That quote, for those who don’t recognise it, is from Moby Dick, the story of a cranky old man chasing a dream that was ultimately too big for him.
Meanwhile in Blackwood, it has been 148 days since the FZR was taken off the road, and tomorrow in all likelihood another cranky old man will find out if his dream is also too big for him.
With the exception of two small drain plug bolts to be screwed in, some water in the cooling system and the battery being connected, the project bike is ready to be started.
This project was probably too big for me. If I had discovered that the Gumtree motor was indeed ready to swap straight in then it probably would have been fine, but the rapid descent into a full rebuild has pushed my capabilities into far deeper waters than I’ve ever been. I’ve gone through the full gamut of emotions in the past 148 days, been ready to give up a few times, have had my hands quite literally shaking in fear that I’d snap a bolt or drop something down the crankcase in the final stages of the engine build. I’ve learned a stack of things that I’ll be able to do faster and more effectively next time.
All that is left now is to see if it actually runs.
Even thinking about hitting that starter button triggers a grab-bag of bipolar thoughts, typically oscillating between ‘I cut a small corner in not doing x, and that could be fatal’ and ‘these things will run after a whole lot more abuse than you could consciously do, let alone unconsciously – you’ve followed the book and it will be fine’.
The folks at both Yamaha World and The Motorcycle Society have been great, and they are both on the side that it should be fine – if the motor turns over without pistons banging on valves and without any scraping noises from damaged rings then it’ll be fine.
To return to the title of the post, a lot of my fear has been driven by ignorance – simply not knowing what lay beneath the skin of the FZR. Now that I’ve taken it apart, looked at most of it from the inside out, and reassembled it, then I’m no longer afraid.
Even as I think about hitting the starter button at some point tomorrow after work, I’m not afraid of the end result. Either it will run, and I’ll be an extremely happy camper, or it will explode in a puff of blue smoke, and I’ll know that I wasn’t ready for it – this time. If that happens, I’ll pull the motor out, go back to first principles, see what I can salvage to combine with the old motor, and start again.
No matter what happens when I hit that starter button, I’ve learned something, and I’m no longer afraid. The next one will be a lot easier.
I work in an industry where we are fixated on completion, largely because of a government mindset which forces us to do just that in order to survive. Right now I feel like a student who has just finished a project worth 100% of their marks for the semester, and it’s an all-or-nothing situation in terms of ‘passing’, even though I know that even if I have to ‘repeat’ this semester then I’ll have learned a massive amount from what would be considered failure.
Incidentally, if I’d signed up to do a Masters this year like I had contemplated, and failed a subject in that, then I’d have blown far more money than I have on the spare motor and assorted rebuild parts for this project – and I swear I’ve pushed myself to learn a far more diverse set of skills than I would have than if I’d had a crack at a Masters in something relating to my day job.
There’s a lot to unpack in my own head about how this 148 days of winter project has gone. I’ll finish it before Spring starts, even if that ‘finish’ is actually the start of a repeat of the project. If that happens, maybe I’ll just park it up for a month or two and rebuild the 1980s pushbike I’ve been threatening to strip down and powder coat as a work commuter. Perhaps I’ll hit that button and it’ll purr like an angry kitten, and I’ll have one of the best FZRs in Australia on the road. To finish up with another quote from Moby Dick:
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick