early ABS fairings that had the extra-tall windshield and the large edge trim, lowers with the fancy edge trim, the leading edge lights and a stereo installed: this weight up front made the need for stiffness a bigger thing. Air forks became a 'must' with those big fairings, so I often added them to the package, even early on.

On my own bike, I have cracked the crossmember twice from carrying up to 40 lbs of [her] stuff in the fairing on long trips, hitting the occasional bad road in the process. Once I had it welded mid-trip, only to have it broken by the time I got home: the second time I took her to the Post Office on the 2nd day of the trip, bought a big box, and mailed a bunch of "it" home. She didn't like that...

But, with all that weight in the front, it sure ignored heavy cross-winds!

[Terry in Australia]

In the mid 70's I worked for a landscaping and excavating company.  During the winter one of the jobs we had was fixing the large rack filled with 10.00x 20 wheels with the now illegal split rings.  You had to pry the ring off and pull the wheel out of the tire.  After fixing the tube and reinstalling the liner, you pushed the wheel back in.  Then you flipped it over and installed the ring.  When you hooked up  the air hose to inflate the tire you had to tap on the ring to make sure it was seated on the rim.  We never leaned over the tire while it was inflating.  One day I was sitting in the mechanics office talking, one of the other guys came in.  He had left the air hose attached to a tire he had fixed.  A few seconds later there was a loud bang followed by the sound of breaking glass.  The ring had not been seated correctly and had blown off.  It shot up about 16 feet into the air and broke one of the windows on the open overhead door.  A while later I saw a demonstration showing how one of these rings tore the head off a dummy.
[/quote]

I don't know if split rims were banned here, but when I was in the Army I saw a picture of a big dent in the roof of a workshop as a result of a guy being thown into it by a split rim exploding in a similar fashion. We were then issued with "Tire Cages" which the wheels had to be rolled into before they could be inflated.

I remember trying to seat a used tire on a rim in my workshop, I used tie down straps pulled tight around the OD of the tire to spread the beads onto the rim, it was a pricck of a job, and God knows how much air pressure I used to eventually get it on. playing with tires is like playing with fire...........  

[Bailgang]

When I worked as a mechanic we had a 19 year old newby mechanic in the shop. He was working on a car trying to find an antifreeze leak using a hand pump pressure tester. Normally you'd pump it up to no more than 15 lbs but this kid was pumping like crazy, my boss found it odd that it was taking him so long to pressurize the system and about that time there was a WOOOOSSHH and antifreeze all over with the kid saying "HEY!! I found the leak!! He sure did alright, don't know exactly how much pressure he pumped up to but it was enough to blow the radiator.

Yeah I was 19 at the time too but the mechanic in question wasn't me. 

[HondaMan]

One really hot summer day in 1971 a guy came in to my Pekin shop with his CL77, complaining that after about 20 minutes of riding, it would stop. If he 'let it cool down, it would fire back up for another 20 minutes'. So, I asked when the last tuneup and oil change was, and he said 'last Spring'. So, I wrote him up for a tuneup and oil change.

Next day, I changed the plugs and points and set the carbs, then pulled the oil plug to drain the crankcase from the sidestand, as the centerstand was missing. Nothing came out. Thinking that it must be plugged with grit (?), I jacked the bike horizontal on the shop stand, and about an ounce of oil dribbled out. Supposing the oil hole must be clogged, I stuck a screwdriver up inside - nope, it was open. So, I pulled the dipstick: dry.

Wow!

Then I reinstalled the dipstick and 2 quarts of oil and kicked it over: it fired right up. It didn't smoke. It didn't leak oil, either. We called him and told him the bike was ready, and he came and got it. I suggested he keep an eye on the oil level, told him I found no oil in it when changing it.

Over the next 2 months we became 'lunch buddies' as it happened that he frequented the McD's next to our shop, where I usually ate lunch. He rode in almost every day from his job about 2 miles distant. I asked him how the oil was doing: it never used a drop, but he said it sure ran better and had a lot more power, and didn't stall anymore.

Later that Fall he came in for another oil change. He brought 2 quarts with him this time, asking if I'd use it: sure, that's fine. Then he told me he 'found it in his garage, might be the oil he thought he had changed last Spring'.

...I think the CL77 might be tougher than the SOHC4? 

[DH]

The genius I mentioned earlier in this thread also had his own
special proceedure for charging A/C...........
1) hook up gauge set
2) start engine and turn a/c on
3) open BOTH high and low side valves........
4) stand with gauges in hand and shake can of R12, wondering why it wouldn't go in......
By the time he got to step 4, I'd already ran for cover. I can't to this day, believe the can never blew up in his face. I tried to warn him against doing it, but he wouldn't listen. Luckiest man alive.

[HondaMan]

The genius I mentioned earlier in this thread also had his own
special proceedure for charging A/C...........
1) hook up gauge set
2) start engine and turn a/c on
3) open BOTH high and low side valves........
4) stand with gauges in hand and shake can of R12, wondering why it wouldn't go in......
By the time he got to step 4, I'd already ran for cover. I can't to this day, believe the can never blew up in his face. I tried to warn him against doing it, but he wouldn't listen. Luckiest man alive.

My former boss told me that when he was a teen (1070s), he bought a Chevy pickup that needed some A/C freon. So, he bought 5 [large] cans and proceeded to install it. After the 5th can, he thought it 'didn't feel cold enough yet' (likely because he didn't vacuum it first) so he bought 2 more. He installed those, too, right in the Checker parking lot. About an hour later he drove his girl to the mall and was waiting for her out in the truck, listening to the radio with the engine off, 100-degree Colorado afternoon, when he heard first a little whistling sound, then and explosion that made him jump out of the truck and run! A big cloud of grey ballooned out from under his hood and wrapped around the front of the truck, then turned white and vanished. He walked back up to it to find frost all over the fenders and under the hood.

On the way home, the A/C didn't blow cold anymore, either.

[DH]

 

[Don R]

My girlfriend worked at a gas station, the owner allowed me to hang around a little. One friday evening he went home for dinner and left instructions to get the truck and push Mrs Goodwins 53 chevy into the shop, he said get it going good so you don't scratch the bumper going up the ramp. My GF got in the chevy and I went out in the street to watch for traffic. I gave them the go sign and around the corner it came, up the drive, in the shop and BOOOM  right into the steel cabinets against the wall. All the junk on the shelves rained down on the hood and it rolled back stopping perfectly in the tire chocks.
 After 10 minutes of hysterical laughter we got nerve to call him, my GF saked what was Mrs. Goodwins car was in for? He replied a valve job, she asked anything else? It was then he realized the brakes were out too, he'd forgotten that little bit of info. He just said I'll be right there. I left then.