One dilemma I've recently ran into is when my bike kickstarter broke. My bike is insured, so i'm already paying for that. My truck costs quite a bit more in gas money to drive. The parts to fix the kickstarter are $63, including a couple extra seals and a filter that should be done while i'm in there anyway. I didn't ask, but i'm guessing it would cost close to $150 for the shop to do the work for me, which is about an hour of shop time. I have the manual that explains how to fix everything on my bike, but i've never done it before. What would you do?
Ya, I tried it myself. Good news, it is fixed now. Bad news, it took almost 3 weeks. I gave myself a nice sunny Saturday afternoon and a couple beer to take the bike apart, replace the spring, seals and filter and put it back together. It was going fine and dandy until reality checked in. The bike is from 1986, the bolts and everything are getting old, things happen, proper tools aren't around and free time comes to an end.
I just recently changed the oil in the ol girl. She doesn't run as great as she did last year, but she still hums.
Step one, drain the oil. Easy thankfully to my roommates extra set of tools with a larger socket set than mine.
Step two, take everything off the crankcase and remove crankcase cover, easy, except for the brake bolt, the stupid thing has an outside hex size key of about 7.5mm, try finding a 7.5mm hex key. This is where I stopped working.
After going back and forth to my buddies house a couple times to find a proper size hex key and failing, it was time for my guests to come over, eat, watch hockey and drink. This was after about 3 hours of messing around with finding the right tools and everything. Right then, I thought to myself that it would have been nice to just drop my bike off, pay the $130, go get it when its done, and continue riding. But..my working Day was over...and the next one...and the rest of them for 2 weeks, it seems when you have a lot of stuff to do personally, everything else is more important or gets in the way.
Long story short, it probably took a total of 10 hours including messing with putting the kickstarter and 50 attached little springs and pieces back together, BUT, i can now do the entire job in under 45 minutes no problem. In the end, a success, next time my 1986 kickstarter spring breaks, it will be well worth doing myself. When that will be...who knows? maybe another 20 years when the thing should probably be in the trash with all the other 1986 Honda XL600R's.
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