Engineers
& trust
Been given a
good engineering lately? Guido has…
Excuse me for sounding paranoid, but I really am convinced that there’s
a coven of engineers out there whose sole mission is to make people’s lives
utterly miserable – and get away with it.
Take, for example, the evil genius who designed the Honda’s infamous inboard
disc brakes as fitted to such mechanical luminaries of the eighties as the VF400
and CBX550. The brilliant wheeze behind this idea was to make disc brakes look
like drums. In a Comstar wheel. Very retro. Why, for gawd’s sake? Why don’t
we also try to make the motorcycle look like a wheelbarrow? You watch –
some idiot will try it.
Why drums, anyway? Despite what many old tossers will tell you, they were crap.
The only reason they sometimes seemed good was because the bikes using them
were slow, or unreliable, and usually both. How much braking do you need on
something that almost never runs? Geez…
Back to the inboard discs, or “#@*!^!” as they’re known in our
house. I’ve seen grown mechanics quake in fear at the prospect of changing
one of these wheels, and have even done it myself on occasion. Most recently
when we were fixing up Ms M’s old CBX550 for Mr Smith, its new owner.
Naturally the “#@*!^!” required new pads (both ends) and had to be
removed. This involves completely disassembling an enclosed twin disc set up
front and performing obscene acts on the rear. There are no special tools needed.
Unless you regard requiring one more arm than is available – regardless
of how many people are working on the bike – as a special tool. You do
however have to be kneeling on a factory workshop manual while facing Suzuka
for half an hour before beginning work – that’s if you hope to have
any prospect of succeeding.
By far the most breathtaking moment in doing a “#@*!^!” change is
when you go to reassemble the front. There you’re expected to hold together
a wheel, two discs, plus callipers, plus assorted covers while juggling same
back into the forks, the gap in which is precisely 2.8mm too narrow – which
makes it a press fit. Or “hammer fit” as we prefer to call it. Doing
this requires holding together 41 parts in you left and right hands, while opening
the forks with your other. And they wonder why I drink…
Now for my other favourite, which is sidecovers. Who’s the ninny who came
up with press fit (where a lug is squeezed through a grommet) for these things?
It must have taken years of careful development to come up with guaranteed to
fly off the moment you hit the right-sized pothole at 136kmh. That is of course
except for the ones carefully designed to lodge in place so hard that the only
means of removal is tearing off the cover and leaving the corners, with the
lugs firmly in their grommets, on the bike.
If by some miracle you manage to make it past the wheels and sidecovers, there’s
plenty of surprises waiting inside the engine. Like the tappet adjusters on
my old GSX1100, for which there was no known tool. Actually I lie, apparently
a number 3 clock winding key (go on, open one up and see if I’m wrong!)
is a perfect fit. This was worked out by a fellow owner and I was much too scared
of the answer to enquire what bizarre thought processes led to that discovery.
It’s also good to see that this is not an art restricted to older machines.
For example the Blackbird I owned a couple of years ago had an oil filter carefully
situated where no wrench available in the southern hemisphere would fit it.
What on earth did they do, put the filter on a bench and build the bike around
it?
Engineers. They may seem harmless, but don’t trust the bastards…
Guy "Guido" Allen
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