My beloved old crotchey rocket has been suffering for a while. It starts hard, the power surges and staggers, and it stalls out if I let the idle drop to normal rpms. Ouch. I’ve done what I can for it, with some help from my friends, but I just haven’t been able to bring it around. I didn’t know who I could turn to in Squamish for help.

The bike came with a great mechanic when I bought it in cali. Although he didn’t talk much, he loved to tell the story of how it first started showing up in his shop in the form of bits and pieces brought in wrapped in an oily rag by a woman in coveralls who had found the bike in storage sowhere and decided to rebuild it as a learning excercise. I noticed I got billed about half as much if I showed up with grease under my fingernails, and sometimes if I described what I had done already, he would hand over a couple more suggestions and some tools and look the other way while I worked in the parking lot.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in california anymore. The first shop I tried was run by a friendly helpful young guy who may or may not have ever ridden a motorcycle on pavement. We chatted for a while about his dog and the new four stroke off-road bikes (I know nothing about off-road bikes, four stroke or otherwise – his dog is great though). He decided that he was confident that his mechanic could probably help me, even if all he had ever seen him work on was two strokes.

“This one is much too soft!” she grumbled.

Down the road is Beaver Motorcycles. It must be spring because they are finally open, some days. Inside a couple of guys in black leather vests and black jeans and black tshirts and black ball caps and long hair were kneeling around a dismantled Harley and smiling contentedly. “Do you guys do metric?” One of them looks up with a grin. “You mean, Japanese bikes?” “Yup”. “How many cylinders?” asked the other. “Four”. “Ouch. How many carburetors?” “Uh… four.” “That’s a lot of carburetors. Well, if you’ve got a manual for it, bring it down and we can have a look at it”.

“This one is too hard”.

I finally made it in to that place on Industrial I saw when I first came through Squamish back when. “Windbell Enterprises”. Kind of an odd name for a bike shop. Sitting on the curb however, propped up in pride of place, was an orange 70’s era Kawasaki 350. Kind of like what Rob Persig would have rode if he had been a little cooler. Inside was an expansion on that theme – Hondas, Kwackers, a few Yamahahas. The youngest was a late 90s road rocket. Mostly UJMs and street/sports. Nothing with nice detailing or a splashy coat of paint, but everything clean and neat. The place reeked of unrecognized, unglorified, well engineered, well ridden uncool cool. (and oil of course). Masao is an innocous, friendly looking guy in glasses, but there’s a broken in set of racing leathers hanging on the wall with thoroughly shredded pucks on the knees. And when I told him I had an ’82 GPz 550, he was quick to verify that the bike in the window was indeed an ’84 GPz 400. I didn’t think such a thing existed. Turns out it does, if you import it from Japan. I told him my problems and he asked me to describe in detail the noises and events surrounding the issues. The next day I brought it in, he gave the engine a couple or quick revs and started talking with quiet authority about the specificity of the valve clearance and the manufacturer of the cam chain adjuster.

“This one is juuust right.”