Gomer the Ratster.3

I was out riding one day, shortly after the front end transplant, and discovered what happened when I could not make up my mind whether to stop or run the light. There was something about that intersection. So, anyway- I'm going south; the light turns yellow; I don't know if the light will turn red by the time I get into the intersection; do I slow down or speed up or stop or what? I sqeezed the front brake lever, locked up the front wheel, and down I went. Picked myself up with a little help from Gino, who was right behind me, walked Gomer around to the northbound side of the street, and started her up. I rode to work, parked her overnight, and took her to the shop the next morning, where they re-aligned the the front end and sent me on my way.


I fell down a lot learning to ride. I was pretty much on my own. So far as I knew there were no riding schools then like there are now. Being stupid, I never thought of getting some big soda bottles, laying out a practice course at the end of the street in front of work, and practicing there. Never thought to ask around if anybody wanted to teach me for pay how to ride without crashing. I just went out riding, and crashed and learned.


I tried to do as much of my repair work as I could. It took several incidents for me to figure out that I should not ask for long-distance diagnosis. For example, I tried to start Gomer one day and the kicker went around without engaging the motor. The kicker arm went down and stayed down.


So I called Gil at work, and he told me the kicker return spring was broken and I needed to get another one. I looked at the spring and it looked OK to me. But hey, I called Gil, so I should follow his advice, right? I bump-started Gomer and rode to work, and parked her there. The next day I went to a dealership and bought a new spring. I installed the spring, and nothing happened.


Well, I guess if it don't work, you gotta take it apart and find out why. And that's what I did. That's when I found out that the kicker gear was broken. So I went back to the dealership and bought a new kicker gear. I go to put the kicker gear in, and n o t h i n g ! No engagement, no resistance, nada. I took the assemly apart and looked at everything, checking for engagement. It all looked good. I reassembled the kicker, and tested it. No engagement.


Just about that time, a line driver from the Bay area walked by and saw me working on Gomer. He walked over, looked at what was going on, and told me that I had the wrong kicker gear, that I needed the earlier gear. It took him all of what, fifteen seconds?, to tell me what I needed to do to fix the problem. I went to the dealership the next day and swapped the new gear for the earlier gear. I put everything together, tested the assembly, buttoned it all up, and started the bike right up.
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