Weird, wonderful, precise, strange, or brutal, these tools shared by Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Mark Hoyer make working on motorcycles easier, more repeatable and more fun. How many do you own? How many have you heard of?
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Thanks for watching!
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Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00We are back with another episode of the Cycleworld podcast.
00:00:06I'm Mark Hoyer.
00:00:07I'm the editor-in-chief and I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.
00:00:11This week's topic is favorite tools, favorite tools and how to use them.
00:00:19We both brought a pile of tools from the shop and I've learned something about myself, Kevin,
00:00:27in doing this as I grabbed my favorite tools.
00:00:29I really like to measure things.
00:00:33I have a very strong desire to know what I'm looking at or messing with.
00:00:40Any overall observations on your collection or is it just...
00:00:44Well, I didn't bring my Vernier caliper, but the Vernier caliper was measurement for me.
00:00:57The most important use of that measurement was port timing.
00:01:03How far down from deck to the top of the exhaust port, the top of the transfers?
00:01:09Where's the piston when the intake port opens?
00:01:12All that stuff got written down.
00:01:14I have all these terrible notes that will go out on the curb one day.
00:01:21At the time, those were magic.
00:01:25I said to a friend of mine, do you know what wisdom is?
00:01:29He said, what is wisdom?
00:01:31I said, 32 down and 47 wide.
00:01:36He said, oh, 750 Kawasaki.
00:01:42I felt that that was a guess.
00:01:45It was a kind of arcane wisdom, which we shared.
00:01:49Amazing.
00:01:51Amazing.
00:01:52Yeah, well, I'll start.
00:01:55One of my favorites is this Mitutoyo caliper.
00:02:04It's the long kind.
00:02:05You can get down in fork tubes with it.
00:02:10Just measuring all the things.
00:02:11I mean, I have the digital dial caliper.
00:02:13You can lazily switch between thousandths and millimeters.
00:02:18It's amazing.
00:02:19I mean, it's incredibly accurate, and it's incredibly repeatable.
00:02:27It's very high quality.
00:02:30I do like the analog.
00:02:31That's what's nice about this is it's just millimeters, and it has point millimeters
00:02:37on the little scale right here.
00:02:40No moving parts.
00:02:41This one is actually X.
00:02:42You probably can't focus in on that, but this is X Kell Carruthers.
00:02:45I got this from Kell.
00:02:47Randomly looking on Facebook Marketplace, I needed a disc sander, and I found a guy
00:02:54selling one, and it was Kell Carruthers.
00:02:59I knew Kell because Paul Carruthers' son was my boss at my previous job years and years
00:03:04ago at Cycle News, and so I'd had barbecues with Kell and Jim Allen and stuff during those
00:03:12days.
00:03:13Yeah.
00:03:15When we were making a deal, I got these from Kell, and they're signed, and it makes them
00:03:20special.
00:03:21Man, what a useful tool.
00:03:24I love the digital one.
00:03:25When you really need the nanometers, you can use your digital one.
00:03:31I guess related to that is I've always found myself ... You just get in a situation where
00:03:39you're on the lathe, on the mill, or you're measuring things, doing things, and you need
00:03:44to know your decimal equivalents of fractions or want to, and I have this beautiful metal
00:03:49plate made by Draplin Design.
00:03:52You can look them up online, Draplin.
00:03:54It's metal.
00:03:55It's just beautifully etched and gorgeous.
00:03:59It's made in USA, and it goes from 164th, which is .01565, all the way to one inch,
00:04:07which is 1.0, it turns out.
00:04:11I keep this in the shop next to the drill press, the mill, and the lathe and stuff.
00:04:16It's always super handy.
00:04:17What do you got, Kevin?
00:04:21Well, the thing that I remember from my early know-nothing days with TD-1B and other primitive
00:04:32race bikes is that you had to set the timing repeatedly because it constantly went out
00:04:39of time.
00:04:41Now, today, digital ignition systems are never wrong.
00:04:47You don't have to set anything.
00:04:50It's no longer a concern.
00:04:53But in those days, there was a breaker cam on the end of the magnetorotor, which pushed
00:05:01mechanical switches open when it was time for the spark.
00:05:08Those crankshafts to which the rotor was attached were sort of floppy like the surface
00:05:14of the ocean.
00:05:16Look once, and look twice, and everything is different.
00:05:21We were forever setting the ignition timing.
00:05:24Now, if we imagine this cylinder head being on a bike, here is the adapter.
00:05:31Drew it in to the spark plug hole as a cute little set screw right there to hold the dial
00:05:43gauge.
00:05:45With the dial gauge, you could accurately know the piston position.
00:05:57The timing specification given in the owner's book, ignition timing, it said 2.0 millimeters
00:06:06before top dead center.
00:06:09You put this 12 millimeter wrench combination, lovely pre-modern snap-on quality onto the
00:06:24rotor bolt, of which this is an example.
00:06:27You could turn the rotor at will.
00:06:30The wrench just stayed there obediently, stay, and it stayed.
00:06:37Then you could run the piston through top dead center, zero the little ring on the dial
00:06:45gauge, and then back it up two millimeters.
00:06:48That is where the Okutakoke meter should indicate, here is the Okutakoke meter.
00:07:00You connect the little alligator clips to the magneto in the appropriate places, and
00:07:07the swing of the needle tells you when the points are breaking.
00:07:12It was a pleasure.
00:07:15I looked forward to it at the end of the day, because I knew that I would be sitting there
00:07:19squatting on the ground, facing the right-hand side of the engine, swinging that needle back
00:07:27and forth, and making the little adjustments to get the timing right.
00:07:35It was all very pleasant, and that's one of the reasons why, when I pick up these tools
00:07:40today, they are, put it crudely, friendly, friends of mine.
00:07:49Twelve millimeters combination, it only had one job, because there wasn't any more twelve
00:07:55millimeter on the motorcycle anywhere.
00:07:57Of course, that changed a few years later when twelve millimeter heads became standard
00:08:02on eight millimeter bolts.
00:08:07There was also the business of changing gear ratios, which happened fairly often, front
00:08:13sprockets and rear sprockets, and bending tab washers, because when you put the five
00:08:23sprocket bolts to mount the rear sprocket, you would first
00:08:32put on a tab washer, which had two holes in it, and a sort of a dog bone connecting
00:08:38them.
00:08:39You would use three for this assembly.
00:08:43Torque up the bolts.
00:08:46Then use this little cold chisel.
00:08:51Tiny cold chisel.
00:08:52Yes, to get under the edge of the tab washer, so that then you could, with the channel locks,
00:08:58pinch it up against the side of the bolt head.
00:09:02Now, you might think you were done.
00:09:04Oh, we're going to such-and-such another racetrack, which has the same gearing as we are using
00:09:10today.
00:09:11I don't have to change the rear sprocket.
00:09:14That was okay with the 250, but when we got the 750, I found that when I unbent the tab
00:09:22washer and put the wrench on the bolt head, there was no torque.
00:09:30Where did it go?
00:09:32Well, with that 120 to 140 horsepower 750 banging on those bolts, they stretched.
00:09:46You had to re-torque the sprocket bolts every weekend, even if you were going to use the
00:09:53same gearing.
00:09:55Some people learned that the hard way.
00:09:59I have to take a moment and apologize to anyone on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc., because
00:10:06this is a visual program a little bit.
00:10:08We are holding up tools, and Kevin held up the cutest little cold chisel.
00:10:13It's just lovely.
00:10:14It's like the size of a number two pencil with a flat edge on it.
00:10:17It was beautiful.
00:10:18We're going to be doing that, and we'll do our best to have descriptive audio for those
00:10:27of you purely going on the podcast platforms.
00:10:41You were talking about bolts.
00:10:46One of my favorite tools is this little guy.
00:10:51It's sort of like a pocket knife.
00:10:53It's stainless steel.
00:10:54It's a Starrett, and it's a thread gauge.
00:11:00All these little alligator teeth guys open up, and it'll be hard to see, impossible to
00:11:05be in focus.
00:11:06But you take one of these, and you hold it up to the teeth of a bolt, and if it goes
00:11:12in perfectly, then that's what you have.
00:11:15It tells you, okay, that's 19 threads per inch.
00:11:22It also will fit inside of nuts.
00:11:23That's why it has that crank shape.
00:11:26Yep.
00:11:27And it's a positive stop, so it goes against the back.
00:11:30And like I said, this is a Starrett, and this is SAE.
00:11:33I have a metric one.
00:11:35That's the wrong part of the box.
00:11:36But I have a metric one also, and what I need is something like this with British threads,
00:11:41which I have not found yet, because those are the ones that are truly mysterious, because
00:11:47it could be cycle thread.
00:11:48It could be 26 threads per inch.
00:11:52You just never know what you're dealing with on an old wet work.
00:11:55AMC had a thread that was unique to themselves, and it was just for rocker boxes.
00:12:01I never understood that one.
00:12:04Somebody decided that it was exactly the right thread to keep from vibrating loose, and it
00:12:08was going into a casting, because you want coarser threads going into a casting, typically,
00:12:22especially aluminum.
00:12:23Poor old aluminum.
00:12:25It never forgets.
00:12:28Well, you were talking about torque.
00:12:33Sure.
00:12:34I'm going to get out my Matco.
00:12:39This is a hundred foot pound.
00:12:41This is incredible.
00:12:42I found it incredibly useful for, you know, all things, most things motorcycle.
00:12:47Yeah.
00:12:48And good quality tool.
00:12:50It's calibrated.
00:12:51I've got a local person that goes out, but you can also just stick something in your
00:12:55vise and put it here and hang the pounds on the handle at the setting.
00:12:59Sure.
00:13:00Yeah.
00:13:01And then there's a screw you can turn.
00:13:02But, you know, sometimes we like to defer to the, like the spacecraft guys, because
00:13:08they're the, they're the, they're the calibrators, but this is, it's a click type, which, you
00:13:14know, I like.
00:13:15I think you have one that's not clicky.
00:13:19No, mine is not clicky.
00:13:21It's this guy, which you can throw it across the room and Young's modulus guarantees accuracy.
00:13:33Well, and also what you have there is you don't have to zero that with this one, with
00:13:38the spring in it, you zero, you got to unscrew it every time you use it, unscrew it, then
00:13:45put it back in its case.
00:13:46And and then it'll be accurate for a long time.
00:13:49If you think, leave the thing cranked in 99 pounds or something, it's not a good idea
00:13:53over the long term.
00:13:56Well, this is three eighths drive stuff on motorcycles is generally more like three eighths
00:14:04drive country than it is half inch drive country.
00:14:06Oh, absolutely.
00:14:07Half inch is automotive, one inch is oil field.
00:14:11Yep.
00:14:12Half or three eighths here is the same.
00:14:15And I, you know, I was tempted to bring, I do have a half inch drive, a snap on pneumatic
00:14:21impact gun.
00:14:22Oh yeah.
00:14:24And highly useful for those sort of, it's more automotive.
00:14:29It's for those axle nuts.
00:14:31I have never, the nut that holds the flange on the back of the transmission, that kind
00:14:35of thing.
00:14:36Yeah.
00:14:37I have never, I have a 1989 Ford F250.
00:14:41It's victorious on any rusty bolt.
00:14:44I mean it, you know, boy, I, you know, I'm not totally brutal.
00:14:48I'm not brutal with it, but you know, you, you know, we put some thread penetrant, aero
00:14:51coil is another tool that I love.
00:14:54Aero coil is the penetrating, the penetrating oil that was shared with me by a wheels through
00:15:00time.
00:15:01It was, oh yeah.
00:15:03Everything that they pull out, they, you know, they soak it in aero coil first, the bores
00:15:06and you know, cause they get all that ancient stuff down there.
00:15:11Dale Woxler was the principal there.
00:15:14Now the late Dale Woxler, but anyway, you put that half inch, I was tempted to bring
00:15:19it, but it is, it is an awfully automotive piece, but it's, it always wins.
00:15:25That's what I love about it.
00:15:26Well, when we did that series of videos with the 600 Honda engine, it had been, it had
00:15:33been together for a long time and I went and bought myself an electric impact just for
00:15:39that.
00:15:40And as if that's the way it feels victorious when you just go, but yeah, well that, you
00:15:48know that, yeah, it's just because otherwise you're, you're getting a piece of a sector
00:15:55gear and jamming it in someplace and hauling on it.
00:15:59And the engine crankcase is lifting up on the bench if it's an engine only.
00:16:05And it's just, it makes you feel like an ape.
00:16:11I was going to start this off.
00:16:12Yeah.
00:16:13I was going to start off with that.
00:16:14You know, they always said use of tools is what separates from the best from the primates,
00:16:18but I don't think that's true.
00:16:20No, I've seen apes use tools and, and so, so have I, um, yeah, get a bigger hammer.
00:16:29Yeah, absolutely.
00:16:30Um, I, uh, the impact, yeah, I have a three eights impact electric and I use it a ton
00:16:38because it saves so much time and it's very easy to control and it's not, um, it's not
00:16:45over Torquay.
00:16:46It's a, it's not a big, powerful, like that half inch, you know, you're not doing fine
00:16:50work with that.
00:16:51You're hammering the rusty trailer hitch and you know, trying to get that thing to come
00:16:57off the bumper or something.
00:16:58Um, and you're just, you know, really hitting it with a three eights.
00:17:03It's got a really fine control trigger and you can go on an eight millimeter or 10 millimeter
00:17:09and zip it open, get it, get the thing out.
00:17:12And when you're reassembling something that has a lot of, uh, say a side cover and you
00:17:18just want to zip them in, you can zip them in.
00:17:20And if you're, you know, repeatable, you just, you can do your, you know, go opposite ways
00:17:27and you just put a light torque that's pretty even all the way around.
00:17:31And then you can go in with your torque wrench or, you know, I have friends who are perhaps
00:17:35better mechanics than I, or, or more, more into the vibe.
00:17:39I don't know, but they don't use a torque wrench and they kind of make fun of me for
00:17:43having like too many kinds of torque wrenches all the way down to this Weha, um, it's a
00:17:50torque screwdriver, digital, and it comes with a, it comes with a ton, a ton of bits
00:17:56so you can really kind of get into anything, but it also just takes a variety of bits.
00:18:00So there's no JIS in here, Japanese industrial standard.
00:18:05And that's why I have my Japanese industrial standard.
00:18:08If you don't know what that is, folks, most of your Japanese stuff, the thing that looks
00:18:12like a Phillips is not a Phillips.
00:18:14Yep.
00:18:15He's got even the same brand.
00:18:17And if you put a Phillips in it, you can sort of half-ass it and get it done, but you're,
00:18:20you run a really good chance of wallowing out the, you know, the beautiful, yeah, it's
00:18:25a vessel and it has impact too, right?
00:18:27You hit it with a hammer if you need to.
00:18:29Yeah.
00:18:30Vessel.
00:18:31Yeah.
00:18:32I first learned about the existence of that brand from their, uh, impact driver, which
00:18:37was marketed in the U S back in maybe the late sixties.
00:18:41And it came in a blue tin box.
00:18:44It was really very old timey looking.
00:18:48Yeah.
00:18:49We have one in the shop that works like crazy.
00:18:51Exactly what you described.
00:18:52We have one in the world shop here.
00:18:54Yes.
00:18:55The thing here is for years, I use this made by Crescent in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
00:19:00Oh, nice.
00:19:01And of course, Crescent has been bought by Apex and who knows what all so that, um, you,
00:19:09you don't know where things are made any longer.
00:19:13And I struggled with this for years trying to keep it in Phillips screws so that it didn't
00:19:19cam out.
00:19:21And on occasion when I would have to get something out and it wouldn't come out, I would put
00:19:28the whole assembly into the press, bring the press ram down until it touched this so that
00:19:34it could not cam out and then victory.
00:19:38Wow.
00:19:39Get out, man.
00:19:40That's, that's awesome.
00:19:41I got to keep that in mind.
00:19:44Well, you know, these things occur to you when you're, when you're struggling with something
00:19:48that isn't cooperating.
00:19:51And that's a great thing.
00:19:52The great thing about tools is cats have tools.
00:19:56Those claws that come out, they can, they can run up a tree trunk and sometimes we had
00:20:02a cat that would do that and that would be up there 30 feet in the air and would look
00:20:06down and goggle eyes like, Oh, how did I get here?
00:20:12But tools enable you to do everything.
00:20:18It's wonderful to be able to just think to yourself, Oh, third drawer.
00:20:23And there it is, whatever you're, you're looking for.
00:20:26I used to carry a 50 power magnifier.
00:20:30I have, uh, thanks to my youngest son, I received one last Christmas with a light and all that,
00:20:39but it was just wonderful because I could look through the slot in the connecting rod
00:20:46at the surface of the big end roller rollers and see if they were showing any pitting.
00:20:53Oh, excellent.
00:20:55And just, just a lovely thing.
00:20:58Well, I have, you know, my, um, my magnifier, my favorite magnifier, which I did not bring.
00:21:04This is a cup that was a gift to me, uh, from my brother, a 70 to 200 millimeter Canon lens,
00:21:11but it's actually just got water in it.
00:21:13It's not a lens, but the lens.
00:21:14I have the center element of a 70 to 200 that was a faulty for the camera.
00:21:20It didn't work for the camera.
00:21:21It had an aberration in it and, um, you never see that, but that center element I got as
00:21:28parts back after I got my lens fixed, that is the single finest magnifying glass I have
00:21:34ever had.
00:21:35Oh, it is so sharp and so precise.
00:21:39I have it in a little like velvet bag and then you take it and you can, you can, you
00:21:44know, you move it relative to your eye, relative to the surface and you can just zero in.
00:21:49It's not molecular man, but it's, it's like what you're talking about.
00:21:52It just seems like you're peering into another world.
00:21:55It's just, it's so good.
00:21:57And when you got to see, you got to see.
00:22:00A few years ago, Bud Axlin, who was Kenny's first sponsor, Kenny Roberts, first sponsor,
00:22:08uh, looked up from whatever he was doing, saw that I was standing there and he said,
00:22:13have you noticed they're making the numbers on main jets smaller?
00:22:20So, uh, you have to have this in your toolbox somewhere because it could be that you can
00:22:30stare at it.
00:22:31You carry it to the door, go out into the bright sun and you're staring at it and it
00:22:35won't give you the information.
00:22:37This will extract the information.
00:22:39Well, here's, no, here's the thing.
00:22:40So, um, you know, I'm not young, but, um, the way, the way we do that now, Kevin, this
00:22:48is my other favorite tool is this is the camera, this phone and the camera on this phone.
00:22:54I have a hundred photographs of jets because you can, you take a picture and you can zoom
00:23:00in and you can see anything.
00:23:02So you can look where you, you can't normally see like the back, uh, you can stick it in
00:23:08behind the engine and turn the flash on and take a flash photo or make a video with the
00:23:14light on and see where you can't see.
00:23:16I've done that on the back of my Ford F two 50.
00:23:18There's an oil pressure.
00:23:20It's a four 60 Ford and there's an oil pressure sender back there and you can't really, it's
00:23:25a big truck.
00:23:26You got to crawl over the engine.
00:23:27You can just reach in with this thing, take a picture, make a video and see if is it leaking
00:23:32Is the wire not connected?
00:23:33Cause I was, you know, trying to figure that out.
00:23:35So this is my jet reader and that, yeah, that's great.
00:23:39That Ducati back there, um, the Makuni carbs on that thing, you know, I had to rebuild
00:23:44those completely when I got it.
00:23:46And so I've got pictures of all the jets and it's a nice record.
00:23:49Like I have it in the, I know what the stock, I mean, I've got notes, I've written all that
00:23:52down, which reminds me of my, my high quality Tombo pencil for, uh, for general writing.
00:24:00It's, um, Tombo since 1913, it's a beautiful quality wood.
00:24:06It's two five, five, eight B. And, uh, I have the, the most, it's a two stage pencil sharpener
00:24:12for it.
00:24:13That's ridiculous.
00:24:14I know, but it's like nine bucks.
00:24:16It's a German, it's a German pencil sharpener and you stick this thing in and you do the
00:24:20first one, which, which takes the wood back and then you have a really long lead and then
00:24:25you stick the lead in and you get this beautiful long fine point.
00:24:29Yes.
00:24:30I'll dig it out.
00:24:31You start talking about something else and I'll dig out the pencil sharpener.
00:24:34Okay.
00:24:35Well, um, everything's tubeless today, but it wasn't always so.
00:24:43And for people who are restoring older machines, particularly those that have drilled, uh,
00:24:51spoke wheels with drilled rims, you still need an inner tube.
00:24:57And I watched a friend of mine who had bought a TD1C brand new in 1967, pinch three tubes
00:25:06in a row, one after the other.
00:25:09And he got so angry after the first one and he got angrier and angrier.
00:25:17And eventually, uh, later in life, he, he, he died of a heart attack.
00:25:25And I could see that it's not a good idea to let yourself become that angry.
00:25:32So I never used a tire iron that was longer than this.
00:25:40These are German Dowodat.
00:25:43I think Dowodat made tool kit stuff for Volkswagens and rather plebeian.
00:25:51But the nice thing about these was they're easy to control.
00:25:57If you feel like you need more leverage, that's telling you, you need more rew glide or you
00:26:04need to get the opposite side of the speed down into the well.
00:26:09It absolutely shouldn't be a brutal operation.
00:26:12No, it should be slick.
00:26:15There are a few exceptions.
00:26:18Years ago, we were doing a story that was a thousand dollar, but no, no, this was $500
00:26:25dirt bikes that we were taking on a, on a ride.
00:26:29Jimmy Lewis was our off-road editor at the time.
00:26:32And I found a, I found a 1975 Honda MT250.
00:26:37So it looks like an Elsinore, but it's a dual sport 252 stroke and a beautiful little bike.
00:26:43And I found it in Huntington beach and you know, it needed tires and I was trying not
00:26:47to spend any budget.
00:26:49So I was looking through the shop for tires and I found this, you know, this Dunlop knobby
00:26:54and that, that thing I've never encountered any tire, particularly a knobby.
00:27:01The thing was like cast iron.
00:27:03I mean, it was the hardest carcass and I, you know, I've changed a lot of tires and
00:27:11this was a brutal operation.
00:27:12I was using short irons because those long irons, let's, you bend your rim with those
00:27:16things.
00:27:18I'm not into, I'm just not into the big leverage.
00:27:20Just like you said, I finally got that thing on there and I got it aired up and Jimmy came
00:27:26out to the shop and I said, yeah, man, I got the tires changed.
00:27:31He's like, oh cool.
00:27:32And he looks at that.
00:27:33I said, God, this tire was horrendous to get on the back.
00:27:35He's like, where did you get that tire in his very Jimmy Lewis way?
00:27:39And I'm like, well, it was in the other shop.
00:27:40I just found it there and it was the right size.
00:27:43You can't use that tire.
00:27:44I'm like, what?
00:27:46I'm like, I'm not taking that tire off.
00:27:49There's no way I'm taking that tire off.
00:27:50And Jimmy took it off, but it was like a special, it was some special construction bum-lop
00:27:54like desert racing tire for heavy bikes.
00:27:57It might've been for a GS or something, you know, like at the time, cause he was rally
00:28:00racing a BMWs at Dakar, you know, he was third place in the car and a twin one year.
00:28:08So I couldn't use that tire, but even that's the only time that it should be brutal is
00:28:11when you're using a specially constructed rally tire.
00:28:15Well, my worst tire was a hardened up Dunlop triangular 275 18 front, which I mounted on
00:28:24a WM0 rim with those tire irons.
00:28:29And it was not easy, but when I finished and it held air, I was so happy.
00:28:39I was just delighted.
00:28:42It's really nice when the bead snaps, air it up and just, boom, boom.
00:28:48Once in Daytona, there was a man who, who came into the, I think he came into Goodyear
00:28:57and he said, um, I can't get the bead to seat on this.
00:29:00Can I use your air?
00:29:01And they say, yeah, it's over there.
00:29:04So it was regulated to 60 PSI and he said, it's not going to, not going to do it.
00:29:10Can we, can we turn it up at the compressor?
00:29:12And they said, it's a safety thing we don't do over that pressure.
00:29:17So he went somewhere else, bang, the whole thing exploded and it tore a big hole in his
00:29:24wrist and blood was squirting out and John Jacobson, the late John Jacobson, who owned
00:29:31Boston Cycles in Boston and was responsible ultimately for the yellow and black paint
00:29:36scheme that Yamaha adopted, just was marvelous.
00:29:43He went over and grasped the guy's hand upstream from the wound and started directing people,
00:29:49you go and get this, you make a phone call.
00:29:53And he's holding this thing and the victim is kind of looking like, oh, what's happening?
00:30:02What, what'd I do?
00:30:04And it was marvelous.
00:30:05You know, the fellow was, was a patched up and went about his business, but that's something
00:30:10to remember that if you're angry at a bead that won't seat, more Ruglide or water or
00:30:19whatever you like and try again.
00:30:23Yes.
00:30:24Yeah.
00:30:25Sometimes you need a large volume of air to, to blow the bead out.
00:30:29I've had, I've had tires that were stored by being wrapped.
00:30:32Yeah.
00:30:33Yeah.
00:30:34For tubeless.
00:30:35Banded.
00:30:36Yeah.
00:30:37Banding was a terrible thing.
00:30:39But when you use short irons like this, it tells you if you're not being successful,
00:30:47it tells you to think again because you're doing something wrong.
00:30:52Otherwise you'd be able to mount those things.
00:30:56But unfortunately we humans also are like the old Testament God, vengeful and jealous.
00:31:07We go to the tire store and get one of those tremendous tires, I'll fix the SOB.
00:31:13And like you said, they either blow a chunk out of their cast rim or they bend it.
00:31:19Or like the gentleman in the anecdote, hurt themselves.
00:31:23Yeah.
00:31:24Not necessary.
00:31:25Got my pencil sharpener.
00:31:28Ooh.
00:31:29KUM, made in Germany, two holes, big hole does the wood, next hole sharpens the point
00:31:38and it's beautiful.
00:31:39And yeah, this and a yellow notepad.
00:31:43As much as I take notes on my phone, writing things, I do a ton of that on notes on my
00:31:49phone.
00:31:50But also having a big notepad and making sketches and keeping things organized that way is great.
00:31:57Of course you can't beat, again, the phone for photographing wiring before you take it
00:32:02apart or disarrange the wires.
00:32:06Absolutely.
00:32:07Yes.
00:32:08Where do the washers go?
00:32:09Where do the spacers go?
00:32:12Lots of pictures and stuff before I take it apart.
00:32:15Yeah.
00:32:16It's such a useful thing now.
00:32:20Sending film out.
00:32:21I mean, I do it for fun.
00:32:22You know, I take film pictures for fun.
00:32:24Yeah.
00:32:25But man, you can't beat having that thing with you all the time and yeah, amazing.
00:32:32Whatever the artists may say, it's the new standard.
00:32:38And it used to be that surveillance photography from orbit was dropped in the form of film,
00:32:45would come down on a parachute and a C-130 with a special rig would fly past and snag
00:32:51it and it would be hauled in.
00:32:54And now, of course, all that stuff is encrypted and they beam it down.
00:33:00Yeah.
00:33:03How many hammers do you have, Kevin?
00:33:05Oh.
00:33:07Well, at one point, I thought I'm going to take a chance on these Chinese hammers because
00:33:13they look good.
00:33:14And when they arrived, they were good.
00:33:17They haven't worked loose.
00:33:19The handles have not worked loose from the heads.
00:33:22And they're regular old wood, which no doubt had to be imported into China from some place
00:33:27where wood grows.
00:33:29But a hammer is a...
00:33:36For example, A1R was a disc valve motor, disc valve two-stroke, and it had two cylinders
00:33:43and there was a disc on either side of the crankshaft and the carburetor stuck out the
00:33:47way our ears do.
00:33:49And that's why those-
00:33:50Like these?
00:33:51Yes.
00:33:52Had bulges in the side of the fairing that were to accommodate the outward projecting
00:34:00cylinders.
00:34:01Well, those disc valves were mounted onto the crankshaft by means of little dowel pins.
00:34:09And they were a fairly close fit so that sometimes they were really in there.
00:34:15And the only way to get them out was to take a one-inch cutoff disc and cut a groove on
00:34:20either side of the projecting part and then take hold of that with your diagonal cutters
00:34:25and lever it up.
00:34:28And it came out so sweetly, it was lovely.
00:34:31So for reinstalling the dowel pin, I've always treasured this two-ounce ball peen because
00:34:41it's the right size for the job.
00:34:43And I found it useful for a lot of small, precise work that calls for tapping, not ramming
00:34:51and hammering.
00:34:53And people have hit this on stuff so the wood is all splintered here and it makes me sick,
00:35:02but still with me.
00:35:04Yeah, this is a four-ounce ball peen.
00:35:07The brand is Craftsman, but it's made by Vaughn, has a hickory handle.
00:35:12The head is tight as can be.
00:35:14It's painted blue so we know whose it is.
00:35:18And I'm across the room and yeah, I have a four-ounce for the same reason you have a
00:35:23two-ounce and I have a variety of other hammers like sheet metal hammers and big, brutal,
00:35:29you know, two and a half pound, five pound sledges when you really got to get it done.
00:35:33But what you're talking about, it's the right size for the job.
00:35:36It's so important and tapping versus destruction, there's a real difference in how you hit something
00:35:45and what the mass is behind it, what the feel is, what the swing is like, all of that.
00:35:52It makes a real difference.
00:35:55And when you want to break a taper, breaking a taper, you can do it brutally, I guess.
00:36:06You could, a lot of people want to hit the end of the thing to get it out of the taper,
00:36:12the thing that's protruding, the bolts or something or the threads.
00:36:16They don't screw a nut on it.
00:36:18Yeah.
00:36:19You can screw a nut on it, number one, preferably a nut you don't need and you can do that.
00:36:23But also, I sometimes back it up, I have this egg dolly, which I use for sheet metal shaping,
00:36:31but I wish you could feel how heavy, this is a Martin egg dolly and it's got all these
00:36:36little shapes.
00:36:37It's got a square shape.
00:36:38It's got this contour.
00:36:40It's got this contour.
00:36:41You can get it into places.
00:36:43If you hit the taper on the other, so you back it up with this and you hit the taper,
00:36:48with a four ounce hammer, it doesn't have to be a big hammer, and give it a good snap,
00:36:54it'll just drop out and you don't have to brutalize the threads.
00:36:57And highly useful.
00:36:59This egg dolly, I mean, dense, yeah, it's just, it's so, it's very, very useful.
00:37:07Just heavy as heck.
00:37:08I know this is probably four pounds, five pounds.
00:37:11I have disassembled many a customer motor whose crankshaft ignition in threads were
00:37:22crushed by that individual's desperation to get the rotor off.
00:37:28And the same thing with the clutch hub.
00:37:31And I don't think ill of those people because they're in a hurry, they're doing something
00:37:42that they're probably not fully familiar with, and they're taking action, which I'm all in
00:37:50favor of.
00:37:52I don't want to stand at the side of the road looking helpless.
00:37:55I want to do something and get moving.
00:38:00But I've had the advantage of having a lot of experience with things like that.
00:38:10And those people are coming along, they're laying hands on the equipment, but they've
00:38:15hammered those threads because, like the mouse looking at the peanut butter on the trap treadle,
00:38:23they didn't think.
00:38:25I got one.
00:38:26I just went out to the, going out to the shop to get this stuff.
00:38:30I got the mouse that was doing horrible things to the equipment in there.
00:38:34Oh yeah.
00:38:35I have a cat that chews through the wires on this computer setup if I don't keep him
00:38:39out of here.
00:38:42Just run a moderate, just run a moderate voltage through those, it'll learn to stop.
00:38:50I think I'm one of those people who thinks that the beauty of snap-on is real.
00:38:58Now, there are a lot of people who regard it as a racket and may have tendencies in
00:39:05that direction because you're a young man trying to come up in the mechanical world
00:39:11and the snap-on truck is out front.
00:39:14And you go out there and you think, well, it's only $400 for the things I want.
00:39:23And they're so nice.
00:39:25I mean, this big guy here, I love that.
00:39:34It's a nice shape and it is functional.
00:39:39I was able to buy brand new in a roll about 20 years ago, I was able to buy the short
00:39:50set of British Standard Whitworth.
00:39:55And they are, they're gorgeous.
00:39:57It has a BA0, BA1, and then it goes up in the Whitworth sizes to a fairly large.
00:40:04And they're nice and short.
00:40:07I have the long ones too, I have a full set of snap-on long Whitworth and some others.
00:40:12I don't have all snap-on tools, but for those, I was able to acquire those.
00:40:18The sockets are very nice.
00:40:20When I was at Trackside, I carried only the tools, the fastener removing tools that fit
00:40:28the fasteners on the bike I was running.
00:40:32Because I've seen so many guys that have a tremendous tall toolbox.
00:40:38Two men are having a gut buster trying to get it off the truck.
00:40:43And you pull open the drawers, oh, there's wood planes in there and spare parts for cars
00:40:51they haven't owned.
00:40:52But I like to have two of each.
00:40:55And in this case, these are sevens, seven millimeters, and they're for tightening the
00:41:01jam nuts on cable adjusters for making your throttle slides all take off at once.
00:41:11A pleasure.
00:41:12A pleasure.
00:41:13Yeah, that's awesome.
00:41:14Also, not a whole lot of that going on these days with sinking your carburetors via the
00:41:20cables.
00:41:21Well, they're racked.
00:41:24These were not racked carburetors with a central.
00:41:28I saw at Monza, one of the first batch of Jalera 500 racers that was built with the
00:41:39synchronization built into the carburetor rack so that then you just ran an opening
00:41:49and closing cable to the throttle.
00:41:53That was a step.
00:41:54And of course, now we have throttle cables that are made out of copper so that conducts
00:41:59electrical sounds, signals, that tell the computer, this is the torque I want.
00:42:09And then the computer kind of goes, well, we'll open the throttle this much because
00:42:15Our table of information gives us that information very, very quickly.
00:42:30So a nice fitting wrench is a pleasure.
00:42:33No question.
00:42:34But when you're facing the rusty trailer hitch and it's just a ball on the top and you have
00:42:42your half inch snap on air gun and your air compressor up at 120 PSI and it just spins
00:42:51the ball in the bumper and there's nothing to hold that.
00:42:56That's when you get these locking pliers and I won't use the brand.
00:43:01The other brand we might, well, we might call them vice grips.
00:43:06These are called Eagle grip.
00:43:07They're made in USA.
00:43:08I don't think they're in production.
00:43:09They may still be in production.
00:43:11This is an LP10R, just means they're 10 inch.
00:43:14It's a Malco Dewitt, Nebraska.
00:43:16I have never used locking pliers as positive as this.
00:43:23I put them on that trailer hitch and just, you know, tightened it and got it to go over
00:43:30center and it didn't budge.
00:43:33And I had to hammer the daylights out of it to get that nut to come loose because it's,
00:43:37you know, it was like an inch and an eighth or something pretty big.
00:43:41Just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop with that.
00:43:42And this thing held tight and they work better.
00:43:47And you can do that.
00:43:49You can grip the daylights out of this thing, really, really squeeze it, get it to click
00:43:52over center just with all your might.
00:43:55And then when you go to release it, it just comes apart.
00:43:58Yeah, because it's really close to center.
00:44:01It's really easy.
00:44:04It's very positive, but also it doesn't, it's not hard to release.
00:44:08Massively useful tool and having the right, you know, they're not cheap.
00:44:12I think I paid $50 for these, which is perhaps excessive, but what I've found is spending
00:44:23as much as you could afford often gives you the tool that actually works.
00:44:30And it's, it's really true, you know, good fitting, like a snap-on wrench, Matco.
00:44:38It's the difference between rounding a nut off or getting the nut off.
00:44:44Because the socket fits properly, like a six-sided socket that fits on the bolt that somebody
00:44:52else has kind of rounded off.
00:44:55A six-sided socket will grab it, grip it, and you get it out.
00:44:59You don't round it off more to where you got to cut it or drill it or do something,
00:45:03you know.
00:45:04That's a good reason to have a few six-side in your box because you may encounter that.
00:45:09The best you can get.
00:45:10Like I have tons of old craftsman stuff that I bought because that's what I can afford.
00:45:16And you know, there's all Harbor Freight has some pretty good stuff, but you will find,
00:45:21like I've seen pictures of broken sockets, you know, when you're really hammering on
00:45:27something.
00:45:28It splits.
00:45:29It splits.
00:45:30And it looks like, well, you look at, shouldn't be all those air bubbles in there, should
00:45:34there?
00:45:35So, yeah.
00:45:36And of course, those are two worlds of mechanical competency.
00:45:45There are the people building engines in a controlled environment, not like the seashell
00:45:51dust that Daytona used to be blowing in the open areas.
00:45:58And then the other thing is the people who are not defeated by rust.
00:46:04They work on rusty old junk.
00:46:06They work on stuff that's been assembled for a long time, and they know how to just buzz
00:46:10through it.
00:46:11They're not going to stop and have to go, oh, well, what am I going to do now?
00:46:18Maybe I can.
00:46:20And when you have that experience, it means that whatever it is, you can get it going.
00:46:27And that's valuable.
00:46:28Even though it seems crude, and it seems to rely upon physical force or impact, sometimes
00:46:36that's the medicine.
00:46:38It is.
00:46:41So I have to respect both of those camps.
00:46:46Absolutely.
00:46:47Yeah.
00:46:48Drilling the case and hitting it with a chisel to get the seized bolt out or, I mean, you
00:46:55got to get it apart.
00:46:56You can't.
00:46:57You're not going to have progress unless it comes apart.
00:46:58How are you going to get it apart?
00:46:59Are you going to hit it with the torch?
00:47:02Or I bought some components for that pickup truck, AC components, and you can't buy motorcraft
00:47:09parts for an 89 Ford pretty much.
00:47:10I mean, there's some of them are out there, but none of the AC stuff.
00:47:13You can't buy a factory AC hose.
00:47:15So you go and you buy whatever brand, and you find something I've found recently, particularly
00:47:23it's happening in motorcycles as well, older motorcycles.
00:47:26But automotive is even a better example is like brake hoses.
00:47:31So I redid the brakes on the 89 Ford and I needed brake hoses.
00:47:35And I went to giant online retailer, and there's a brand called Sunsong, and they're $5 for
00:47:43a rubber brake hose for the front rubber brake hose and the rear single on a 89 Ford F-250.
00:47:48$5, $6.
00:47:52Then next to it is a Raybestos.
00:47:53I'm like, well, Raybestos.
00:47:54Yeah, that's $8.
00:47:55I'm like, yeah, I think I'll go with the Raybestos.
00:47:57So I get the Raybestos.
00:48:00Then they come.
00:48:01So I buy the Raybestos and I opened the package and it says Sunsong.
00:48:06So I paid two to $3 for it to be put into a Raybestos box.
00:48:10And then I'm like, well, now I know.
00:48:15And I put the brake hose on the one side and then I go to do the other one.
00:48:19And on the fitting that goes into the hard line, it's like a T. There's another fitting,
00:48:24but I don't have anything to go into it.
00:48:25There's nothing cut off.
00:48:26There's nothing missing.
00:48:28It's just as if it's the wrong brake hose.
00:48:30And now I'm in the middle of the job and I want to get it done.
00:48:33The brake hoses have different part numbers.
00:48:35They're within a fraction, like an eighth of an inch in length.
00:48:39I need a brake hose.
00:48:40So I call my local auto parts store with their house brand, best brake or whatever it is.
00:48:48And then I go over to the auto parts store and for $22, I get that box that says, ultimate
00:48:55best brake parts, auto parts store brand.
00:49:00And I opened the box for $22 and it's a Sunsong brake line.
00:49:05So there's one factory that everybody is repackaging from and...
00:49:10All these marketing outlets, yeah.
00:49:12Yeah.
00:49:13And when I take it off, the copper washers that come in, I measure and they're too thin
00:49:18for the caliper.
00:49:19So there's a recess in the caliper, a fine recess.
00:49:22It's like a fraction of a millimeter that's supposed to hold that washer.
00:49:25The washers that they put in that package are so thin that the banjo doesn't work.
00:49:32It just leaks out.
00:49:34So then I have to get my whole box of copper washers out and find something appropriate
00:49:37to put in and then anneal them and do, you know, and that's what I use this for, measuring
00:49:43the washer.
00:49:44Like, well, you take the used washer is twice the thickness of the one and they're just
00:49:48saving money because it uses less copper to make this really thin washer, but it doesn't
00:49:53work.
00:49:54And I told giant online retailer, Hey, these washes are wrong.
00:49:57They're like, Oh, well look into it.
00:49:58We've never heard of that before.
00:50:00And then I'm standing there at the auto parts store and this is like the hub store.
00:50:04This is the big store in the area and it's Southern California.
00:50:07So it's got a pretty big warehouse.
00:50:09And these are the guys who are dealing with the shops that are all around.
00:50:13And that's why I go there because they have more stuff.
00:50:15They're more likely to have it in stock.
00:50:17They'll work with you.
00:50:18You can go in the back and look at pipe fittings or like, I think we have something over here
00:50:21and then you can just look at the parts and they're very cool about it.
00:50:24But I stood there and I said, these washers in this package are too thin.
00:50:28They will not work.
00:50:29And he's like, uh huh.
00:50:30I'm like, you need to tell somebody, you know, and it's just, this is how it is.
00:50:38It's not a tool, but it's, it's, it's solving problems is what we're trying to do.
00:50:45I needed a hydraulic hose for the tractor and the local outlet.
00:50:51Oh, we don't have any in stock.
00:50:54So internet, uh, well, it wasn't encouraging.
00:51:02So I called the place where I'd bought tractor stuff before.
00:51:06And I told the lady who runs it, my problem.
00:51:10And she said, uh, we don't stock anything.
00:51:13We make all that stuff.
00:51:15Bring it down here.
00:51:16We'll make you one.
00:51:17Bingo.
00:51:18Yeah.
00:51:19Great.
00:51:20I thought it was wonderful.
00:51:21Yeah.
00:51:22The AC, I redid the whole AC system and you get it, you know, you just get it from one
00:51:25of many brands and then you find that everyone's selling the same, uh, condenser.
00:51:31The photo of the condenser is identical, but there's like four brands selling them.
00:51:35So you just, you know, I just bought that condenser, but the, the hose, the return,
00:51:40the low pressure return, uh, after it goes through the evaporator and it goes across
00:51:44the engine bay and back into the compressor, it had the wrong bend in it.
00:51:50It had, you know, it was like a hundred and 70 degree bend and it needed to be more like
00:51:56120.
00:51:57Yeah.
00:51:58So I'm happily putting all this stuff together and like new air conditioning, I'm going to
00:52:02charge it up and snowflakes are going to come out of the vents.
00:52:04And I, I'm like, God, that looks really high.
00:52:06And the band was just too straight and you, you couldn't close the hood.
00:52:11So then I got to take the stuff off and I didn't bring my oxy acetylene torch in, but
00:52:14having a torch like fire, you know, when you really got to get some stuff done or you need
00:52:20to heat, heat up the part, you know, a rosebud, you want to drop that bearing in without brutality,
00:52:26heating up the place it's receiving it and freezing the bearing.
00:52:29The fancy guys use like liquid nitrogen, you know, like if you look at, you know, one of
00:52:36my, one of my heroes is Gary Braun.
00:52:39He works, he had a company called Retro Dine and he was, you know, he was out there doing
00:52:44what you were doing.
00:52:45It was like hammering pipes and making these two stroke cones and design.
00:52:49And so shout out to you, Gary, he's working at Millennium and yeah, he's, he's, you know,
00:52:56he's the frozen bearing guy and it just drops in, you know, it's, it's amazing.
00:53:00Anyway, I got the torch out, I took that thing down to the shop, got the torch out, my oxygen
00:53:06regulator failed and I had to borrow one, but I put it together, I got it, I heated
00:53:10up the part and just scooched it and I'm like, we better try that.
00:53:14Don't want to go too far.
00:53:15Don't want to kink it.
00:53:16And I took it back up, wasn't enough, brought it back and then heated it up in a slightly
00:53:20different area to put more of a curve on it.
00:53:24And away we went and now we got snowflakes coming out of the AC, but that's like parts
00:53:28up, you know, that's what you're buying off the shelf.
00:53:30It's very challenging.
00:53:31The parts can make on vintage stuff where you can't go to a dealer.
00:53:37Half the challenge is finding quality parts.
00:53:39Like I am here to tell you carburetor parts off of eBay, probably not what you want to
00:53:45do unless it's your only choice.
00:53:49Yeah.
00:53:50You know, unfortunately we gave a shout out to Sudco recently after I was fixing my McCoonies
00:53:57on my Ducati and Sudco has gone out of business.
00:54:01Yeah.
00:54:02Isn't that a crisis?
00:54:03And it's, man, you know, you could rely on Sudco for quality parts, Keen and McCoonie
00:54:08in particular, and you've got the right O-rings and they're not standard O-rings a lot of
00:54:13times and they're made out of good stuff that's like resistant to problems.
00:54:19And they're 1.2 millimeter by whatever, you know, they're, they're very specific sizes.
00:54:25And now we're, we're trying to find like who's the Keen person and who's the McCoonie person
00:54:30then.
00:54:31Well, this is life in the post-industrial era.
00:54:33It is.
00:54:34Well, I'm going to pull up, oh, you got one?
00:54:40No, it's just that we have, our toolboxes are museums now.
00:54:45Not entirely.
00:54:46I mean, we still use this punch here.
00:54:49I could do an entire, we could do an entire program on Motion Pro.
00:54:56I thank them for these because this has a replaceable brass tip and you can, you don't,
00:55:03you don't mess up your, your collars on your shocks when you're doing your adjustable preload.
00:55:08It's nice and long.
00:55:09You can get in there.
00:55:10You can change this tip as it wears out and you can tap, tap, tap, tap, and get your collars
00:55:14loose and set your preload.
00:55:16I did this with my son on the Ducati sitting back there.
00:55:18We cranked up the ride height, A, because I'm large and he's pretty large for an 11
00:55:24year old and loves riding on the back.
00:55:25So we, we put it at the upper range of the recommended rear spring preload.
00:55:31So I love that.
00:55:32This is a really nice tool for the shock punch.
00:55:36It's 08-0483.
00:55:37There you go.
00:55:40My other favorite Motion Pro tool I bought new in 1986 when I had my RD400 Daytona Special
00:55:46and I wanted to synchronize the carburetors and it wasn't like my old SU's or my Schramberg's
00:55:52on my Triumph TR6 where you just stuck this like airflow meter on the face of the carburetor.
00:55:57You could do this with vacuum.
00:55:58So I have a, and here it comes, they call it carb sticks.
00:56:02It's a manometer and I bought this yellow beauty with these nice rubber hoses and like
00:56:07I said, about 1986 and inside of here folks, real mercury.
00:56:13And I feel proud that all the mercury is still there, that I didn't make a toxic cloud out
00:56:19the tailpipe because if you rev the bike up too much and shut the throttle, you get an
00:56:23incredibly high vacuum condition and you can pull the mercury all the way up and then you
00:56:27get this misty silver death cloud at the tailpipe, which is why they probably don't sell this
00:56:33anymore.
00:56:34You have to use, I think they use ATF or something in the new ones and you have to kind of calibrate
00:56:39them every time you use it.
00:56:42Calibrated since 1986 folks and I still have all the mercury.
00:56:45So I did my RD and I think the lesson with, this is part of my thing for measurement is
00:56:53they always tell you like, oh, we'll stick a drill bit in the bottom of the carburetor
00:56:56and adjust the idle screw until it kisses the drill bit.
00:57:03And then that's, you're synchronized and just take it from there.
00:57:06And I, you know, I did that on my Norton Commando.
00:57:09I did that with my, my new AMO premieres that I put on there and you know, I've done it
00:57:13on many multi carburetor bikes and I'm like, oh yeah.
00:57:17Listen to the hiss, various ways, oh, we'll just turn, we'll, we'll put the drill bit
00:57:24in and we'll turn the screw the same amount.
00:57:26And to my, I'm like, you know what?
00:57:27I got to find out, I'm going to synchronize these carburetors without using this tool
00:57:32to the best of my ability.
00:57:35And I, I thought, okay, I've nailed, I'm good.
00:57:38I've nailed this.
00:57:39I did my drill bits.
00:57:40I did all of that stuff.
00:57:42I did my, my cable because it, the Norton is a cable sync.
00:57:47You're synchronizing the throttle slides by adjusting basically the length of the cable.
00:57:52I did all of that work the best of my ability.
00:57:55I'm like, I know that I nailed this.
00:57:56I'm going to be within, you know, a centimeter, a millimeter.
00:58:00And I put those carb sticks on and it was like, it was so far out and I wrote it, got
00:58:05used to it.
00:58:06You know, I'm like, oh, it seems to be running pretty good.
00:58:07And then I synchronize, I actually synchronize it with that tool and it was exquisitely smoother
00:58:14and just better running.
00:58:15And that's, for me, that's the importance of measuring.
00:58:18And that's what I found is going through all of this stuff, I mean, this is my craftsman
00:58:25sweep dial indicator for the lathe and it's a little follower, you know, and it's, um,
00:58:34you know, it's a one thou, one thou, set up the head of your lathe, make sure your lathe
00:58:42is good or you're putting, you know, your four jaw chuck setting, you can set it wherever
00:58:46you want, right?
00:58:47Four jaw.
00:58:48You can just move it around and it's, it's way fussier than a three jaw, but I'm not
00:58:52in production.
00:58:53I'm in the accuracy business.
00:58:55And so getting, you know, getting that shaft in a four jaw chuck is, is the way to go because
00:58:59then you know, you can set it up for zero.
00:59:02So in the olden days, uh, one of the things that the shop superintendent did was to grind
00:59:08the jaws on the three jaws for concentricity every little while.
00:59:14And I remember seeing this older gentleman doing this in the, in a shop that I was using,
00:59:21which brings me to the subject of shared tools.
00:59:26I worked for one of those organizations that was publicly funded and we made scientific,
00:59:32uh, sort of teaching movies about fluid flow.
00:59:37And that was fascinating, but they tried to have, uh, a shared tool board in the shop
00:59:45and the people who actually worked in the shop of course had their own tools and they
00:59:50were locked up at night.
00:59:53But when the tools went up on the board, they were all gone in a week.
00:59:59And so one of us decided that he would go and buy 144 gross of number two, plain blade
01:00:08screwdrivers.
01:00:10And he said, I'm going to test my, my theories.
01:00:14One theory is that as soon as everybody has stolen enough screwdrivers, he's got one in
01:00:19each car, one down at the Cape and one at the house.
01:00:24The thieving will stop all 144 screwdrivers disappeared because it became screwdriver
01:00:32central.
01:00:33Oh, I need a screwdriver.
01:00:34I'll just fall by the shop and get one.
01:00:36Some of those people probably had 10 of them.
01:00:38It was wonderful.
01:00:40Well, this reminds me, um, I have a screwdriver.
01:00:44I've talked about it on the show before, but I have a screwdriver, a specific screwdriver
01:00:48that I had brutalized and broken.
01:00:51And so it was just a, like, what was it?
01:00:52It was sort of a chisel, but not because of the edge wasn't straight.
01:00:56And then I was struggling getting jets out of a carburetor years ago.
01:00:59And I thought, I don't have a screwdriver that fits into the hole a and then fits into
01:01:06the slot perfectly.
01:01:07So what I did is I took a brand new McHugh pilot jet and I ground my screwdriver until
01:01:14it fit the pilot jet perfectly.
01:01:16And it had really sharp square edges.
01:01:19Yes.
01:01:20And that even when someone else has just brutalized the jet before you got it, a lot of times
01:01:27you can get it out because it fits and it has those sharp edges to really bite.
01:01:32So folks, if you are, if you are doing the ridiculous thing and working with actual brass
01:01:37jets, do yourself a favor and make yourself a screwdriver that actually fits.
01:01:43It doesn't have to be fancy.
01:01:44It doesn't have to be, you know, made of some unassailable high nickel alloy.
01:01:48It just needs to fit really, really well.
01:01:51I did exactly what you described.
01:01:54And that tool is still in my toolbox.
01:01:57As if time were about to run backwards.
01:02:01And I would be once more confronted with McHugh idle jets.
01:02:07Yeah.
01:02:09On the other end of the spectrum, dealing with electronic fuel injection and weird tuning
01:02:13and doing stuff.
01:02:14I have this huge, what is this, probably a six inch gauge.
01:02:18This is a master gauge type 100-3 316 stainless tube Marsh instrument company.
01:02:28It's in one pound increments, PSI zero to 100.
01:02:33I took it down to the hose shop where you were getting your custom hoses made.
01:02:36And I had a variety.
01:02:38I've got many different hoses and many different fittings so that I can get it in plumbed in.
01:02:43I got a bunch of different size T's and I can plumb it into an electronic fuel injection
01:02:47system and measure the fuel pressure while running, turning the key on.
01:02:53What does it go to the proper pressure?
01:02:55And does it leak down?
01:02:56Because the pressure should be static.
01:02:58But if you have a leak injector, it'll go 50 PSI and it'll start to dribble away.
01:03:04Yeah.
01:03:05Leading to hard starting.
01:03:06Yes.
01:03:07And yeah, that's a, this was a, you know, I got this off one of those auction sites
01:03:13many, many years ago, used.
01:03:14I wasn't sure if it was accurate, but I loved it anyway.
01:03:17I thought, well, I'll just hang it on the wall.
01:03:18It's just beautiful.
01:03:19I mean, the graphics and everything, and I hooked it up to my bicycle pump, which is
01:03:26a very fancy, accurate digital bicycle pump to the 10th of a pound, 10th of a PSI.
01:03:33And I pumped it up and it's dead nuts, 50 PSI is 50 PSI.
01:03:37So it's, it's been a really useful tool all these years.
01:03:41I don't know.
01:03:42There's more.
01:03:43Do you have more?
01:03:44I have more.
01:03:45We can go on.
01:03:46I'm through here.
01:03:47I've exhausted the, well, the one thing, the gasket scraper.
01:03:54That's awesome.
01:03:57It's best tackle those jobs in the warm sunlight of an afternoon, and you have your thoughts
01:04:05to yourself and you're being careful not to scratch.
01:04:10And pretty soon you have that aspect of the cases you're working on ready for reassembly.
01:04:15Well, this is, yeah, this reminds me of one of the great, the greatest tools is experience
01:04:21because a long ago I brought an RD 350 motor to your shop in Massachusetts, all the way
01:04:29from California.
01:04:31And you were over there going to, going to port the cylinder and I was on the other side
01:04:36of the shop and I was chasing threads and you asked me, what are you doing?
01:04:41Kind of curious.
01:04:42And I said, well, I'm, I'm chasing the threads cause I like them to be smooth.
01:04:45And you kind of said, oh, okay, you were, you were satisfied with that because you like
01:04:50things to come apart easily the same way that I do.
01:04:53And I felt proud of that because, you know, I'd, I'd satisfied Kevin Cameron in some small
01:04:58way in his own shop.
01:05:00And we're working on rebuilding that engine.
01:05:02And the next thing was the cases are apart and I'm cleaning the three bond off with a
01:05:08razor blade.
01:05:09I'm scraping.
01:05:10Yeah.
01:05:11And you're just over there doing your thing.
01:05:12You're like, what are you doing?
01:05:13And I said, oh, I'm getting this, you know, the, the three bond, you know, it's, or it
01:05:18was Yama bond.
01:05:19It's the gray gooey stuff that you put the case that you glue the 1104 folks.
01:05:23That's, that's the stuff I like the best.
01:05:26And I'm three bond 1104.
01:05:28And Kevin says, you know, if you put some lacquer thinner on a rag, that'll wipe right
01:05:33off.
01:05:34I'm like, oh, and sure enough, as if by magic, no more brutal scraping, just wiped it, wipe
01:05:40it away.
01:05:41And that's, you know, wipe it away.
01:05:43Having, you know, having, I don't know.
01:05:48It's apprenticeship in some ways, you know, having somebody who's really done a lot of
01:05:51things to work with you to help you along the way.
01:05:55I found that incredibly useful.
01:05:58Just little things like that.
01:06:00All right.
01:06:01I'm going to talk about my solder sucker, vampire tool, solder sucker made in Japan.
01:06:05This is a beauty.
01:06:07So when you're soldering on boards and stuff in particular, but when you want to get the
01:06:10solder off, this is the tool.
01:06:14So you hit it, it locks in position like this.
01:06:18You take your soldering iron for whatever you're doing, not too hot, just hot enough
01:06:22because you don't want to melt the whole board off and you got your hole and you want to
01:06:25put a new capacitor in your EFI, you know, brain or whatever it is you're doing and you
01:06:31get it, you heat it up and then you hit the side button and it makes suction.
01:06:36And this is a silicone tip and you just mash it on there and it cleans out, it cleans the
01:06:41joint so you can start fresh solder sucker.
01:06:43Love it.
01:06:44Oh, what else?
01:06:48I think the, um, infrared thermometer.
01:06:54Gotta have it.
01:06:55Well, gosh, you know what?
01:06:56You're not measuring tire temperature, but you can measure the track temperature.
01:07:00You can measure the surface temperature of the tire, which isn't really the number that's
01:07:03important.
01:07:04That's why the fancy tire guys have a probe with a little, a needle on it almost that
01:07:09they can get in and really actually measure down by the carcass what's going on.
01:07:14That's important.
01:07:15But man, this thing, multi-cylinder engines, how hot are the exhaust pipes?
01:07:19Are they evenly temperatured across like at idle or you can just learn a lot by the temperature.
01:07:24It's really, it's nice.
01:07:25Nice to have.
01:07:26And then this morning in Indonesia, the track temperature was like 57 centigrade.
01:07:34Oh my.
01:07:36Yeah.
01:07:37Right up there.
01:07:38Multiply 57 times 1.8 and add 32 and you're there with Fahrenheit.
01:07:45But the riders seem to be okay with it.
01:07:49It's not, people aren't burning up.
01:07:51Oh, good.
01:07:52I was going to say, take it easy, Greasy.
01:07:54That's what Kevin Schwartz used to say occasionally on press launches.
01:07:59I'll go with the, um, he would show up for Suzuki.
01:08:03He was on the GSXR 600 and 750 launch at Phillip Island hanging out with us.
01:08:09My last two items I think are electrical.
01:08:13One is a low cost analog multimeter with all your ohms and volts and everything.
01:08:22And the reason I like analog is because I have a digital one of these things, a Fluke,
01:08:28you know, it's not actually a Fluke.
01:08:30It's the, it was the Craftsman copy.
01:08:32I mean, Fluke made them for Craftsman.
01:08:36And I love that accuracy, but a lot of times in the stuff that I'm dealing with, all I
01:08:43need to see is like, does the needle move and how high does the needle go?
01:08:48Is it around, I don't need to know if it's 12.76595 volts.
01:08:52I just need to know that it's, Hey, it's around 13.
01:08:55Awesome.
01:08:56We're in good shape.
01:08:57It stays steady when I rev it.
01:08:58If it goes 17, like the old, my RD 350, why is it, why is it breaking up at high RPM?
01:09:04Because the coils can't tolerate 21 volts because the voltage regulator broke, mechanical
01:09:10by the way.
01:09:11And then a chintzy test light.
01:09:13Now I have, I have a better test light, but I like using my chintzy one because I don't
01:09:18care if it melts, you know?
01:09:21And yeah, it is, it is nice to have more of a bulb because this is kind of a tiny bulb.
01:09:28That's what's good about the big ones is the bulb actually has a bit of a load.
01:09:32And so you can see it has more wattage.
01:09:35You can put a higher watt bulb in it and then you can see like, Oh look, it's kind of dim.
01:09:39Why is that?
01:09:40So dim?
01:09:41Because if you go from pole to pole on the battery, it's bright as day.
01:09:44So, Oh, this is not good.
01:09:46Trailer lights, you know, like, you know, trailer wiring is usually 11 volts or 11 volts
01:09:51by the time it gets to your bumper because you know, that's why led lights on trailers
01:09:56are kind of nice because they, they make the same amount of lumens with 11 volts going
01:10:02in or, you know, 13.7.
01:10:04They don't care that much.
01:10:06So no, they need their minimum and above that is just, and they're, they're just bright
01:10:10as heck.
01:10:11And that's, that's why instead of the $2 trailer tail light, you can buy it, you know, the
01:10:16trailer section at your Napa in Salinas, California, or wherever you live.
01:10:24You pay $80 for the led ones cause they last presumably forever and they're bright.
01:10:29Okay.
01:10:30I used to carry this, uh, with me trackside, uh, because with a slide rule, you can see
01:10:40every combination of numbers, front sprocket, rear sprocket that produces the ratio you
01:10:46want and you can pick one.
01:10:50And never does the battery go dead.
01:10:54Yeah.
01:10:55Slide rules are pretty neat.
01:10:56I got, I have my dad's slide rule and uh, what an interesting and fun tool.
01:11:00And of course now you just talk in your phone and say, what, what's uh, what is one eighth
01:11:06or what's, what's the ratio of 13 to 42?
01:11:10Yeah.
01:11:11Um, you can do all that, but as it is with the internet, sometimes the signal to noise
01:11:15ratio is bad and sometimes it doesn't tell the truth.
01:11:21Sometimes people out there are doing the wrong thing and putting the wrong information out
01:11:25there and telling you things that aren't true.
01:11:27People used to say to me, they wouldn't let them say it if it wasn't true.
01:11:34Yes.
01:11:36Let's police the internet.
01:11:37There's a job.
01:11:38Yeah.
01:11:39Well, we hope we've, uh, done something for the signal to noise ratio.
01:11:43I'll just show my angle measurement indicator thing.
01:11:46Love this guy too.
01:11:47Made out of stainless.
01:11:48Super accurate, um, highly useful.
01:11:52It goes along with actually where's my, here it is.
01:11:56My mini mag plus Fowler, um, electronic protractor has magnets, turn it on and you can, uh, turn
01:12:05it and it gives you the number, turn it, give you the number.
01:12:09You can zero it.
01:12:10So even if in the grand universe there is zero degrees versus gravity, you can put it
01:12:18on the table that you're working on and zero it to the table and then you know that the
01:12:21table is the truth or you can put it on the table that the motorcycle is mounted to and
01:12:27make that the zero.
01:12:28And then you can measure the fork tube angle and say like, Oh, okay, we know what the rake
01:12:33is.
01:12:34So here we go.
01:12:39I could talk about tools all day, but I'd rather go use them.
01:12:43Yes.
01:12:44Well, and we have, yeah.
01:12:53My favorite tools, how to use them.
01:12:56We didn't really talk about, I was going to want to, we're way over time.
01:12:59I wanted to talk about torque values and how, how you can be ballpark, the torque value
01:13:05by the shank of the bolt and the material it's made of.
01:13:09And you can get a good idea of what the torque should be.
01:13:11There's usually a torque value in your manual.
01:13:13Look it up.
01:13:14Yes, there is.
01:13:15A lot of times I write it on a pen next to the thing, just like on my trailer in silver
01:13:19pen on the fender.
01:13:20It says TP, tire pressure, six zero.
01:13:24And I know for sure that it should be six zero.
01:13:26And it keeps me from being lazy because it says tire pressure should be 60.
01:13:31Do I know if it's 60?
01:13:32I better find out.
01:13:37My first brothers had a troublesome customer who kept breaking their lovely bolts.
01:13:46And they, I think they were axle bolts.
01:13:50And finally they sent a company representative around to the guy's shop and said, we'd like
01:13:56you to show us the procedure you use for torquing these bolts.
01:14:01The guy gets out the torque wrench, it's a very nice modern, just got a certificate
01:14:07of calibration, all the good things, swings them in steps.
01:14:14Everything is nice.
01:14:15The guy takes a breaker bar and another quarter turn.
01:14:19And of course, the representative is drawing back and wincing, what are you doing?
01:14:28He said, I don't want them to come loose, do I?
01:14:33What are the torque specifications for?
01:14:37Does this person understand that materials have a yield point beyond which it is not
01:14:45elastic?
01:14:46It doesn't come back to the original.
01:14:49Usually the torque values has already given you exactly the amount of stretch that you
01:14:54need.
01:14:55And they will recover.
01:14:56There are some bolts that stretch and then you got to use a new bolt.
01:14:59That's how it works.
01:15:00But there are the others where they stretch and then you would loosen them and they will
01:15:04stretch again.
01:15:05TTY, torque to yield.
01:15:07That's what you're talking about there.
01:15:09I think Mercedes may have started that.
01:15:12Oh boy, Germans.
01:15:15But the guy was perfectly transparent about it.
01:15:19Well, he said, I don't want it to come loose.
01:15:21Yeah, my friend Ray worked at a car dealership early in his mechanic career and he was in
01:15:27there and there was a guy whipping away with an air gun on lug nuts and he broke the bolt
01:15:34and he's like, God, I thought these things stopped by themselves.
01:15:37He's winging it with an impact.
01:15:42I guess they did stop by themselves, didn't they?
01:15:44Well, I think I set the cruise control on his motorhome and went in the back to make
01:15:49a sandwich.
01:15:50Maybe someday.
01:15:55All right.
01:15:56Well, thanks for listening, folks.
01:15:57We appreciate the attention and spending the time with us.
01:16:02We've got a lot of podcasts out in the back catalog now.
01:16:06We're getting close to 40.
01:16:08We'll hit 50, I think by the end of the year.
01:16:10We got a special one in mind for the 50th.
01:16:13We'll let you know about that coming up.
01:16:16This podcast, like the others, is brought to you by Octane Lending, our parent company.
01:16:21There's a link to Prequal Flex.
01:16:23You can check it out.
01:16:24You can see a no impact credit pull and you can shop for bikes and shop by price or shop
01:16:31by model.
01:16:32See what you can get.
01:16:33Helps us out if you click the link and check it out or particularly if you want to go buy
01:16:37a bike, use Octane.
01:16:40We appreciate your time and we'll see you down in the comments.
01:16:44Thanks for listening.