RSS Reluctant competence
Filed in Blog, Daily Photo, Motorcycle Maintenance
Yesterday I did something that I’d never done before, which was to change both my bike’s brake pads unsupervised. The only help I needed, really, was with the physical act of prizing the calipers back into their hole. Because the rear disk is a bit scarred the calipers have a nasty habit of sticking, and before the pads will fit back in they need to be forced back in.
This is notable because somewhere between the last time–which for the rear brake was only in February, i.e. one pad has worn out ridiculously fast–and now I suddenly got a clue. I know what order to do the parts in and how to arrange them so that I can put them back in the right order. And it’s something that I didn’t ever actually realize I could do. I remember, a long time ago with my first bike (a little 125cc Honda) going all around the bike looking at it trying to figure out why it kept stalling and realizing then that I would never be a mechanic.
I was right. I’m not. But I can do some basic maintenance, which is more than I would have expected back then. Even though I really hate working on the bike, mostly because it’s fiddly and things always ping off into the sunset at least once, it saves a bunch of money and in the end only took about an hour. In fact it took less time than I spent on putting it off in fears that it would take three hours per brake pad, like it did last time.
And now I can ride again, which is good, because I can count the number of rides I’ve been on with me on front this last month on the fingers of one hand. I’ve also become reluctantly competent when it comes to brake pads. Just don’t ask me to take another engine out and dismantle it. ;)
(The photo here was taken in February and shows exactly how much I love working on my bike.)
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