Truck Rest

The birth of ever stricter emissions laws are the death of the traditional engine , run without electronics. This also means the death of repair manuals as we know it. While to me this is fine for my buick le sabre repair manual , I am not ok with the idea of not being able to fix my motorcycle by hand. It seem that by this point everyone knows the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it is even being taught in colleges around the states now. This book did something to me when I first read it that made me have to go out there and buy a bike and be able to do the maintenance myself. I know this was never really the point of the book, it’s really more about quality and self realization, but there was something in his self diagnosis that spoke to me. I wanted a view of the book like no one else and wanted to be able to take a Motorcycle manuals and fix myself. That isn’t something that I ever became able to do, but I did find a passion for fixing motorcycles. When I hit my mid twenties I started teaching motorcycle maintenance at the high school down the road. It was great as a part time job, and my boss at the mechanic I worked at was happy to let me off for an afternoon to teach those kids something real as he used to say. To me it was nothing much, but I did get a great feeling of being able to zone into each part when I was working on a bike with a kid. In my thirties I even opened up my own niche mechanics business and all I worked on was motorcycles all day. I volunteer with the high school still, but in a different way. I had them set up a work study program and every year I get three to five students who would work with me on the bikes and get credit for it. One of them recently brought up to me that his father used to be a mechanic on cars, got into the business because you didn’t have to know anything, just had to be able to look in there and be willing to fix what was wrong with it. When they converted to only working on newer cars, they brought in new equipment for analyzing the car and new people who could understand the equipment. They had to let his father go because it all got just a little too over the top for a man who never even finished high school. It got me to thinking how that book would have been different had motorcycles all been electronics and not engines. I wonder if there can really even be any way to transfer that into a new edition or if suddenly that book will become outdated one day. I hope not, because on that day, so will I.

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