The demise of the apprenticeship in the UK, whereby you could not do a job at all unless you had completed a recognised apprenticeship of 4-5 years, ensures that many \'tradesman\' (a misuse of the term) don\'t even have the basic skills required...
Motorcycle maintenance and restoration is no different unfortunately....People with few relevant background skills or any engineering experience can set themselves up as a motorcycle mechanic/restorer...
I would suggest the effect on the quality of what is on offer is both inevitable and entirely predictable....
When I started in Engineering you couldn\'t get a job in a factory (or many other trades) without the relevant qualifications...
That all changed due to the fact that the people who run this country don\\\'t actually recognise manual skills as something that warrants either protection or preservation or meaningful qualifications as a necessity....
If the bike on offer wasn\'t being sold through the \'trade\' then none of the above applies...
In that case you are simply describing the effects of the obvious variations in standards that will be apparent in a hobby full of willing amateurs with varying skills, budgets, facilities and motivation...
Despite this, it\'s possible for the end results to be very similar...In both situations some people will have the skills/knowledge and some won\'t..Ian
SO what makes you think you are Robinson Carouso ?
With the demise of democracy and the rise of adversarial two party politics most politicians are University graduates in non scientific - engineering schools. thus they have no fundamental understanding of either.
They did not back in days of the decline of BSA and i has only gotton worse since then.
Australia no longer has a minister for science, for the first time since federation.
As a lot of pollies have a law degree they do undestand law so have passed laws that make it impossible to be an independant tradesman and this follows on from the philosophy that they only want BIG business because it is easier to negotiate with 3 large enterprises than 3000 small ones.
Next the decission to abandon all government enterprises means that there are no organizations like railways, shipyards & navy depots to train apprentices and then they regulations covering employing apprentices has become such an onerous task that few companiws with less than 20 staff in personnel can actually get through the paperwork.Then we decided that we were going to be "THE SMART COUNTRY" so every one was going to do 10 years of high school and go on to university regardless of the actual IQ or even interest of the students themselves.
Finally we have a corperate structure that only allows people with commerce , accounting or law qualifications to get to any reasonable level of management so even if you had a passion for manual work, you have no future persuing it so it is not hard for students to see a total numbskull with the right qualification can pull 10 to 100 times tha average wage while high skilled trades people long term will be pushing it uphill to earn more than the dloe over the long term.
As for the quality of work.
I know 2 professional restorers who paint wheels, fully assembled and one of them even leaves the tyres on.
They look spectacular when finished & get sold ( at auction ) for very big bucks, usually to collectors or investors who will never ride them so never know how badly they were done and both of these are fully qualified trades men who have run their own shops for many years before retiring into restoration.
There have and always will be bodgers who tart things up and flog off garbage.
email (option): wariron@tpg,com,au
Hi
I was interested in the variety of views expressed in the replies to this interesting subject, and have to admit as having been caught out myself - something I kick myself for.
Basically I took on trust the pictures (of course a picture never lies does it!), the persons apparent reputation and the extensive list of work undertaken, which in fairness most had been done. It was one of those situations where distance and work precluded my normal fastidious investigations. Bottom line, although supposedly fully restored and running it was obvious it had not been run since having been reassembled and the work only partially completed, something which shrouded some potentially dangerous issues . It remained unwired, all the wiring was in the correct position but no connections had been made, the horn and regulator (seen in photos were missing), the petrol tank had so much dried sludge in the bottom it fill a large jar when the tank was cleaned. The carburettor slide was jammed solid, in a position which was clearly historic and clearly prevented it functioning, in fact the carburettor required a complete rebuild. More significantly the front wheel race/bearing was barely moveable making a seizure inevitable if the bike had been ridden. It had been painted where you could see in most places etc etc etc. The list goes on and on!
Basically I stripped it down and started from scratch, the result after much painstaking work and extra expenditure a lovely bike. I kick myself as I have been restoring vehicles for over 40 years and should have known better - all that glitters is not gold!
Anyway - just a personal rant, and agreement with all the other comments.
Andy
email (option): a.tizzard@btopenworld.com
I never buy running bikes, preferring to start off with a non runner/basket case and then going through it comprehensively to ensure everything is attended to correctly....
In fact I'm probably the bloke you want to buy a bike off... ..
I'm known for being 'fussy' and never really accept that anyone will do the work the way I like it done..
As I've always used my bikes as my main form of transport there's no faking it...Something that's badly repaired, not replaced, outside of spec. or replaced with a poor quality component will be the thing that brings it all to a grinding halt
....Ian
email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com
Wasn't Robinson Caruso the Italian opera singer that got marooned on a desert island?...
....Ian
email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com
In the name of historical accuracy, I had to do the same.
I'm sure it doesn't mean painted after the tyres have been fitted! But it would explain why my spokes are painted
As they say in Yorkshire..'There's nowt s' strange as folk'..('There's nothing as strange as people')....
It can certainly be hard to see the logic in the decision making process sometimes....
However, I often think people get 'fleeced' because a) they don't bother to do their 'homework' in terms of what's available and b)they rarely seek a second opinion...Ian
email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com