One reason work progress has been slow lately is the increasing number of discontinued OEM parts.
The approach of disassembling first and then sourcing parts feels increasingly risky these days.
First, you have to check whether at least seals, gaskets, and O-rings—rubber parts—are available before you disassemble, or you might not be able to get the bike back together (*’ω’*)
Oh no—the gasket is discontinued . . . (paper type)
What used to be a simple job of peeling off and replacing a delivered part now requires hunting on Yahoo Auctions or patrolling the world.
Well, if it’s a bike that’s considered a classic, there’s no problem at all.
But with something a bit more unusual, not only are gaskets for engine covers hard to find—the engine covers themselves are discontinued, so you can’t even afford to drop the bike.
It’s scary, really.
Engine disassembly has serious issues too.
Setting gaskets aside, are both the front and rear camchain sliders discontinued? You can’t really feel comfortable not replacing those.
Take the transmission—ideally you’d want fresh second and third gears on both the drive and driven sides, right? If there are aftermarket transmission options, you can just throw money at it, which is nice.
And then you think, well, a new primary driven gear is quieter too, and if I’m swapping the transmission I might as well change the shift fork, and it never ends.
I don’t do much engine work myself, so I can’t say for sure, but with older bikes, you probably need to take your work to a shop that keeps a substantial stock of various parts, or the whole point of doing a disassembly and maintenance job gets watered down.
When it comes to front forks, metal-type parts have been scarce lately. Especially KYB
—many O-rings just aren’t available anymore.
What used to be a simple job of looking up a part number, getting the part delivered, inspecting it, and installing it now requires taking information from a deformed used O-ring, figuring out the inner diameter, outer diameter, and wire diameter of the machined mounting location, understanding what it’s for, and then hunting for an equivalent or a standard part.
Just thinking about it is exhausting.
Honestly, I wish I hadn’t taken on some of these jobs. That’s been the story lately. The research continues until I find what I need, and this research time doesn’t get billed as labor.
If information about this kind of hassle could be shared, I think that would be truly wonderful.
From this perspective too, it feels like the era when anyone could handle any bike is over.
How to differentiate yourself . . . that’s a tough question (*’ω’*)
