Last night I adjusted the valves on my motorcycle. That requires taking the valve covers off. (The valve cover is the squarish thing right in the middle of the picture with the silver horizontal lines running through it.)It's not a difficult procedure, at least on paper, but 33-year-old motorcycle factors can crop up at any time, especially the first time I do something on the bike.
Take this nut, for instance. It's just a nut. 13mm, as it turns out. It's recessed in the valve cover pretty deeply and there's not a lot of space around it. I managed to get a 1/2" socket around it on the left side cover, but it wouldn't work on the right side.
I was rapidly approaching that frustrating mechanical position known as "Stuck." (It has other, more colorful names as well, but this is a family blog for the most part and we'll stick with Stuck.) The fact that I ended up at Stuck some hours later and into this morning when a 33-year-old stud stripped (so much for this being a family blog) is beside the point, because I've now fixed that too. But back to the nut - if I can't get a socket around it I can't finish the procedure.
Then I remembered that earlier this week when I visited 
Retired Mama and her Financial Adviser (a good band name, by the way...) she gave me a gift: This quarter-inch-drive socket set. (Mr. Fix It and Edward David are getting them too - if it was supposed to be a surprise, oops.) The largest socket in the set - 13mm. It fit into the tight space perfectly and the nut spun right off.
Nothing beats having the right tool for the job. Thank you Retired Mama!
7 comments:
I hate getting stuck at Stuck. What usually happens to me is I'll decide I'm going to do some project around the house as a surprise for Mr. Fix-it... and then I get well into the project and something that I'm not physically strong enough to deal with crops up. Then HE gets to do the project, which isn't the sort of surprise he really appreciates.
Evidently, I'm not the right tool for the job...
I would recommend leverage, but Diane is pretty sure it's a torque issue...
Wow - how's that for good timing.
Sorry you were Stuck at Stuck for awhile but glad you were able to get to un-stuck.
Having the right tool is nice ... but I also like it when I MacGyver something up and if does the job. I think Sonnjea has nicknamed it Elliott Logic.
Good to know we got something good out of that gene pool!
Keep up the good work on the bike!
Crazy Elliott Logic, I call it...
And I was unaware that "to MacGyver" was a verb...
It's a good verb, though...
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