1-6-07

Zen, Art, and Cylinder Four

This past Saturday I decided to go to the Honda shop and take my 1974 Honda CB750 Four for a spin. I say Honda shop because the local Honda dealer owner is a classic bike and car guy like myself and he graciously allows me to park my cycle in his museum in the showroom. It stays perfectly clean and moisture free in the climate controlled environment of the showroom. In my garage it corrodes in about three days. The name of this dealer is Southside Honda here in Lafayette, LA. So the boy and myself gather up our safety gear. His gear consists of a dirt bike helmet and safety glasses so he looks cooler than me.

We show up at the dealer at about eight o'clock in the morning. The mechanic there goes and grabs my key as I push her out the door. Step one in this process is to drain the fuel from the carb bowls. No matter how well you preserve the fuel in the tank, the carb bowl gas will always be yellow and stinky. It will run but it does not run well and since I have to kick start it (battery has been dead for years) I drain the bowls. It only takes two kicks to fire up and it runs on three out of four cylinders as usual. It normally does this for a few miles then pops to life. I get on then Evan and we are off. It is a sort of dreary morning. It's not cold but wet and muggy enough for a jacket and gloves. Evan is hanging on and I do not sense any fear or distress as I lean into the first turn. This is only his second time on a street bike so I kind of wondered. He wasn't  scared the first time either about a year and a half ago. I am trying to enjoy the ride myself but that dead cylinder is really eating at me now. It has been about three miles now and still it has not perked up. I look down and see that cylinder four (the far right one) is wet and dirty. An indication that it is the dead one. I try to kick the plug wire with my foot to no avail. Back to the Honda shop for us now as I can't ride like this. In the parking lot I pull the bowl from carb four and clean it out even though it is not that dirty. I pull the main jet also and it is clean as a whistle. It even whistles a little as I blow through it (I love the taste of gas in the morning!). This is obviously not the problem here so I move on to the other option.......fire (spark). I have to go borrow a plug wrench from the mechanic and he has no problem with that. I pull the plug and he sandblasts and gaps it for me. Put that back in and blammo!, she fires up to perfection. We get the helmets back on and hit the road before something else fouls up and all is well. I hit the curviest roads south Lafayette has to offer and I take both curves with ease. We cruise for a while and I could hear Evan faintly saying he was thirsty. Time for a pit stop at a gas station.

On the way there I think about the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig. This is a great book about a man and his son who ride across country from Minnesota to California on his bike camping and wrenching on the bike along the way. They take back roads all the way. Read it if you have ever touched a wrench as it is really good. Anyway, we were on a mini (very mini) version of this story although, I am not going insane, I don't think so anyway. We stopped at Lagneaux's grocery and I got a Toro Rosso (Red Bull) and Evan chooses chocolate milk for his form of refreshment. We share some hot fresh hog cracklins for sustenance. I wonder what the poor folks are doing at this time as we sit on the park bench and feast like kings.

 Time to hit the road so we suit up after a quick photo op. She fires up flawlessly and clicks into first like the well oiled machine she is. Well oiled because I had just topped it off at the dealership since we were a quart low. We ride on for about another half hour or so and head back to Southside. All is well with the machine. This bike runs so smoothly and is pretty powerful for a thirty-four year old machine. It has one exhaust pipe per cylinder and you can almost hear the individual pops from each one. The valvetrain is perfectly adjusted and whistles along like music. The best sound it makes is a third gear roll on from about forty to sixty MPH. This bike was revolutionary in it's day with it's huge, for it's day, inline four cylinder engine. It has alot of chrome and polished aluminum. The paint is near flawless as the previous owner installed a new tank and a few other parts. Back at the showroom now and we pull it in the door. I take some time to polish off the road grime and get it back spiffed up for the fluorescent lights to reflect off it and I park it. Despite the initial non running cylinder it has been a good ride indeed. I fully deserved the punishment of having to perform some light mechanical troubleshooting earlier. Sort of punishment for not riding this thing enough and at least it wasn't too serious. Back to the Maxima with ears slightly ringing and head home. Feeling a little Zen as we drive home.