M900nster
20-10-2004, 10:16 PM
I had to drag myself away from Carl Harrison's workshop this afternoon.
Some of you will already know Carl - he was the enthusiastic bike mechanic at Chris Clarke Motorcycles in Wymondham, Norfolk. He's got his own place now, and I think it's everything a motorcycle garage should be. I'd only gone today to have tyres fitted to 3 Ducati wheels, but Carl is one of those priceless motorcycle mechanics who enjoys talking bikes with his customers almost as much as he enjoys making sure the bike's spot on. In the end I had to force an extra fiver on him because he only wanted £15 for fitting and balancing three tyres, which, as I told him, is not charging enough. I'm sharing this with the rest of you because I want Carl to get enough work so that he's always there when I need him. I'll give you another example: My M900 had horrendous front end chatter at the track day this summer (I'm sure that the riders following me will remember it vividly - it almost had me off at the hairpin), plus it had developed a slight leak from one fork seal. I took the bike to Carl who bounced the front end up and down, agreed with me that it seemed a little underdamped and told me what I might find wrong when I striped it. I also wanted his opinion on my carb set-up, so I casually asked how much it'd cost if he was to do the forks and also have a look at the carbs for me. He had a think and said: "Oh, about £90". All thoughts of doing it myself evaporated. Carl carefully re-built the forks with new bushes and seals and, as my forks don't have adjustable damping, experimented with 3 different grades of fork oil, having to strip and invert them to tip out the oil each time until he got them working nicely. He also checked the jets and tweaked the carb balance. A lot of dealers would have tried to sell me a fork upgrade kit, or a Dytnojet kit at the very least. Not Carl. He seemed to enjoy telling me that he thought my forks were working nicely now, and that the carbs were fine. He only wanted the £90 he'd quoted.
Need I say more? Probably not, but if your bike could do with some servicing work before the spring, I'd suggest that you nip round to Carl's now, while things are quiet - he did have a 6 week waiting list earlier this year. You won't regret it.
Carl Harrison, Harleston, Norfolk. 01379852020
Some of you will already know Carl - he was the enthusiastic bike mechanic at Chris Clarke Motorcycles in Wymondham, Norfolk. He's got his own place now, and I think it's everything a motorcycle garage should be. I'd only gone today to have tyres fitted to 3 Ducati wheels, but Carl is one of those priceless motorcycle mechanics who enjoys talking bikes with his customers almost as much as he enjoys making sure the bike's spot on. In the end I had to force an extra fiver on him because he only wanted £15 for fitting and balancing three tyres, which, as I told him, is not charging enough. I'm sharing this with the rest of you because I want Carl to get enough work so that he's always there when I need him. I'll give you another example: My M900 had horrendous front end chatter at the track day this summer (I'm sure that the riders following me will remember it vividly - it almost had me off at the hairpin), plus it had developed a slight leak from one fork seal. I took the bike to Carl who bounced the front end up and down, agreed with me that it seemed a little underdamped and told me what I might find wrong when I striped it. I also wanted his opinion on my carb set-up, so I casually asked how much it'd cost if he was to do the forks and also have a look at the carbs for me. He had a think and said: "Oh, about £90". All thoughts of doing it myself evaporated. Carl carefully re-built the forks with new bushes and seals and, as my forks don't have adjustable damping, experimented with 3 different grades of fork oil, having to strip and invert them to tip out the oil each time until he got them working nicely. He also checked the jets and tweaked the carb balance. A lot of dealers would have tried to sell me a fork upgrade kit, or a Dytnojet kit at the very least. Not Carl. He seemed to enjoy telling me that he thought my forks were working nicely now, and that the carbs were fine. He only wanted the £90 he'd quoted.
Need I say more? Probably not, but if your bike could do with some servicing work before the spring, I'd suggest that you nip round to Carl's now, while things are quiet - he did have a 6 week waiting list earlier this year. You won't regret it.
Carl Harrison, Harleston, Norfolk. 01379852020