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Gumption; this forum's declaration?

Discussion in 'XJ Technical Chat' started by fintip, Apr 19, 2012.

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fintip Member

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Sorry for typos; I hand typed this while reading from the book, and my 'e' key is a bit stiff for some reason. But this passage, I feel, is something everyone new to these forums (and indeed, to motorcycles) should read. Enjoy:

(emphasis mine)

Robert Pirsig said:

"But there's another kind of detail that no shop manual goes into but that is common to all machines and can be given here. This is the detail of the Quality relationship, the gumption relationship, between the machine and the mechanic, which is just as intricate as the machine itself. Throughout the process of fixing the machine, things always come up, low quality things, from a dusted knuckle to an accidentally ruined "irreplaceable" assembly. These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business. I call these things "gumption traps."

There are hundreds of different kinds of gumptions traps, maybe thousands, maybe millions. I have no way of knowing how many I don't know. I know it seems as though I've stumbled into every kind of gumption trap imaginable. What keeps me from thinking I've hit them all is that with every job I discover more. Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That's what makes it interesting.

...In traditional maintenance gumption is considered something you're born with or have acquired as a result of good upbringing. It's a fixed commodity. From the lack of information about how one acquires this gumption one might assume that a person without any gumption is a hopeless case.

In nondualistic maintenance gumption isn't a fixed commodity. It's variable, a reservoir of good spirits that can be added to or subtracted from. Since it's a result of the perception of Quality, a gumption trap, consequently, can be defined as anything that causes one to lose sight of Quality, and thus lose one's enthusiasm for what one is doing. As one might guess from a definition as broad as this, the field is enourmous and only a beginning sketch and be attempted here.

As far as I can see there are two main types of gumption traps. The first type is those in which you're thrown off the Quality track by conditions that arise from external circumstances, and I call these "setbacks." The second type is traps in which you're thrown off the Quality track by conditions that are primarily within yourself. These I don't have any generic name for; "hang-ups" I suppose.

...The first time you do any major job it seems as though the out-of-sequence-reassembly setback is your biggest worry. This occurs usuallty at a time when you think you're almost done. After days of work you finally have it all together except for: What's this? A connecting-rod bearing liner?! How could you have left that out? Oh Jesus, everything's got to come apart again! You can almost hear the gumption escaping. Pssssssssss.

There's nothing you can do but go back and take it all apart again-after a rest period of up to a month that allows you to get used to the idea.

There are two techniques I use to prevent the out-of-sequence-reassembly setback. I use them mainly when I'm getting into a complex assembly I don't know anything about.

It should be inserted here parenthetically that there's a school of mechanical thought which says I shouldn't be getting into a complex assembly I don't know anything about. I should have training or leave the job to a specialist. That's a self-serving school of mchanical eliteness I'd like to see wiped out. That was a "specialist" who broke the fins on this machine. I've edited manuals written to train specialists for IBM, and what they know when they're done isn't that great. You're at a disadvantage the first time around and it may cost you a little more because of parts you accidentally damage, and it will almost undoubtedly take a lot more time, but the next time around you're way ahead of the specialist. You, with gumption, have learned the assumbly the hard way and you've a whole set of good feelings about it that he's unlikely to have.

Anyways, the first technique for preventing the out-of-sequence-reassembly gumption trap is a notebook in which I write down the order of disassembly and note anything unusual that might give trouble in reassembly later on. This notebook gets plenty grease-smeared and ugly. But a number of times one or two words in it that didn't seem important when written down have prevnted damage and saved hours of work. The notes should pay special attention to the left-hand and right-hand and up-and-down orientations of parts, and color coding and positions of wires. If incidental parts look worn or damaged or loose this is the time to note it so that you can make all your parts purchases at the same time.

The second technique for preventing the out-of-sequence-reassembly grumption trap is newspapers opened out on the floor of the garage on which all the parts are laid left-to-right and top-to-bottom in the order in which you read a page. That way when you put it back together in reverse order the little screws and washers and pins that can easily be overlooked are brought to your attention as you need them.

Even with all these precautions, however, out-of-sequence-reassemblies sometimes occur and when they do you've got to watch the gumption. Watch out for gumption desperation, in which you hurry up wildly in an effort to restore gumption by making up for lost time. That just creates more mistakes. When you first see that you have to go back and take it apart all ovr again, it's definitely time for that long break.

It's important to distinguish from these the reassemblies that were out of sequence because you lacked certain information. Frequently the whole reassembly process becomes a cut-and-try technique in which you have to take it apart to make a change and then put it together again to see if the change works. If it doesn't work, that isn't a setback because the information gained is a real progress.

But if you've made just a plain old dumb mistake in reassembly, some gumption can still be salvaged by the knowledge that the second disassembly and reassembly is likely to go much faster than the first one. You've unconsciously memorized all sorts of things you won't have to relearn.

...The intermittent failure setback is next. In this the thing that is wrong becomes right all of a sudden just as you start to fix it. Electrical short circuits are often in this class. The short occurs only when the machine's bouncing around. As soon as you stop everything's okay. It's almost impossible to fix it then. All you can do is try to get it to go wrong again and if it won't, forget it. Intermittents become gumption traps when they fool you into thinking you've really got the machine fixed. It's always a good idea on any job to wait a few hundred miles before coming to that conclusion. They're discouraging when they grop up again and again, but when they do you're no worse off than someone who goes to a commercial mechanic. In fact you're better off. They're much more of a gumption trap for the owner who has to drive his machine to the shop again and again and never get satisfaction. On your own machine you can study them over a long period of time, something a commercial mechanic can't do, and you can just carry around the tools you think you'll need until the intermittent happens again, and then, when it happens, stop and work on it.

When intermittents recur, try to correlate them with other things the cycle is doing. Do the misfires, for example, occur only on bumps, only on turns, only on acceleration? Only on hot days? These correlations are clues for cause-and-effect hypotheses. In some intermittents you have to resign yourslf to a long fishing expedition, but no matter how tedious that gets it's never as tedious as taking the machine to a commercial mechanic five times. I'm tempted to go into long detail about "Intermittents I Have Known" with a blow-by-blow description of how these were solved. But this gets like those fishing stories, of interest mainly to the fisherman, who doesn't quite catch on to why everybody yawns. He enjoyed it.

Next to misassemblies and intermittents, I think the most common external gumption trap is the parts setback. Here a person who does his own work can get depressed in a number of ways. Parts are something you never plan on buying when you originally get the machine. Dealers like to keep their inventories small. Wholesalers are slow and always understaffed in the spring whene verybody buys motorcycle parts.

The pricing on parts is the second part of this gumption trap. It's a well-known industrial policy to price the original equipment competitively, because the customer can always go somewhere else, but on parts to overprice and clean up. The price of the part is not only jacked up way beyond its new price; you get a special price because you're not a commercial mechanic. This is a sly arrangement that allows the commercial mechanic to get rich by putting in parts that aren't needed.

One more hurdle yet. The part may not fit. Parts lists always contain mistakes. Make and model changes are confusing. Out-of-tolerance parts runs sometimes get through quality control because there's no operating checkout at the factory. Some of the parts you buy are made by specialty houses who don't have access to the engineering data needed to make them right. Sometimes they get confused about make and model changes. Sometimes the parts man you're dealing with jots down the wrong number. Sometimes you don't give him the right identification. But it's always a major gumption trap to get all the way home and discover that a new part won't work.

The parts trap may be overcome by a number of techniques. First, if there's more than one supplier in town by all means choose the one with the most cooperative parts man. (Chacal). Get to know him on a first-name basis. Often he will have been a mechanic once himself and can provide a lot of the information you need.

Keep an eye out for price cutters and give them a try. Some of them have good deals. Auto stores and mail-order hosues frequenttly stock the commoner cycle parts at prices way below those of the cycle dealers. You can buy roller chain from chain manufacturers, for example, at way below the inflated cycle-shop prices.

Always take the old part with you to prevent getting a wrong part. Take along some machinst's calipers for comparing dimensions.

Finally, if you're as exasperated as I am by the parts problem and have some money to invest, you can take up the really fascinating hobby of machining your own parts. I have a little 6-by-18-inch lathe with a milling attachment and a full complement of welding equipment: arc, heli-arc, gas and mini-gas for this kind of work. With the welding equipment you can build up worn surfaces with better than original metal and then machine it back to tolerance with carbide tools. You can't really believe how versatile that lathe-plus-milling-plus-welding arrangement is until you've used it. If you can't do the job directly you can always make something that will do it. The work of maching a part is very slow, and some parts, such as ball bearings, you're never going to machine, but you'd be amazed at how you can modify parts designs so that you can make them with your equpment, and the work isn't nearly as slow or frustrating as a wait for some smirking parts man to send away to the factory. And the work is gumption building, not gumption destroying. To run a cycle with parts in it you've made yourself gives you a special feeling you can't possibly get from strictly store-bought parts.

...Well, those were the commonest setbacks I can think of: out-of-sequence reassembly, intermittent failure and parts problems. But although setbacks are the commonest gumption traps they're only the external cause of gemption loss. Time now to consider some of the internal gumption traps that operate at the same time.
Click to expand...

And if you want to read anymore, go get the book, you free-loader! My hand is cramping!

fintip, Apr 19, 2012

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snapper33 Member

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I'm compelled to get the book now.

snapper33, Apr 19, 2012

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fintip Member

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It's really great. One of the only books I've ever given a second read, and I read a lot.

I really should have typed the rest, but it was incredibly late, and I didn't realize how long the section was, and my hand really was cramping. Besides, I doubt anybody will read it even at this length, which is a shame. If I ran this forum, I'd put it on the home page!

fintip, Apr 19, 2012

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Maxim-X Well-Known Member

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I can't get over that you told everyone that you had a "Stiff-e" 8O and at the end of it all you said your hand was cramping! :roll: :roll:
:twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
I usually ask for pics all the time, but I think I'll pass on this one.

Maxim-X, Apr 19, 2012

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Massimo33 Member

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Thanks for the passage, it makes me want to get the book now.

Massimo

Massimo33, Apr 20, 2012

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Kickaha Active Member Premium Member

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I always thought that book was crap, might have to read it again and see what I think now a few more years has passed

Kickaha, Apr 20, 2012

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RickCoMatic Well-Known Member

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Typing?

Dictate!

http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm

RickCoMatic, Apr 20, 2012

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fintip Member

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Played with Dragon years ago... Is it free? Otherwise, I don't feel like going through the hassle. Even if it is, it takes time, and I don't do that enough--I can usually type plenty fast (I'm somewhere around 80wpm) to make it not worth my while. Cool tools, though. Speaking just isn't very fast, especially when you have to speak stilted so that you are guaranteed to be understood.

X: Harhar har. Seriously, though, clever. Didn't catch that at all.

Glad for the feedback, I fully expected this thread to drop like a weight.

fintip, Apr 20, 2012

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AngryGnome Member

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i think this should be posted as a response to the next "these are the worst motorcycles ever" thread that will inevitably be posted here... i dont mean this as an insult or anything, theres just a lot of truth in this article and patience doesnt seem to be too common these days...
thanks for taking the time to type this up. it was an interesting read, to say the very least.

AngryGnome, Apr 20, 2012

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jmilliken Well-Known Member

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fascinating read bud. thanks for taking the time to post that

jmilliken, Jun 13, 2012

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Polock Well-Known Member

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80 WPM, damm, i can't even think that fast !

Polock, Jun 13, 2012

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ibheath New Member

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I just heard about this book from a customer. So cool that I found a post about it here today!

ibheath, Jun 14, 2012

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3510al New Member

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Yes, Yes, and Yes

Dr. Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values was first published in 1974 and became a best seller and the most widely read philosophical text in history. Dr. Pirsig uses an (autobiographical) father and son motorcycle journey across the country as a vehicle to explore Quality as a value while he devolves into mental illness. It is still eminently relevant today and does capture the essence and spirit of this forum - Doing hands on maintenance with an eye to detail and correctness - See posts by RickOMatic and BigFitz. After reading it, if one is so inclined, I would suggest you read his only other book, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, published in 1991, and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1992. In Lila, Dr. Pirsig uses the vehicle of a fall sailboat journey down the Hudson River in New York with the intention of sailing down the inter-coastal waterway to Florida for the winter. He picks up a woman along the way and uses their isolation and interactions on the small boat to explore Morality. For what it's worth y'all

3510al, Jun 14, 2012

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BluesBass Member

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Okay so in the last year you are the FOURTH different person to recommend this book. I think it is time I make another purchase on my Kindle account.

Also I'd like to note that gumption is very real and I have gone through ALL the ups and downs described here on my Midnight. I also want to note that now, having completely rebuilt my bike from the ground up, when a problem arises gumption kicks in and instead of frustration my mind goes into troubleshooting mode. "Okay, this just happened. What did I do that would have impacted that? What caused this to happen? What safety systems may I have triggered?"

Try getting those responses taking your bike to a shop every time it hiccups or sputters!

BluesBass, Jun 14, 2012

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hogfiddles XJ-Wizard, Host-Central NY Carb Clinic Moderator Premium Member

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I have lots of gumption. I keep a couple extra quarts if it around in case I lose some.

I've never had a problem with a stiff-E, though ometimes my S starts dragging. I DO make it a point to take a P whenever a good opportunity presents itself. However, since this is a family-oriented site, we should leave this X out of it.

Well, I'm heading to bed, since I broke the emulsion tube on one of my Intruder carbs. Since it techically a 'non-replaceable' part, I have to send it out for a repair. I guess I'll pack it up with some styrofoam peanuts and some gumption for a little extr padding.

Dave F

XJ900RK, XJ700, a couple dozen more XJ's, 2 Hondas, 2 Suzukis, 2 xs400 Secas....and counting
------
https://www.xjcd.org/emergency_guidectomy

hogfiddles, Jun 14, 2012

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3510al New Member

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Permit me to further whet appetites: Chapter 8, Paragraphs 4 - 14.

"On this machine I've done the tuning so many times its become a ritual. I don't have to think much about how to do it anymore. Just mainly look for anything unusual. The engine has picked up a noise that sounds like a loose tappet but could be something worse, so I'm going to tune it now and see if it goes away. Tappet adjustment has to be done with the engine cold, which means wherever you park for the night is where you work on it the next morning, which is why I'm on a shady curbstone back of a motel in Miles City, Montana. Right now the air is cool in the shade and will be for an hour or so until the sun gets around the tree branches, which is good for working on cycles. It's important not to tune these machines in the direct sun or late in the day when your brain gets muddy because even if you've been through it a hundred times you should be alert and looking for things.

Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of a "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and more of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. I said yesterday that the ghost of rationality was what Phaedrus pursued and what led to his insanity, but to get into that it's vital to stay with down-to-earth examples of rationality, so as not to get lost in generalities no one else can understand. Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.

We are at the classic-romantic barrier now, where on one side we see a cycle as it appears immediately - and this is an important way of seeing it - and where on the other side we can begin to see it as a mechanic does in terms of underlying form - and this is an important way of seeing things too. These tools for example - this wrench - has a certain romantic beauty to it, but its purpose is always purely classical. It's designed to change the underlying form of the machine.

The porcelain inside the first plug is very dark. That is classically as well as romantically ugly because it means the cylinder is getting too much gas and not enough air. The carbon molecules in the gasoline aren't finding enough oxygen to combine with and they're just sitting here loading up the plug. Coming into town yesterday the idle was loping a little, which is a symptom of the same thing.

Just to see if it's just one cylinder that's rich I check the other one. They're both the same. I get out a pocket knife, grab a stick lying in the gutter and whittle down the end to clean out the plugs, wondering what could be the cause of the richness. That wouldn't have anything to do with the rods or valves. And, carbs rarely go out of adjustment. The main jets are oversized, which causes richness at high speeds but the plugs were a lot cleaner that this before with the same jets. Mystery. You're always surrounded by them..But if you tried to solve the all, you'd never get the machine fixed. There's no immediate answer so I just leave it as a hanging question.

The first tappet is right on, no adjustment required, so I move on to the next. Still plenty of time before the sun gets past those trees . . .I always feel like I'm in church when I do this . . .The gauge is some kind of religious icon and I'm performing a holy rite with it. It is a member of a set called "precision measuring instruments" which in a classic sense has a profound meaning.

In a motorcycle this precision isn't maintained for any romantic or perfectionist reasons. It's simply that the enormous forces of heat and explosive pressure inside this engine can only be controlled through the kind of precision these instruments give. When each explosion takes place it drives the connecting rod onto the crankshaft with a surface pressure of many tons per square inch. If the fit of the rod to the crankshaft is precise the explosion force will be transferred smoothly abd the metal will be able to stand it. But if the fit is loose by a distance of only a few thousandths of an inch the force will be delivered suddenly, like a hammer blow, and the rod, bearing and crankshaft surface will be pounded flat, creating a noise which at first sounds a lot like a loose tappets. That's the reason I'm checking now. If it is a loose rod and I try to make it to the mountains without an overhaul, it will soon get louder and louder until the rod tears itself free, slams into the spinning crankshaft and destroys the engine. Sometimes broken rods will pile right down through the crankcase and dump all the oil onto the road. All you can do then is to start walking.

But all this can be prevented by a few thousands of an inch fit which precision measuring instruments give, and this is their classical beauty- not what you see, but what they mean-what they are capable of in terms of control of the underlying form.

The second tappet is fine. I swing over to the street side of the machine and start on the other cylinder.

Precision instruments are designed to achieve an idea, dimensional precision, where perfection is impossible. There is not perfectly shaped part of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way. It's the understanding of this rational intellectual idea that's fundamental. "

Please also be forewarned, this book is a philosophical treatise and is not without it's difficult sections, but perseverance and hard work will be rewarded.

3510al, Jun 14, 2012

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Rhettb3 Member

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Nice post, I just finished that chapter... I enjoy the book and Mr. Pirsigs' world view. I am currently in need of some gumption lol!

Rhettb3, Jun 16, 2012

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ColoradoDan Active Member

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I finished reading it last week. I had wondered what it was about for 20 years. Thought about picking it up last fall, then my wife gave it to me for christmas - and had no idea I was interested.

I love it for the philosophy side, but the road trip is a good read too. The Gumption chapter was right out of my personal book of wisdom. Thanks for adding philosophy to the forum!

82 XJ650, 50K

ColoradoDan, Jun 26, 2012

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FrankBlack Member

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Fintip and 3510al, thank you for taking the time and effort to type those sections down! I really enjoyed reading it and will most likely buy the book.

As for the tip of using the newspaper and the notebook to keep track of all parts when working on the bike, I have found it a great help to compliment this with a digital camera (or in my case a smartphone), taking before and after shots of every part removed. I just finished a complete teardown/repair of my carbs and this was immensely helpful to me. Not my original idea, I read it elsewhere on this site - just thought I should spread the word as I found it relevant to the whole gumption part.

FrankBlack, Aug 11, 2012

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fintip Member

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It's a great book. One of the few I went back to read a second time.

And yeah, when I did my carbs, I filmed the whole process. I believe it was Rick's oldschool method, where he mentions a 'non-old-school trick' of pulling out the digital camera.

fintip, Aug 19, 2012

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