Week 11

Well things have been busy for me the last week or so. I started a new job on the weekends and its worn me out a little. I haven't worked since December, back injury....long story, and its hard getting back in the swing of things.

Last week we started the Chassis, Suspension, Wheel/Tires class. Last week was just about all book work. We got a new instructor and I'm guessing he hasn't quite found the groove yet. I'm sure he knows his stuff but it's gonna take a little while for him to get good and transferring that knowledge to the students. I'm not one for patience with stuff like waiting for teachers to get good. I pay for it now and I want it now, the education that is. We covered, besides the book stuff, some lacing of spoke wheels, fork tear down and rebuild, tire changing and of course balancing. The lacing took me a little while to get a good grasp on. Mostly because of the truing part. It's not hard once you get it but seeing as the only wheels I've done have been dirt bike wheels it's not doing me much good as far as Harley's go. It's a step in the right direction but I need to practice on what i'm going to be working on. It'll happen more once we break out into the electives (Harley, Honda, etc..) and get our hands on the brand specific training.

This week we started our practice sheets where we get a chance to screw up and learn from it. We're doing the screwing up part pretty good but I suppose if we could do it without screwing up then we wouldn't need the school.

On Tuesday I pulled the swingarm off a dirt bike and checked some measurements on it and put it back on. I also got to take the bearings out of a wheel and put em back. The swingarm kind of scared me a little. It's a very important part of the bike and it intimidated me a little. After we got into it I mellowed out and had fun with it. The bearings part was easy but I'll have to do it a few more times to really know it without reading my cheat sheet. We got done with that stuff a little quick so we knocked out the wheel balancing project. The typical balancing machines were easy enough but we had to use this gravity balancing device. I have never seen one of these before now but it really wasn't that hard.

Tonight, Wednesday night, we jumped into changing tires. It shouldn't have been that hard, or so I thought. The ATV tires didn't give me too much trouble. Those damned tube tires and mag wheels gave me such a headache. Again it comes down to repetition and the more I do them the better I'll get at it.

It's nice getting a little dirty. It makes me feel like I'm doing something. Next week we get graded on what we're doing this week so I'll do all this stuff a few more times before then.