relates to a lot of people here

[_Will_]

http://www.wimp.com/whatlove/

[Freestyle72]

Encredibly inspirational. Very well done.

[ragedigital]

An Asian Burt Munro.

If you haven't seen "World's Fastest Indian", then you need to rent it tonight. It should still be an instant watch on NetFlix if you have that.

[_Will_]

I've seen it, definitely worth the watch.

[apsolus]

wow totally cool

[yamaha_george]

http://www.wimp.com/whatlove/

That film should be quite a bit longer like the one I saw several years back, why it has been shortened I do not know except to be "arty" the original showed the guy at work doing some of the metal fairing work.

As some else mentions it is in the same vein as "the worlds fastest indian" . In that movie you see just what lengths Bert Munroe went to to make his own stuff to make his Indian go faster with out being overly technical.

Unfortunately that spirit is dying as the bike get more and more sophisticated with electronic this that and the next so you need a whole lot more variation in skills to a greater depth.

I learned to weld so I could alter & make frames & expansion chambers, I learned to upholster to make seats, I learned the art of painting so the bike looked "cool" apart from the engineering that went into modifying engines & the Math involved in all the above.

Then some one made electronic ignition so i had to re-learn electronics (I already knew valve theory) I had to learn to design chips to go into the ignition black boxes then found that someone had the darn chip off the shelf DOH.

I now feel like a dog chasing its own tail.............................There is something in being ignorant and just chucking gas &oil & coolant occasionally at the darn beast but I figure the world has its fill of those already :-}

[_Will_]

Geo,
After sending it to a few friends one had said the same as you that he'd seen a longer documentary on the guy. The short doesn't allude to it's existence so I don't know if I'd call it a preview so much as a condensed version. I'm with you in that I miss simplicity, I've never worked in the auto or motorcycle repair industry outside of a parts delivery job. When I've had the occasional girlfriend ask how I learned what knowledge I do have the answer is always the same, I needed to be somewhere and a broken car wasn't getting me there. Making sure you have a job is a great reason to sit down and figure out how to work on drum brakes, that's exactly what I did when mine needed to be fixed and well before the internet was available with resources like fzronline for our bikes. Budget constraints and a strong need to have control and know what's gone into something play a part of course as well, like in painting something. The consensus of course is the nice or good thing to do with knowledge is share it as you, RR, and the other wrenches have done so. I'm personally not comfortable enough with all aspects of the FZR to throw my words out a lot, I'm not so worried when working on my own bike but someone else's there's always that concern you may miss something and make it worse. With cars I am teaching my friend basics, I'm 33 and he's 36 I believe but his father never taught him even how to change your own oil so I've shown him this and now stand back and supervise his actions. We've also been chasing our own tails as you said in a sensor on his car, in reality it burns the slightest bit of oil that you only see after a hard acceleration and that'll no doubt make the sensors confused since they don't expect that. It seems I can rant some in the morning

[yamaha_george]

W,
Unfortunately there are a lot of "fathers" out there who thought that teaching their sons to be "the man of the house" was far too old fashioned.

My son is dead but my 4 daughters got the same education in basic survival in life as he did, considering the "men,<?> " a couple of them married they are very glad their dad taught then a thing or two about house building, car mechanics and basic elektrickery. All of them have some kind of martial art & wilderness skills, use a knife & gun to good effect, drive, ride bike & horse and how not to be a victim in the making.

To me you owe your kids that much , you put them here so teach them how to survive the experience with big wide grin.