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Saturday brought a morning of light mist that barely wet the asphalt. The kind of rain that doesn’t warrant the use of umbrellas or hats, or windshield wipers for that matter. By the afternoon, the sun peered out from behind the sparsely populated clouds and started warming up the ground. The thermometer outside the shop read a even forty-eight degrees. “Not a bad day to be in the garage” I told myself, warming my hands on the stove. But that was a lie. Any day above freezing with a running motorcycle after four months of snow and ice, was always better than a day in the garage. I threw a couple more logs in the stove, and opened up the toolbox with a quiet sigh.

“If this doesn’t work, I’m just throwing this clamtrap into my pickup truck and taking it to BCM.” I stated matter-of-factly to Zsolt last weekend. “I just don’t get it!” When I said it, I really believed it. I’d almost always rather accomplish and learn something myself than involve someone else in my mess, but this experience was really testing my already extensively wide limits. Constantly dealing with ghosts and gremlins, even after what shows to be a completely successful top-end repair. But I saw all this as a test of my understanding of the work already completed. Its a system, its a science, its an organic program that has a few running variables out of whack. Why can’t I fix this? Just this past week I managed to build a complete infrastructure for a program I’ve never experienced before, in a programming language I’ve never used; yet I cannot get the motorcycle I’ve been “rebuilding” for two years running correctly?

Last time I had the carburetors apart, I wrote down the jetting in my notebook. I had a feeling that the idle circuit was too lean for the new rings now working against the cylinders. I did some research online, reviewing some base-settings set on monsters and supersports that moto-one has put together over the years. The consensus among most tuners was that the stock pilot jet (#37.5) was much to lean for any aftermarket use. The stock needle also left things a little lean. I purchased a stage-1 jet kit from Cycleworks in the vain hope that maybe the running problems I’ve had we’re all a matter of being overly lean. I’ve always been skeptical of jet-kits as I’d rather buy only what I need, than occupy shelves with more parts I don’t need, but I was very impressed with the FactoryPro kit I got. New stainless steel hex-head screws to replace the cheap black philips-head screws, as well as the float bowl retaining screws. The kit came with a #37, #38, and a #40 pilot jet. All the main-jets included in the kit we’re smaller than what I already had installed. The new needle should help richen up the top end a bit more (even though I haven’t had any problem running off the main circuit).

As I was putting one half of the carbs together, I heard the faint murmur of a four-stroke single over the garage. “That bastard.” I exclaimed to myself, putting down the new pilot jets. Every bike has a distinct sound, a auditory fingerprint thats can get left in your mind. After a season of riding, I had no doubt that sound was Glenn on his Suzuki DRZ supermoto, complete with the ‘make enemies, not neighbors’ straight through RS-3 exhaust. I popped open a bay, lit up a smoke and listened to the 400cc single close in, waiting for him as he dropped down into my driveway. He warmed up by the stove, and over a few smokes we kicked tires and talked about the possibility of taking a motorcycle tour around the Baja Peninsula, Mexico. After sadly both coming to the realization that we probably couldn’t afford it this year, Glenn decided to take off for lunch.

Couldn’t have been five minutes after Glenn left, when I heard the sharp chirp of Cyndi’s scooters horn. It was a nice day for a sub-forty mile per hour ride, and she had come over to do the first service. She watched over my shoulder as I changed her oil and inspected the small strainer screen that substitutes for an oil filter on her little scooter. Despite being ridden around at redline all day long and often higher, the engine oil was still pretty clean. A half-quart of 10w50 and a little polish, and the blue Honda looked (and ran) almost better than new.

Cyndi left shortly after, and I settled back into finishing the carbs for the SS. The new pilot jets went in without hassle, as well as the new needles. I reset the air-fuel screws to 2.5 turns out, and put it all back together. I flicked off the run switch, and ran the starter motor for a few revolutions to prime the oil pump, then flicked it back to run and thumbed the starter again. The bike fired up instantly, but I could tell immediately, even with the new pilot jets not very much had changed. I gave the bike a quick pull of throttle, and sure enough the revs hung, and I was right back where I started. My idle speed was set by the book, the carburetors sync’ed to within 1/16″ of a inch of each other. Nothing made sense. The book tells me everything’s right, but everything is wrong! Angry and frustrated, I threw my tools to the floor and stormed out of the shop and took Lola for a walk.

While walking, I thought to a conversation I had with a co-worker about perceptions that we form, and continued that line of thought to my predicament. Within minutes, I came to an epiphany. I hadn’t heard this motorcycle run correctly in over two years, and I have absolutely no perception of what it should sound like. You know when your motor is running poorly, when its sound and feel changes from the perception you had yesterday, and the day before. Here I am working off a perception so old, that I might as well have never heard it run, ever! The forest for the trees, damn it! I turned Lola around, and quickly made tracks back home.

I closed the book, threw out every spec they had listed, and with a long flat blade screwdriver, laying on the cold garage floor, started playing with the idle and the carburetor sync screw. I set the idle slightly higher, and things got worse, so I set the idle as low as I could go without killing the motor. Ka-thump-thump, ka-thump-thump. Wait, I’ve heard this before, I know I’ve heard this before! I turned the carburetor sync screw down 1/8th of a turn, an heard an audible “click” in my head. The perception was restored, this is how I remember the bike sounding. I glanced at the sync sticks while on my back, and saw they we’re dead on. I excitedly jumped up, and tugged on the throttle.
*vvrraaaaROOOM!*. The revolutions swooped up quickly, and fell back down to a steady idle. I did it again, and again, waiting for things to change as the motor warmed up. But it only got better, and louder. *vrraaaROOOOM*. I was on cloud nine. Even though I was completely alone in the shop, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Sure, I’ve screwed this thing up beautifully along the way, but I’ve also un-screwed it. I stood there with a smile and a cigarette in my hand and started thinking of early Sunday rides to small coffee shops hundreds of miles away, the feeling of riding a beautiful Italian damsel through the most voluptuous curves I could think of.

Listen to the clack-thump-clack of a well running Ducati, and tell me you don’t see those same curves, and those same road-side coffee shops deep in the country.

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