PERSPECTIVES

PERSPECTIVES GARAGE LOVE

BY MITCH BOEHM

Growing up in Ohio we had a narrow, one-car garage, but for me it was a seriously formative place. It had no shelving or storage and was cluttered with boxes, lawn mowers and Sting Rays, but it was where I cut my teeth (and my fingers and knees) working on motorcycles, first doing chain-adjust/oil-change basics on my SL70 and XR75 and, later, top-end rebuilds and such on my two-stroke Yamaha race bikes.

One experience stands out. On a Saturday evening in 1976 (and just hours before a Sunday race meeting, probably, and don’t ask me why) I was out there sitting on a milk crate beside my YZ100 using both hands to reinstall a freshly honed cylinder over the fresh piston and rings I’d just slid onto the con-rod.

Those of you who’ve done this yourself know there’s that point where you have one hand holding the piston (and using your fingers to squeeze the rings together) and the other guiding the cylinder down onto the piston. I was having the usual trouble managing this (it’s tricky) and was losing my patience (as always), so like most obnoxious, know-it-all 14-year-olds I yelled for my dad to come help me.

He did, but it didn’t help much, as we very quickly pinched my fingers and drew blood doing the deed, which made me yell again and had him saying “screw it, you do it yourself!” as he walked back into the house grumbling to my mom. The “Why the hell did you wait until the last minute?” I heard a few seconds later didn’t help my mood, but Big Al had a point.

Anyway, garages — and all the

My garage is a cluttered mess right now, but it’s better than it was a year ago and there is a plan to make it a proper place to work on bikes, store my ever-growing motorcycle magazine collection and hook up some way-cool vintage audio…

motorcycle stuff we do in them — figure into my two-wheeled psyche pretty strongly, just as they probably figure into yours. And that formed a lot of the impetus for the new AMA Garage section you’ll find on page 72. Our plan going forward is to fill it each month with service-, modification-, technique- and aftermarket-oriented tips, tweaks, fixes and facts on the motorcycleownership experience — stuff many of you would do (or want to do) yourselves, in your garages, but without the bloody fingers and profanity. Take a look and let us know what you think.

My LA-based garage is pretty well sorted, but now that I’m up in Salt Lake City most of the time I’m basically back to square one. I recently got some storage shelving in place, but I still need a proper workbench, better lighting and a lot more tool storage, which my contractor friend Michael has promised to help me with.

This doesn’t mean my Utah garage — which until last year was simply an attached car port — is a stranger to motorcycle hi-jinks, though. In college I did a lot of work on my various twowheelers under its roof. I fettled my KX250 and CR480 motocrossers in it as well as my GS1000S, GPz550 and 500 Interceptor streetbikes. When my buddy Nick Ienatsch convinced me to paint the Interceptor’s frame red I remember hanging it from the opening with wire so our buddy Walt — a fine painter — could spray it. Which he did, magnificently.

Of course, I’m also gonna need a place to finish my GS1000S project bike, which the recent loss of Wes Cooley has back on my front burner. My goal is to make it a real Wes Cooley replica, with the blackedout engine/wheel aesthetic Wes’s Yoshimura racer had during 1981, a year after the blue-and-white production S-model was last built and sold.

I just wish my dad, who’s been gone 13 years now, was around to help. I’d gladly put up with some bloodied fingers to have the chance to twist wrenches and talk some things over with Big Al.

Mitch Boehm is the Editorial Director of the AMA

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