Technician Continuing Education

Schools are mostly designed to teach the basics of any subject.  Where do technicians go to learn beyond the basics?  Shane is in Orlando doing a Harley-Davidson University engine class.  We talk about the pace of the course and what you might expect.  

Transcript

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Roy Merritt  0:00  
It's time.

Once again, it's time to open your ears and

expand your mind.

Or maybe it's still your mind. Either way, I think these boys have some sense. So sit back,

grab a brew,

we're gonna have some to give you our point of view here on Talkin. Braap

that shift. So welcome back. I'll come grab season two.

Mike VO  1:08  
It's hard, man. It is hard.

Roy Merritt  1:13  
It is hard.

Aaron Staudinger  1:16  
I thought that was a sound. That was so clear.

Roy Merritt  1:20  
And he is hard.

Mike VO  1:21  
It's big.

Roy Merritt  1:24  
Yeah, so welcome back season two, I think we're Episode 30.

Mike VO  1:28  
And it's long. I'm

Roy Merritt  1:29  
about to find out here. I'm going on to my website. And it's hard on.com to see me episodes a guy because I don't know.

Mike VO  1:37  
He's trying to do the intro.

Roy Merritt  1:41  
There is no intro. We'll that's how we roll here. And it is hard. It's hard. So now we're on episode 15. Sorry, episode.

Mike VO  1:47  
It's long.

Roy Merritt  1:49  
So long.

Aaron Staudinger  1:51  
We've had productive season.

Roy Merritt  1:53  
We have we done really good this year. We missed out the first few months. Whatever went on. It was an early part of COVID. Yes, we are shipped before we have doubled our viewership to eight. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, that's,

Mike VO  2:07  
you know, that's like a 300.

Roy Merritt  2:10  
We doubled last year and this year we doubled again. So we're at eight. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  2:14  
Oh,

Roy Merritt  2:15  
yeah. We're getting up there.

Mike VO  2:17  
That the what's that song?

Moving On Up.

Roy Merritt  2:31  
This is like Sanford and sons are no good. Because they were never moving on.

Aaron Staudinger  2:36  
That was and it was it was

right after.

Roy Merritt  2:41  
We sidetrack from the very beginning. Immediately. We didn't even make it on to the topic.

Aaron Staudinger  2:47  
Yes, we did. So a good Jefferson

Roy Merritt  2:52  
Jefferson's intro. Yes. That's it. I was doing it as we speak. Just hit moving on. Let's see.

Does it actually play it?

Mike VO  3:02  
It's law.

Aaron Staudinger  3:05  
Let's see. Protect your ears? Nope.

Roy Merritt  3:07  
Don't want to join YouTube.

I don't care who you are. That's all got some soul right there. Yeah.

Mike VO  3:32  
We're gonna kick Joe Rogan in 2177. Correct?

Roy Merritt  3:36  
Yes. right about the time that we die. If he stops now. Actually, we will never get Joe Rogan. But we

Mike VO  3:43  
left he quit.

Aaron Staudinger  3:44  
We can interweave motorcycles and politics.

Roy Merritt  3:46  
We might have to stay off politics. Right. You know what, I don't like to listen to other people's talk about the issues. So I don't want to listen to me ratings and ratings. Yeah. So today I wanted to talk about motorcycles. Motorcycles knows one of our co workers here, Shane. He's down in Orlando. Learned Yeah, he's getting learned he's doing some some dealer classes and it got me thinking not everybody works in a dealership. You know, so there's always outlets there out there for you to better yourself as a technician or even a salesperson, in your case, Aaron, you know, to continue your education. Because you know, most of us go to school, we get out and then it's all work from there.

Aaron Staudinger  4:37  
My education continues every day. Something I learned something I try to make same mistakes out front.

Roy Merritt  4:44  
That's a lot easier to learn because every day is a lot you know, different. You don't do services every day or tire. Some guys do tires every day or whatever it is.

Mike VO  4:54  
I don't know Matt's learning severely every day and usually not in a good way.

Roy Merritt  4:58  
He has learned Quite a few lessons

Aaron Staudinger  5:01  
today, this is my second full transmission cassette, I think I only had to ask one major question, I pretty much got everything

Roy Merritt  5:08  
I needed in that aspect of front, you know, when you're selling, the best thing you can do is keep keep keep burnouts of the rows that you've done. So if you're going to do sadiya, that maybe you're going to sell somebody else fat stack you keep Yeah, you keep that aro parts list. When when the job is done, when it worked. You know, when you quote it, that's one list. But when the job gets done, those are the list that you keep, because Okay, we finished this job with these parts. And then you can use that on to your next estimate. And this is what separates

Mike VO  5:47  
the men from the boys are really

Roy Merritt  5:48  
good salespeople from the guys that are just collecting them hatchet. I am

Aaron Staudinger  5:52  
not hitting up tonight. You had a rough

Roy Merritt  5:54  
night, I worked with a guy in Claremont that I broke you. His name was Sean. And he kind of was kind of, I don't want to say weird dude, because we're all weird. But not a lot of people really liked him. He's bigger

Mike VO  6:07  
yourself, buddy. He, he.

Roy Merritt  6:11  
He was very particular, about everything. What he had, he had a camera setup and everything. And now this was quite a few years ago. He would every bike that he put a different exhaust on he would go out and do a video and a sound of that exhaust. And he would keep them on his hard drive in his computer. And he was he was what we call the chrome inator or chrome consultant, or what's the other one?

Shane Langdon  6:35  
There's there's a

Roy Merritt  6:39  
chrome sexual. That's it. Yeah, Chrome sounds like there's one that's kind of like a dickhead thing to say, yeah, Chrome is sexual. So the Terminator, he would, he would, you know, bring guys in to sit him down at his desk and be like, this is what a stock bike sounds like, you know, on his computer, this is what this sounds like, this is what this sounds like, this is what this sounds like. And he sold a shit ton of exhaust that way. When he would do new stuff, he took pictures, he kept all of that stuff on his computer. And when it came down to selling stuff, he was great at it. Oh, you want to know what this looks like on your bike? Here? Let me you know, Bob pulls it up shows it to a lot of work into that and he ended up at Was it hard driver? I don't think it was hard drive one of those as a rep, you know, moved on to like the distributor side. His sales were always good. You kill it. And customers hate it. Like, I don't want to say hated him. But I can't tell you how many customers that would be like, fuck him. I'm not going in there. Every time I go in there, I spent two $3,000 fucking worked over, you know what I mean? And it was like, well, that's what he's supposed to do. You know, like, you get mad at the guy for doing his bugging jobs and

Mike VO  7:53  
self control, buddy. Yeah, you wanted to spend the money?

Roy Merritt  7:56  
Yeah, you obviously wanted to spend it or you wouldn't, you know, but at the same time, you know, they, they can go back, you know, they they did that. And you know, if you've done this for quite a few years, especially the god like, I've known a few parts guys that have done it for 2025 years, I didn't look shit up and books really anymore. You know, most of the stuff that people came for, they'd done 100 200 times, at least. And they knew the part numbers, they knew exactly where it was, they just walk back there and grab it and hand it to you, you know, yep. That's a rarity, you know, but the newer guys, you know, they have to get there by either remembering or writing stuff down or, or whatever it is. And, and that's a big one to start with, you know, is using what you've done to learn as a technician. We do that every day.

Mike VO  8:42  
When I was at superstition, we had a Parcel Service guy that was he was a tech for like 20 years. And then he got out of that and then became a parts salesman for like 10 years and got tired of that and then went parts of service was so bad as having him

Aaron Staudinger  8:59  
his encyclopedic knowledge of everything you were doing basically, right.

Mike VO  9:04  
Like he was kind of like a in step with what you needed. And, you know, large, like, knew what was going on all the time. And there we had a, you know, much better bigger building this, we had a good setup. So we had all of our special special tools. We're all back in our parts of service area, like on his own room. So when you would do a job like say you're doing like, transmission job. When he put your parts he go, oh, here, let me get the tools. And he just shut off all the special tools in the basket and you're just like, Oh, I love this guy. Yeah.

Roy Merritt  9:35  
Yeah, it's a whole nother level. Yeah, you know, there really is a you know, at my old shop, we had a couple guys been doing a long time and so I'd walk back and be like, hey, I need I'm gonna do a shift draught seal on this and they grab all the parts. He no it was most of the time and then Steve he was dick sometimes. So you walk up there with like an odd ballpark. And and Oh, hey, Steve. I need this you need me to look at him for it. He'd be like, yeah, look it up, let me know. And then you'd go look it up and come back, you get to sit on the fucking counter. Motherfucker do Why do you do that to me every time you come up, and he kind of looked at me like, Oh, you need me to look it up, you know, no big deal, I'll go look it up bag, he sit on the counter and fucking hate you. But, you know, as a technician,

Shane Langdon  10:21  
I think a lot of our

Roy Merritt  10:27  
continuing education, if you will, aside from the experience of what you're working on comes from the people next to you. I think if you're in a good shop, and you have a good relationship with the guys around you, when you find new things that that you haven't seen before, or you haven't run into before we all tell each other, you know, we grabbed you like, Dude, come look at this. I've never seen this before, you know, and there's a reason for that. Because we all know, we, you know, we want to know the next time This comes in. I want to know that that's what the problem is, you know what I mean? So that that's a lot of where you learn is from the guys next to you I know shops where guys, you know, Jordan said, You know one of the shops he was at that like nobody talked to each other they were you know, you went over and ask them something they were like fuck you get away from me. Just I don't understand that. Yeah, I don't like how do you better yourself as a as a shop in general like that. You know, you're just running a machine at that point. You know?

Aaron Staudinger  11:24  
Yeah, and well that has to do with just being stuck in a comfort zone right? Like do things that put yourself out of the comfort zone a little bit you'll learn Oh, absolutely. Oh

Unknown Speaker  11:34  
absolutely learned doing that.

Roy Merritt  11:35  
If you're in your comfort zone every day that's boring. I mean, you know we get out of our comfort I get out of my comfort zone and I'm a bit a little bit but yeah, that's why I do this job. You know what I mean? Shit that truck I got a balancer buried under done that before okay? Fuck it, let's do it. You know? I mean, I don't I don't block it too much. I might pitch a little bit or my biggest thing is when I enter a job, I want to I want to like start it properly. So sometimes I'll grab work or I don't understand what's going on or what's up and I will spend 10 or 15 minutes getting everything figured the fuck out about what I'm doing and what I'm not getting you and everything before I start Yeah, because fuck man if I spend 20 minutes doing so I'm not supposed to that's worse by the way the fuck worse. Yeah, I mean, so a lot of times I I have to like get shit straight and I want to know what I'm getting into that I worked on a sporty this weekend we put the guy up his clutch on the dyno drag and he had a recluse XP clutch.

Aaron Staudinger  12:39  
That's a typical auto clutch.

Roy Merritt  12:41  
clutch. So it it's got an expander plate. Y'all saw it when I had it apart. And then they have what they call a radius cx clutch which is the same thing with recluse plates and Steel's in it. So when we went back we upgraded them you know to that good stuff. I've never done one of these before. So I'm playing off of my experience of doing a lot of clutches i mean i get how clutches work and so you know Saturday I'm doing this stuff and I'm adjusting this thing and I I had instructions for something but it wasn't the right kit there was a similar auto clutch whatever it was so I was like reading the instructions trying to get through I figure stack height all that is what it is. I wasn't worried about that get it all in and it auto clutch arches would not work

Aaron Staudinger  13:34  
and, and you're afraid to rev it like wow,

Roy Merritt  13:37  
you couldn't even read it. Yeah, you couldn't even read it with caution if you put the clutch in and put it in first and Revit you're done. It's gone. So I call it quits because it's Saturday and I tried to call the company they were close I went online to get their manuals, their links are all dead. And I was like I i'm i'm not going to waste a bunch of fucking time on this. While I don't have any there's nothing more in my head than what I've done. I'm not going to learn anything more and you know come to find out for those listening that that know how to adjust the clutch most of the time you kind of automate your adjuster and then give it some play and on those clutches you actually do quite the opposite you you run it in and then you run it into a separate sub plates so in that centrifugal expander plate eats up the difference it starts to work which makes sense when you're thinking about it. You know, when you don't have like instructions and everything. I couldn't figure that out. And of course the guy you know I'm talking to the guy he knows this shit I'll give the guy's a recluse some credit. I think it took a 10 minute phone call with him. And I was pretty particular about asking questions and these are the thicknesses of the discs I have is this right? You know I want to make sure the other guy got me right. And when it was all said and done, he put me down the right path. I went back adjusted at one time and it worked perfect. And I was like all thank you God. And that was a lesson learned. Look who's calling. Yeah, I'm gonna have to be in a school. Yeah, so Shane's trying to call so What's up, buddy? How you doing, man?

Shane Langdon  15:12  
Oh, hello, Ready Get the hell out of Florida. Yeah, why Florida is awesome or I love that's why I moved to Tennessee. Yeah, right.

Aaron Staudinger  15:26  
How's school going man?

Shane Langdon  15:28  
Um, you know, kind of all those things. It's cool to take apart a street, even though I'll never do it again. You won't. But the Sportster you know, horses a little quick little refresh, but other than that man's bow, you know, a lot of things transfer over our common sense goes to the street, but you learn a cool little stuff and you know, transmissions a little different. That's, you know, but

Roy Merritt  15:52  
well, we were we were talking about, you know, how you kind of better yourself continuing education, if you will, not everybody has access to dealer classes. And I thought, you know, we kind of give an idea of what it's like to go to dealer class and I you know, me Mike, we've been so what day are you and your day three today?

Shane Langdon  16:14  
Yeah. Okay, the shop tomorrow? Yeah,

Roy Merritt  16:16  
so what day one day two, you did what streets maybe.

Shane Langdon  16:21  
Now, we started out with this Porsche 41st. Okay, did we did some lesson stuff and then, you know, compression, leak down talk, things like that. Yeah. And then went into the paradigm of sporster. Which, you know, I just rebuild my sparser and there's no fluid in the engine and so it comes are pretty dang quick. Yeah, I imagine in order for everybody to know you're out of school, so they're actually getting a lot of info which is great. But it also somebody like me who's used to being flat rate tech. And time is of the essence is a big Oh, yeah. shock of kind of like, Okay, cool. It took the rockers off. Will you want me to do you get there? Yeah. Okay. So yeah, that's something

Roy Merritt  17:10  
people don't understand. So you kind of go through steps and they'll tell you hey, we're gonna get to the lower rockers for instance. And you if you're quick like Shane, you know, and most of us probably go sure Mike same way if I'm not the first one done, or the second one done, and yeah, and then you wait for everybody else to kind of catch up so that they can explain what the next step is and and this is something that aftermarket shops this is really what separates dealerships from aftermarket shops is the dealer support the dealer education so change in Orlando he you know, you took apart a sporty you probably you're working on your street now.

Shane Langdon  17:52  
Yeah, we we disassemble all the way down to cases transmission apart and put the transmission back together and back in the case half today. Yeah. Tomorrow we'll go through now are they in? So they're almost in separate cases because the way it bolster the scan is discernible. The back of the motor or the case? You got to take the case off? Yeah. This separate they're no they're not on the bike. And you know, no, no electronics don't even have a guy didn't even have push rods in his in his party is half of the you know, the rear stoners missing both push rod, oh man

Roy Merritt  18:38  
have probably been taken apart and put back together so many times.

Shane Langdon  18:42  
I know one of the guys I was helping with a shift fork and like getting the shifting set up. And he's like, man, I don't know why this thing's shifting. So rough. I know. It's bright and light, like, take it apart, put back together a million different ways. You know, like the cases are stamped with all actors all the way across. Like they never went in the field. They just went straight through the school. Yeah. But it's cool. I mean, you know, some of these guys had, you know, DSO or dealer service operations and got to do last on the street. So how many guys do some things were?

Roy Merritt  19:14  
How many guys?

Shane Langdon  19:17  
There's seven of us. Seven.

Roy Merritt  19:19  
What were the most experienced in the classes in time?

Shane Langdon  19:24  
probably four or five years. So you? Yeah.

Roy Merritt  19:31  
You have the most experience in the class.

Shane Langdon  19:33  
Yeah. You know, there's a couple guys from Pensacola. There's three guys from school. Hello guys. taking apart a street a couple times, you know, rebuilt recently. You know, he's the street guy set up. And yeah, yeah, that's our starter. So have you have you been handing out cards and drumming up business? Yeah, at first, like in the first day, I don't think they took a liking to me very much, but gone on. We've we've been a little bit more, why didn't Why didn't I get the? I don't know. They just they you know, some people just you know, happy to meet Jim talked in when they saw my shirt and they'll call me and we're talking about stuff and they're just very, you know very short as far as the conversation went for the first day or so like those guys I know. They don't they

Roy Merritt  20:20  
don't work in moonshine Harley Davidson, so I'm sure it sucks for them. Yeah.

Shane Langdon  20:23  
I think they're a little bit later. Those guys like they keep they keep telling us the numbers though.

Roy Merritt  20:30  
Yeah, well, you know,

Shane Langdon  20:33  
a couple of cool little things like we talked about the instructor is his golf rice back and he's done a lot of pit crew stuff for road racing and worked in the I think he's like 35 years in the industry. Is there different companies and different Pino is racing and so he's, he's really easygoing is very knowledgeable. So it's pretty cool. And yeah, like one thing I didn't really know is about the water test for noisy Sportster. Oh, yeah. Operating. So we talked about that a little bit. And, you know, we're talking about leak down. And so how

Roy Merritt  21:12  
do you do like Aaron, you know, new. I don't know what that is a water test. Yeah, so So long story short, basically, you get a sporty hot unit up to operating temperature. And if it's making noises, you know, to the complaint would be noise while hot.

Shane Langdon  21:26  
was a garden hose or

Roy Merritt  21:28  
whatever. And pour water, your kidney on the side. Because it's where all of the bushings that the cams right on aren't coming. So you cool that down real quick while it's running and it should shrink the bushing if the noise goes away, those bushings are fucked. Wow.

Shane Langdon  21:47  
Yeah. Yeah, no, no, no compression leak down and you know, different things and having the however do one on the Sportster ever.

Roy Merritt  22:00  
Break is like, complete catastrophic failure. And you don't need to take longer to figure out what

Shane Langdon  22:05  
compression is, you know, like he said, first thing is freshers get the motor hot, like the bikes are running back there. Exactly. But the cool thing to talk about, like week down, you know, the manual says 10% variance, and he goes, he goes 10% ish. He's like, you know, if you have a sporty with an 83 is like a three cylinder versus a four and a quarter bore cylinder, you know, 10% on one and 14. So the others probably pretty close. Yeah, because of how much surface area there is. But he's also talking about, you know, doing, if the cylinder is bottled in the center, you know, it's got good compression at the top. But if it's, if it's got a big score or something in the center, you're not going to notice that. So you, you get the top designer compression, and you do your leak out or you bottom center and do leak down the 100% leak down and then you rotate the motor over until you build up pressure and C and set the center to test the center cylinder Make sense? Little stuff like that, you know, guys, the guys having issues with the bike running, starting up cold, no problem, but I want to get caught it doesn't want to start and then when it cools down it starts again. Because you know the fallacies are beat from them rubbing it up or you know the push rods are just as wrong and so when it gets caught everything wells and that hang in the intake valve open just enough to where where the thought it doesn't have you know, starting fresh Can

Roy Merritt  23:38  
you can't be at three valves up enough. I by experience you cannot

Shane Langdon  23:50  
like those guys that just bring off the rebel over your, your stops by racers.

Roy Merritt  23:58  
I think there's no worse way to do a motor than op gear redline. Like that's the worst you can do to a motor because that's the most load everything you can be doing. So if you can bounce it off the rev limiter for 20 or 30 minutes, like I have you do that motor

up to 90 miles an hour.

Well, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I wouldn't be able to go fast any other way? Yeah, yeah. Do we talked about that? People were like, Oh, it's pretty quick. I'm like, yeah, it's everything. It's got, I write it, everything it's got otherwise it's really sucking slow.

Shane Langdon  24:33  
stream. He was talking about the you know, the wesleys on the on the street. And he pulls the cylinder over and he just pushes down on the on the face of the cylinder. Yeah, off the sleeve. Out of the 500 he goes yeah, that's it. I'm like that's all this cold coming together. Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, and

Roy Merritt  24:55  
and so when when that came out, and you guys were all working then

Mike VO  24:59  
at home Sleep.

Shane Langdon  25:01  
Well, yeah,

Roy Merritt  25:02  
yeah. And when that came out they had said they were going to do a bunch of performance shit. And it made sense. It was like, dude, you could pull the sleeve out of that cylinder but you know, a different sleeve and Nicosia sleeve or something, you know, whatever you had to do whatever you could do.

Shane Langdon  25:18  
It oversleep for both of them. They do. Yeah,

Mike VO  25:22  
no, that's the first I've heard of that. There's no tuning. So Well yeah,

Shane Langdon  25:25  
he was basically saying you could do like the streets. The streets with with the stage one actually you get like a slip on and download actually get four or five more miles a gallon on fuel range. They run better when they have a stage one. He was saying if you do that you basically do a street tune and use makeovers hang out like so it's running super lean, but slightly quicker.

Mike VO  25:52  
So everything's super lean. Well, yeah,

Roy Merritt  25:55  
that the day that that 750 especially feels totally choked off from the factory. Like that motor fuse kit wants to give a lot more power than it does and people who have written them we've just been waiting for that to happen because Dude, you could probably make a pretty quick little bike out of that with the right parts the right cams, the right stuff, you know? Yep. You could probably make a pretty quick little bike but just nobody wants to

Shane Langdon  26:24  
leave you go underwater.

Roy Merritt  26:30  
Go into my phone from your ass before you speak. I do that to my wife. She is so fucking mad to me. Call me call me quick.

Shane Langdon  26:42  
holding the phone was my ears.

Roy Merritt  26:45  
Yeah, I just got another beer out of the

Shane Langdon  26:49  
water to finish off this for I checked out in the morning. So

Roy Merritt  26:52  
yeah. So yeah. So today and to give people an idea. So today at a slow pace. You split the cases on a street, completely disassembled split the cases on the street and transmission apart, put it back transmission apart and back together.

Shane Langdon  27:09  
at a slow pace. A slow pace. Yeah. Like it like a snail's pace. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  27:14  
well, I'll

Unknown Speaker  27:15  
tell you,

Roy Merritt  27:16  
I mean, great motors already out it takes an hour, hour and a half to get the motor out of a motherfucker. Anyways.

Mike VO  27:22  
It's gonna say so you know, I haven't I didn't go. When I went the midbrain. The street wasn't out. You know that video. When I went to get a new you know the video that you watch that john, what's his name? JOHN? guy that does a video. You know, talking about Shane,

Shane Langdon  27:42  
for the PhD.

Mike VO  27:45  
You want Yeah, but you watch that video right at the beginning? Where the guy's talking about it. He kind of goes through and does like, the 15 minute version of everything you could do in the class. Don't you watch that video?

Shane Langdon  27:56  
No, we didn't do that. Oh, we just did a little slideshow is 2020 we've done watch videos like that. theme song from ECS Welcome to PHP service training.

Roy Merritt  28:16  
So one of the cool things wire class the AR stuff that they're working on. Oh yeah. Yes, it is. Like you can pull up like they haven't for the Live Wire you can pull up the exploded you know, take shit apart. We

Mike VO  28:35  
don't have it.

Roy Merritt  28:36  
Yeah. Yeah, these years. Where you can like you can leave your phone. Yeah, so the idea would you pick up your phone? You pointed it to biking it shows you how it comes apart? Basically. Yeah, no shit. Yeah, yeah, it's fucking cool. When you do live wire, you'll see it. They showed the show.

Mike VO  28:52  
And it's yet another layer of separation between engineers and real life. Oh, yeah. Here's even more idiotic about how the shit actually works. Because now they go, well I got to do is pull right over here on this piece of air. And that whole side cover comes off. I don't understand why it's gonna take you 35 minutes.

Roy Merritt  29:12  
Now. You know, you're a dealer class. And like I said, we're talking about kind of continuing education, there is no better way to learn how to take a motor apart and put it back together than in a class like that. Because there are ask questions. And when it's all said and done, it's not a customer bike that has to roll out and the guy's gonna put miles on and come back with a fucking oil leak or whatever the fuck it is. You know what I mean? Your your margin of error is much larger in the classroom. And you have any children. I do it as a learning experience. Oh yeah, you miss all your tools. It is so that is one of the biggest things I struggle with when I go is like figuring out where stuff is. Nothing's organized without inches.

Shane Langdon  30:01  
yeah nothing. Craftsman wrap wrapping wrenches, ratcheting wrenches like like the like your ratchet your normal ratchet craftsman. Like what? Like a 12 step on? Yeah. Yeah, I got a fucking Craftsman button style ratchet. Just

Unknown Speaker  30:26  
Yeah,

Mike VO  30:27  
I've never I've never been I've never ever been to a Harley Davidson class where they had anything other than snap on tools correct?

Shane Langdon  30:33  
Yeah, I think they're saving money by replacing stuff and it's just that Oh, and

Roy Merritt  30:38  
well what I understand the snap on MMI like dealer relationship has kind of been muddied the waters have been muddied since we've been through like they were so much closer tie to like Harley and snap on and MMI and all that but from what I understand Stefan's trying to get out of there.

Shane Langdon  30:57  
Some of these guys are doing like the schools it goes Tom they do some stuff online and then they come in for two or three days a week or

Mike VO  31:05  
die. They get in contact with each other. Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous. So

Shane Langdon  31:10  
you'd like to check them a wristband at the frogs were getting out of the building. To Yeah. So we you're in Orlando.

Roy Merritt  31:19  
You're in the other building. I heard that building now has like boats and stuff in it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was that was all.

Shane Langdon  31:28  
Yeah, molars right next to our shop. When

Mike VO  31:31  
I did. I did. I think I did touring electronics there, like in 2012, I think. And that was the only time I ever went to Orlando for that class, a smaller campus than Phoenix. You know, I don't know, because we didn't really you don't really see the

Roy Merritt  31:46  
campus. It's only those two buildings, because?

Mike VO  31:49  
Well, we were we just were in the one one. Yeah. And then one had like watercraft and outboard motors and stuff in there. And then they had a 12. Yeah. And then they had HDU.

Roy Merritt  31:59  
Yeah, he was kind of back in the back corner. Yeah. And they kind of have their own thing better.

Mike VO  32:03  
So are you in the building where you like walk in? And it's like a little miniature break room? Yeah. That's where you like, have lunch? And then you go, and it's kind of like, yeah.

Unknown Speaker  32:19  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Roy Merritt  32:22  
He was over there. When I went through. I don't remember to move shit around. But yeah. So tomorrow, yeah, you will, you will put that motor back together, and probably be done by one o'clock. said and done and your class, like for

Mike VO  32:39  
you guys eat?

Shane Langdon  32:42  
Or do you have a gardener? No, we all have our own owner.

Mike VO  32:45  
I will say that, you know, signing you up for the class. The classes seem to be a lot smaller, as far as like they only allow eight or 912. Yeah, they only allow like eight people in the classes now.

Shane Langdon  32:57  
Yeah. Used to be. Yeah. There used to be 12. Because what they do is they teachers people are, well, they'd have you started, they go over, like the overview of everything. And then six guys would start on the Forster guys would start on the street. And then you came by pop out voters. But I don't know. I mean, there's no time to get your stuff checked off. And you can ask more questions. A little bit more. One on one. Peter.

Roy Merritt  33:28  
Yeah, I don't know your teacher that I think of I don't think I know him

Unknown Speaker  33:31  
lie sack. I'd be surprised that I sack Oh, fried rice. No.

Shane Langdon  33:37  
glasses. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  33:40  
Yeah, I

Roy Merritt  33:41  
know who he is. Yeah.

Mike VO  33:44  
Is he male?

Unknown Speaker  33:46  
He

Roy Merritt  33:51  
said that. He's got glasses. I think I know who you're talking wearing a

Mike VO  33:55  
black and orange striped shirt.

Unknown Speaker  33:59  
Say Harley Davidson on it. Or HDU at you, right. I

Mike VO  34:03  
think I know that.

Shane Langdon  34:04  
Yeah.

Roy Merritt  34:06  
A lot of the guys over at MMI in Orlando. Not so much. But, you know,

Shane Langdon  34:11  
for years.

Mike VO  34:13  
It would be weird to to. So like, you're gonna go what's what's going to be cool with you is because you were neglected for so long over the years. As far as being able to go to these classes. You're going to go to a gauntlet of over the next couple years, you're going to go to so many, you're probably going to have again. Yeah. And then you'll have them again. And then you'll have them again. Yeah, I mean, so you're gonna kind of get to know these guys. Because you're gonna you have like eight classes to go to. So that you can get to the level you actually perform at and we can, you know, put on paper that you are where you say you are. Yeah, so that part's kind of cool. Because

Roy Merritt  34:52  
so we can talk about that for a second because you know, the the master tech thing is a badge of honor. If you Bill, but it doesn't really say a lot about whether you're a good Decker.

Unknown Speaker  35:06  
Oh, also. Oh,

Unknown Speaker  35:08  
no shame.

Roy Merritt  35:11  
standpoint you me absolutely anything really any any standpoint? Like Shane has not worn the master moniker. But chain is a master tech?

Mike VO  35:20  
Oh, yeah. Jordan still here?

Unknown Speaker  35:23  
I don't know I heard him bullshit off

Roy Merritt  35:25  
it Yeah, he's master. The only thing he hasn't done is live wire, which doesn't count as you needed. But so so the way it works for the people listening that don't know there are there are basically stages of levels and it starts with a staff level and then technician gets advanced expert, and then master. There are online courses you have to do for each level. And then there are instructor led courses you have to do from technician level there. Yeah, yeah, people that go through MMI get the first two dealer classes if they do everything right and passer assessment and you know are good at what they do. They come out at a technician level with those first two dealer classes done. This is what's supposed to make an MMI graduate appealing to a dealership is that imagine those, you know, sending somebody to a class cost couple thousand dollars when it's all said they said $5,000 in school. that's a that's a top end of what it really costs when it's all said and done. But it's not far, you know, it's thousands of dollars. It's not records of dollars. So when a dealership sees that, it's like, man, there's a couple of thousand dollars easily that I can save by hiring this guy. Sure. But not, you know, do Shane's experience it not all dealers actually send their techs to school.

Shane Langdon  36:57  
Oh, and

Roy Merritt  36:57  
part of that because it is expensive. It is it is is inexpensive, it is not cheap. So when I when I lived in Orlando, those first few levels of classes, most of them are offered in Orlando. So it was easy for my dealer to send me to those classes. And we were an hourly shop. So she made a hell of a profit margin off of us anyways. And I was when I was in that shop is because

Shane Langdon  37:25  
in the hotel, the travel, you know, the the cost of the class, you also have to take into consideration what you're paying the tech a week of times to be there and learn right or losing out the 119 an hour that he fills the entire afternoon, that's a bigger hit, I think on the grand scheme

Mike VO  37:45  
of things. That's where that's where, because you know, you're like, like just for your your deal. So you're getting, you know, four days of basically 100% paid wage or training. Yeah. And the classes $550 you're getting paid to be there, your hotel was like is going to be like $400 sounds about right there. We're paying for dinner, because you get breakfast and lunch. And the flight was like $600 or whatever, for the round trip.

Roy Merritt  38:16  
So and then 220 $700 on average.

Mike VO  38:19  
And then like you said, you know, you average between 50 and 60 build hours week at $119 an hour. So, you know, five? Well, you

Roy Merritt  38:28  
figure 10 hours a day and hours a day, you know, for days, you know, so many hours at $120 an hour, Buck that adds up? Yeah. And that's money you could be making? Yeah, you know, for the business. So, again, that is being staffed properly,

Shane Langdon  38:44  
or one on one arrays. And dealerships don't want to deal with that. So yeah, and then other times like me, I you know, one of the shops, I had a 42 year, guys 60 years old in the industry 42 years. Yeah. So you learn a lot from him. Oh, yeah.

Roy Merritt  39:01  
So they figured, well, if he if I can teach him and he can learn everything is gonna learn at this class, but I'll have to spend the money on it, and give them a raise, I'll just give them a little bit of a raise now and call it so we kind of talked about that before he called which was, you know, one of the best ways to learn any good shop, which I consider as a good shop, because we all get along well is from each other. You know, when we when we find something new, we show each other, you know, we're like, Hey, dude, you gotta see this, you know, I feel the same way about those dealer classes. Or at least it used to be that way. Because when I was going through them, I was the four or five year guy, three, four year guy, and everybody else I was in class with or 10 or 15 year guys. And I learned a lot from those guys. When we were doing our homework and stuff sitting around drinking beer and just talking because one of the things people don't realize about this business is where you're at. Make sense? A lot of difference about what you see. Yeah. So yeah, the problems that you see in Phoenix and the problems that you see in Orlando, are totally different, right. And you might get some of the same problems. But what you see the most of is not the same. So, you know, you go to class with these guys that are like, man, we get these bikes all the time they do this. And it's always, you know, this. So one of the examples was down in Florida, because of the salt, air and everything else corrosion. So we would get in one of the first symptoms that I that was very consistent was the volt meter bounces. And that's one of the first complaints that we noticed it on. And what we found was the main fuse would get corroded. And it would still pass electricity and everything else, but it was fluctuating. So the volt meter was showing, and man, you pull that mean, fuse out, clean it, put some dielectric grease on, throw it back in problems gone. Now, this job, you spend an hour, hour and a half to hearing that out. You know what I mean? It's not that simple. So then when you go to classes, and you're talking to guys, you're like, dude, if you ever see this, go here, you know, those little, you might get one or two. And each time you go to class, those little help outs are amazing. You know what you learn for other guy? One

Shane Langdon  41:25  
guy, one guy was like, Yeah, well, you know, Ortiz went a lot better a lot quieter with oil. We're talking about oil and oil, you know, oil, pressure and all that. And he goes, Yeah, because you're here in Florida. Yeah. It does bring up noise. It's not going to start in the winter. Yeah. You know, that's all relevant to where you're at some guys jump in mud dauber issues when they get in to the battle lines for the fuel tank. Yes. Very common in Florida. And cars. I mean, you know, freakin mud daubers or spiders. I mean, there's all kinds of weird stuff that certain, you know, geographic areas We'll see.

Roy Merritt  42:01  
But these are things without these classes are, are hard lessons learned in the shop. And that that was kind of where I was going with the topic tonight was, you know, what are the other ways that you can kind of learn these lessons without having to do it the hard way? You know?

Shane Langdon  42:22  
Yeah. And networking is nice, too. Because, you know, I've had, you know, the luxury of working with a lot of cool tech from different shops through the years. Absolutely. And so there's guys that you know, nobody in our shop has any idea I'll throw a line out be like, Hey, man, you ever come across this? Every once in a while? They'll be like, Oh, yeah, I know what that is. Yeah.

Roy Merritt  42:43  
No, really, in the industry. That's the other thing about going to dealer classes. It's really nice. Meeting guys in the industry. In fact, that's kind of how you met Jordan wasn't it? Was was your class?

Mike VO  42:56  
He wasn't in my class. Yeah, I was there for live wire. He was there. He was getting his doing. It's one of the master classes, I think. Yeah. And

Roy Merritt  43:06  
so the master classes, like, all the way up until master the base of classes are about what but Shane's talking about, you kind of do any way you do a new way to do a new way. Master power train is kinda like that. For Shane, it'll be like that, because he knows the Milwaukee eight motor pretty well, when I went through master power train, I had never taught him to hockey a motor apart before. So it was like four months after it was released. It was it was really quick. And so that was my, you know, entrance into it. And I don't think I was the first one done every time you know what I mean? I don't think I was, you know, that, that that guy, I was there and I and I made time and I'm you know, made my, my grade and everything like that. But, um, you know, the real one that everybody talks about is master electrical. And, you know, long story short about master electrical is is they give you a real workload is when it's when it's all said and done. A good technician that understands electrical, and can read a manual and knows to start in the beginning at, you know, diagnostics will do very well in that class. But, I mean, I was, I think, I think I might have the highest grade in that class when I went through but didn't know second. And it you know, I've always kind of been the electrical guy. I watched people struggle, man, I you know, there was a, a pre Rushmore bagger in there that they did some audio diagnostics on that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was like the switches. It was Yeah, it was super simple. Yeah, it was super simple. It was like they had it was like when you push volume down on the back, it would go volume up, and when you push volume up, it would go But if you picked up the manual and read through the initial diagnostics for, I think it was in that section, it said, if you have a switch giving you, you know, the function of another switch, then those two wires are shorted together. And I'm like, okay, so I went and disconnected the connector grabbed my own meter. Sure enough, they're shorted together. I was done five minutes. Yeah, and the teachers like, and when you get to the master level, you know, before then they want you to do everything, the way it's done in the book, no matter what, even if you understand it, and you know, shortcut, it has to be done this way. When you have a master electrical teacher say, I don't give a shit how you got there. As long as when I come over, you can explain it to me. And I know you understand what's going on. Yeah. over. And he's like, you know, gives me this strange look, because it was literally five minutes. And he's like, how did you get to this so quickly? You know, kind of grilling me? And I said, Well, in initial diagnostics, it says this. And my meter says the same thing. And he's like, you're right. You walk away. And I was the end. And I walked, I watched guys with breakout boxes. If you don't know what a breakout box is, it's a login box. They make them for every connector damn near and allows you to test everything wireless, connected and go through the

Mike VO  46:30  
flowcharts. And oh, yeah, the end of every flowchart. If it passed, me please. Walk it

Roy Merritt  46:40  
no bullshit. I'm walking by these guys, like start over. Because you're not allowed to help each other. Like, that's a no, no. And I'm like walking by like,

Unknown Speaker  46:49  
at the beginning, when?

Mike VO  46:50  
When did you go through math? When did you go through math?

Roy Merritt  46:59  
15 years. Massey? 16. probably

Shane Langdon  47:01  
wasn't the for BCM.

Roy Merritt  47:05  
So it was around the time that people were bitching. Yeah. And they were doing something about

Mike VO  47:12  
so yeah. So I went through a one year that I went through. I think, like halfway through 14 when they is a revised it. They they revise Master?

Roy Merritt  47:25  
Yeah, they came out with a new Yeah, a new car, you

Mike VO  47:28  
had to take it apart, put it back together again, and then run it in the class after you grades it. Yeah.

Roy Merritt  47:33  
And you have to be within like 5% on the dyno or whatever it is. You got to make dyno numbers. You have to

Mike VO  47:38  
Yeah, you have to run it on the dyno to pass so the bike has to run. And you have to be able to do a full poll with grenading it though.

Roy Merritt  47:45  
Yeah. On a brand new just build on?

Mike VO  47:48  
Well, and not only that, but I don't know if they still do the master engine class this way. But what I went through it, when you are taking it apart, you need to inspect everything is done correctly, because you're grading the guy that did it before. Correct. So the week before, when the guy what have you saw together? If you suck, how can you grade someone else's work? Well, because when you're taking it apart, they tell you like, this is the way the push rod goes. If your push rods are upside down, I need to know to watch it because you don't really you don't realize that you're grading that guy before you until you get the motor disassembled. And did you ever do like plant motors where they knew there was something wrong? And they put something in there? No. No, they do that in electrical? Yeah. When I went to electrical? There's no like in most of classes, like you know, you probably have like a some class time right chain where you guys went over like this. This this this? You wrote a bit down a bunch of stuff. Yeah, like half the first half of the first day and then the first half today probably.

Shane Langdon  48:51  
Yeah. When you go to lecture this level can be doing this is what you look for.

Mike VO  48:56  
Yeah. So when I went to master electrical, there were eight people that was the first class that they said there can be only eight people in the class. Because there anymore and and they wouldn't be able to instructor wouldn't be able to spend enough time. Yeah, for people to actually pass a class. Yeah. So I get to the class. And you hear hear rumors, but at that time, it was so new that nobody knew. But they were like, this is a 50% failure rate class. So you're like, motherfucker. Yeah. And it's PCM. So it was all fairly new Anyway, you know, I mean, the only thing you really had to BCM till 14 was soft pills. And I mean, they never broke so yeah, you know, I mean, the new technology Canvas is it's pretty, pretty amazing. Fucking reliable. And also they run great. If you know how to work. It's great for diagnostics. Great for everything. Yeah. So we get in there and the class teacher pulls us around, and he's like, how many of you guys are retakes? For guys raise their hand. And we're looking over like, Oh, shit. Oh my god. Class. Yeah, it has already failed this class. Once. You're like, But all the rumors are true. Yeah. And he says, and so he says, Look, this isn't like the other classes you took. This is a test. Yeah, this is a four day test. Because if you're not at a master level electrical, you will not pass it, you will not pass this class. Yeah. If you don't know what you're doing, and you don't know how these systems work, you're in the wrong class. There

Roy Merritt  50:19  
is something to say about that. Now getting your master now, if you can pass master electrical, you do know your way around the electrical system fairly well. Yeah.

Mike VO  50:26  
You know, because then the first day, you go, and he's like, this is what we're gonna do. You need to diagram, a starting system, diagram, a charging system diagram,

Shane Langdon  50:40  
a

Mike VO  50:42  
starting charging ignition, what was the fourth one? Starting charging ignition. Something else I can't remember what the fourth one was. But and they were all on ECM bikes. So like, what tripped everybody up was, you know, you're like, what wire then it's like, just questions. Which wire is a starter relay? You're like, well, there isn't a starter relay to PCM. Yeah, but there is a starter relay wire in the BCM. When you start looking at the wire schematic, and you're like, holy shit, look, starter relay. Okay. All right. Okay, now I'm getting a feel for it. And then so that was one task. The next task was you had to test the starter motor. And then you had to pinch the relay. Yeah. And then remember that, that might have been it. That there were four stations, but I can't remember anyway, did you guys do oscilloscope? The second day? You will the last day? Yeah, we did it second day. And then the last two days were troubleshoot.

Roy Merritt  51:39  
See, they did ours at the end, because they were like you need to focus on troubleshooting. Because this is where you're going to lose your time. So and oscilloscope. Yeah,

Mike VO  51:50  
by then. And so the thing the thing about it was though, was the pace was so fast that you couldn't go backwards. So like the first day, if you weren't a real keen on bench testing a starter motor, because we don't really do that anymore. Yeah. And yeah, and you struggle trying to figure out how to do it, because I do not do it that much anymore. But I mean, that how to do it is actually kind of confusing if you don't know how to do it. Yeah. You know, like you do the hold in Poland test. And you're like, so what do I know? You know, like, so now I just take this off. I don't get it. Yeah. Yeah. The Wire often it just snaps back.

Yeah. So then then day two is a Scylla scope. And if you're not real savvy with computers, the oscilloscope fucking kicks the shit out of you. Because everybody got their ass

Roy Merritt  52:47  
kicked by a computer. It's all laptop. And I didn't have any problem because I got how it all worked and right whatnot, and I'm good with computers. But yeah, I watch guys struggle with that. And it was like, Man, this is so simple, why. And then the last few

Mike VO  53:02  
days were troubleshooting. And what they do in master electrical is they don't bug the bikes. They put all the components in the bikes. So it's actual real field failures. It's not like bullshit. Like what he's talking about.

Shane Langdon  53:18  
warranty repair services they serve. Yeah,

Mike VO  53:20  
yeah. So. So you know, there was a bike that like, you turn the power on, and every time you hit the button, everything shuts off, but the security flashes. And you're like, What the fuck is this? You don't I mean, yeah, I've never even seen anything like this. And then you shut it off. And the stereo clear. turn the power back on. Everything works. Hit the star button. everything turns off the security flashes. And you're like, Okay, yeah, yeah, you check your codes. And there's like, speed sensor high. And you're like, yeah, you know, that those? And you're just like, and if you don't know how to go through the steps of troubleshooting, you're done.

Roy Merritt  54:02  
So there was there was two. Besides that one, there were two like I consider a bugged bikes. That that stood out to me. And one of which they took everybody knows what a fuse looks like. It's basically a flat piece of metal in a plastic housing. And the little the little bit of metal in between the two things is what makes the fuse you know that 30 amp or whatever, so they actually took one of these fucking things apart and broke.

Shane Langdon  54:33  
What's going on out there

Mike VO  54:35  
ice machine?

Shane Langdon  54:37  
Yeah, you better Yeah, I

Roy Merritt  54:40  
think Jordans fell down the stairs. Oh, so it didn't Yeah, they are they willing through the door. So. So they took this fuse and if you could picture you know, the two fat sides that go into the fuse and then the little squiggly line in the middle? Yeah, they broke it. So That little squiggly line was hole all the way across. But it was broken right at the terminal. So when a fuse blows, they pop and you know, but if you pulled this thing out and looked at it,

Shane Langdon  55:12  
it looked good. And

Roy Merritt  55:17  
yeah, you needed to use a tester and you had to test it. That one was a good one. That one got me for a little bit. And there was another one where they took either the BCM we're talking about BCM the BCM have a big power wire that go into it. People don't realize it that that one separate wire is actually the power into the BCM. Yeah, looks like an antenna or something weird. You wouldn't think it was our the way it blew the way it's laid out. Yeah. Well, they took like a, say, you say you took that connector and cut like six inches of it off. And then tuck that into the fucking harness. So it looks legit. You know what I mean? Like, it looks legit. But it's actually about six inches into the harness it there's nothing there. So there was no power to the BCM. And you look at and you're like, well, the fucking this the wiring should be fine. You know, that's one of the problems as a technician, you get to especially on a new bike, you know, oh, this thing's got thousand miles on it's not a wiring issue. That might not be could be Yeah, it could be and you replace components because you're like, I don't want to spend the time to figure out if this is a wiring issue or whatever else so a lot of guys will just throw components at it.

Shane Langdon  56:34  
Yeah, and it's not a component issue or wiring issue. I'm a firm

Roy Merritt  56:40  
believer in taking the new component installing it reproducing the symptom and or not and putting the old component back in if I can and then reproducing the symptom and if I can reproduce it with the old one and not with the new one I'm pretty confident that I got it you know what I mean? If I'm in that system, but you know the the wiring tests are a big fucking deal I mean shit in the last couple weeks how many different wiring issues have I found a bunch that were just like wires that were like just bad? Broken wires or factory stuff? No no factories? Yeah, just Oh yeah. Cuz they'll they'll do joints where a one wire comes in and then two wires go off and that joint just doesn't get solder properly? Or whatever it is or something maybe when they're together it's broken. I'd walk cambus wire broken in the middle of the fucking backbone where there's no stress.

Mike VO  57:28  
Yeah, they had like even just going back to like, what was it like oh five or oh six? Maybe they had the where the wire would go through the tunnel on the baggers and then they came down for the injectors that hard 19 Oh

Roy Merritt  57:42  
yeah. And they tie

Mike VO  57:44  
out wire there and then you'd like the front cylinder would stop firing and they're like I don't know why. Oh, yeah. You know your first thing to do when you don't have when cylinders not firing number one thing arc, change your spark plugs.

Roy Merritt  57:57  
does great by I won't say the name but a poor part today. As I was tearing it apart, fuel injector wires were rubbing on something there there. Yep, silver, I can see him. And I put blue tape around that shit. So I don't forget it. You know what I mean? I was like, well put blue tape here. So I know what this means. I need to fix that before I put it back together. But yeah, that should those fuel injector wires are pain in the ass man. They think they've taken some abuse of the IRS.

Mike VO  58:21  
But you know, the cool thing about the classes though is is you kind of you know, you see that these weird strange things and even even like when you do during electronics, you know, that's a big electrical class. Because that's where you go through ABS troubleshooting. Yeah. And you do you know, basically the whole audio system on touring bikes.

Roy Merritt  58:38  
It's really odd. Yeah, boom, now Yeah, yeah, now they do a boom to in touring electronics. And they go pretty deep into how boom, two works, because the first thing that they admit, is that boom, two instructions suck dick. You know, it's

Mike VO  58:54  
not it's not even that there's, there's, it's so there's so much. Yeah, you don't I mean, you're just like, I don't even know what to do. Well, that's

Roy Merritt  59:01  
the idea. And that's what they do. They kind of give you a broad view of what you're doing and why you're doing it. So that you understand that the inky harness, you know, that we call it that runs from the front to the back needs to be connected here. And when you change the

Shane Langdon  59:17  
power goes here. Like

Roy Merritt  59:25  
they said signal different place. I mean, it's crazy. I'm crazy. Yeah, they overcomplicate the shit out of it.

Mike VO  59:30  
Yeah. And and, and so you know, you but you in that environment, though, you know, when they're bugging these bikes, they're doing their best to try to make it stuff that you're actually going to counter. Yes. And so, you know, our whole introduction to that electrical class was like a 10 minute thing, like you're gonna get your fucking ass handed to you and you are going to feel like you're not going to finish. You don't mean curriculums,

Roy Merritt  59:55  
from their warranty in tech. What do they see a lot of you know I mean, I'm sure that's that's where that curriculum comes from. We see so many people have BCM, you know, replace bcms? for no reason. Yes. So then PCM testing becomes part of that class so that you understand that's why they went in so depth into the canvas because man WE CAN bus came out. All the Harley guys had no fucking idea how that worked

Mike VO  1:00:21  
well, and When, when, when we went through it, when they first came out.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:27  
They didn't fail.

Mike VO  1:00:28  
Yeah, because you're now you're seeing them fail, you know, and the instructor even told us that he's like, Look, you know, the mechanical, the mechanical side of this with the way in manufacturing is now the technology advancements in you know, gaskets, and, and metallurgy and, and just met and just the way everything is made so much more precise. You just don't really have mechanical failures. And you don't, I mean, you just don't have as much. How many bikes come in here with no compression in the rear cylinder, almost done. I mean, it's so rare that it happens that you're just like, wow, I don't even know what to do with this. Now. Now, it's almost like mechanical failures are different things to diagnose now, because everything is electrical.

Roy Merritt  1:01:11  
Well, yeah. And and well, and with the new motor, you know, the Milwaukee eight, we so many years, Twin Cam, we're here to noise, we kind of knew what it was. And now when we hear new noise, we're all like, Huh, I wonder what that is? You know, but this is, like I said kind of earlier, this is really what separates the aftermarket shops from dealer is that the guys in the aftermarket shops are not really offered, right, this type of schooling. And, you know, maybe that's maybe that's a void in the industry that needs to be filled. You know, maybe there is, well, I think I have an aftermarket class. We talked to, we talked to in the previous episode, about you know, starting an online school actually thought there was there was a reason I brought them on if it was a really good idea. I think that being able to get with maybe not so much, I think it's gonna be hard to get the manufacturers into that because they want to support their dealers. But, you know, getting with an MMI or somebody like that and developing a curriculum and providing something that aftermarket shops could send their guys to, to get certified, I think would be a big deal.

Mike VO  1:02:24  
I think that at MMI. And at the schools, you know, I think it just fucking sucks that the schools are so expensive. Yes. And they, they're not truthful with the students. Because without students, there are no instructors. You know, without instructors, there's no school.

Roy Merritt  1:02:41  
I hear that a lot. But I can tell you in my experience with AI,

Mike VO  1:02:46  
but here's the deal. Any one of us could go to any aftermarket shop and we're just gonna be completely fine because it doesn't matter we have enough experience that you don't need all that extra support you know, well

Unknown Speaker  1:02:58  
now that's why

Mike VO  1:03:00  
right but what I call tech services now I'm not really see done the first one that's ever encountered this problem. Seriously, come on, and there's a few times

Roy Merritt  1:03:07  
when they start asking me dumb ask questions and you check the oil. Yeah, battery. All right. Yeah, I've been doing this 10 fucking years. I'm not an idiot. I've done all the basic stuff, or I wouldn't be calling. Right. Okay. They're the only time I call tech is either warranty related, something that you know, the bikes under warranty. And at that point, I want Tech's approval for whatever I'm doing because I'm not 100% sure that I can send that back and they're gonna say no, you don't have your say yet. Other than that, it's I am knee deep in something that I have no fucking idea what I'm doing like that's that street at a street with a strange starting issue. Made a crazy noise didn't want to start. I know. You know about what she knows at this point about sts which is what we do in class. You know, like he said, he'll probably never tear one apart again. I haven't torn one apart since you know, school. There's no need that those motors are actually pretty fucking good dude, but

Shane Langdon  1:04:09  
when you do well, yeah, when I do make it got lucky.

Roy Merritt  1:04:14  
I got lucky enough to get Jason who's on the show? And I called I was like, Oh, God, I got you Jason. Good fucking deal. Here's the deal. The bikes not under warranty. I just have no idea what the fucking do you know, what he would have seen what? And and they have the ability to kind of look through history and stuff and see what they've seen. And they gave me a few pointers.

Shane Langdon  1:04:35  
Um,

Roy Merritt  1:04:37  
I didn't nail it on the first time. That one that one could have been done better on the first time, but I went with what they said and I if I really sat down and tried to work out how it all worked, I could have figured that,

Unknown Speaker  1:04:49  
you know, but

Roy Merritt  1:04:52  
you know, it is what it is. It should have been the name of the game, you know? That's why when the new guys are getting all pissy and whining and we've been mad Quite a bit, you guys are out there pissin and moanin. And it's like, dude, you have not been doing this nearly long enough to be able to

Shane Langdon  1:05:07  
do that I'll

Roy Merritt  1:05:08  
take the Bichon from the guys that have been doing this for 10 years. That's fine. You know, we're all here because we want to be here. You're here because you think you need to be here. There's difference. Do you know what I mean? Like, you don't have to be here. And you're providing not a lot more than a body. Right?

Mike VO  1:05:26  
Yeah, you stop trying to show me how good you are at this. Yeah,

Roy Merritt  1:05:30  
yeah. Well, you're not well, and that's the thing you're doing. People, it's the same thing, anything, it has nothing to do a wrenching, if anything in life, the people that try so hard to prove something are the ones that are just trying to prove it to themselves, because they know they can't do you know what I mean? And I think as a technician, we all come out kind of, you know, wanting to be that guy, that's the fastest guy in the shop does everything the best. And I know I was I've, you know, as an hourly tech for years, I build 120 hundred and 30% efficiency, like an idiot, making other people fuck tons of money while I'm cooking. And, you know, nine to 925 bucks an hour as a technician in in 2012, you know, 2011, whatever the fuck it was, and I'm busting my ass billing 5060 hours a week get paid 40 at fucking $9 an hour, you know, while they're billing at $90 an hour for what I'm doing. And it wears on you after a while because I'm an idiot, you know, I see this shit. It's like, Man,

Shane Langdon  1:06:33  
I've made

Roy Merritt  1:06:34  
you a lot of money. Why don't you want to pay me? You know, so so. And Shane kind of touched on it earlier, which, as you grow up, you know, I'm advanced, I'm electrical, you go back to your boss, oh, hey, man, this is worth anything in money, I want more money. And one of the things I tried to do in my last dealership, and it's really hard tartar new thing was set up a structure for because they were an hourly shop was a flat rate totally different an hourly shop. And that structure was supposed to start, you know, say, for example, as a as a technical staff level, technician, you make $10. You know what I mean? When you get to technician level, you can make $11 an hour plus $1, a build hour, or whatever it is, okay, so then you do your classes, and then you get to advanced level? Well, at an advanced level, you can make anywhere from 12 to $15 an hour, and anywhere from one to $3 an hour. This is how you factor in, you know, how long a person's work there or how good they are at what they do, you know, and you have to give yourself some variances in there. But, man, it's it is really hard to develop a system like that, that works that people are happy with if the boss is happy with that, you know, works to me. That's the way it should work. You know, if I'm a new technician, I'm technician level. And I'm going to classes. I should know, I'm not saying I expect more money, but I should know what to expect. You know what I mean in those instances, and it seems like the perfect idea to time until you a flat rate. And then you know the guys that can do the job. Really never go back from flat rate until you get to a point here. You know that you're just like bucket. I'm just doing this for fun.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:33  
Yeah, even then, I mean, why Yes,

Mike VO  1:08:35  
once you're proficient, you know, you're like, why would I ever want to make it be paid hourly? Again? Yeah, look down.

Shane Langdon  1:08:40  
Yeah, you don't? I mean,

Mike VO  1:08:41  
I mean, he, you know, you do. And I think another thing that's great about dealerships that people don't understand that are an aftermarket, because I spend my whole life in aftermarket. Yeah. So I was I'm like the opposite of what happens with most cases. You know, I grew up doing aftermarket. I went to aftermarket, I had my own shop, then I went to MMI to learn the Harley technology and all that stuff. Because you know, when you see it, when you see the shift in the way things move, you know, adapter die.

Roy Merritt  1:09:09  
Yeah, well, it was around that time that everything kind of got a lot more technical. Right, you know, back back in the 80s 90s. You didn't Matt Harley was pretty easy to fucking work on there. Oh, no. Yeah, you know, there wasn't bcms and all this dumb shit that you had to worry about. It was mechanical switches. And if you understood electrical and how it worked, you could figure it out. You know what not

Mike VO  1:09:30  
sure. And so, you know, I even I even went a couple years Japanese. You don't mean to start to learn that side of it. Because that's, you know, that's what what is all that stuff, you know,

Roy Merritt  1:09:42  
but together they they they have a bigger share of the market than than Harley does alone. You know, all the Japanese Yeah. Together. Yeah.

Mike VO  1:09:50  
But then when I went to, then I said, You know what, Fuck this. I'm done with this. Because you know, the thing about aftermarket is it's super random. You never know what's gonna happen you never know what you're going to get and almost everything is kind of shitty because, you know, it's cheaper.

Shane Langdon  1:10:08  
Yeah, yeah, it's

Mike VO  1:10:09  
you know, when you take your bike to an aftermarket shop, it's because it's less money. It's not because you they're going to do such a better job. Yeah, it's because the parts are made of lower quality so they're not as expensive. The the, or they're gonna do

Aaron Staudinger  1:10:21  
something the Harley shop or the you know,

Unknown Speaker  1:10:24  
the dealership won't do correct. Yeah,

Mike VO  1:10:27  
yeah, you know, I mean and and the reason

Roy Merritt  1:10:28  
that shows that's where the Japanese market aftermarket is really good because like a Honda shop, they will fuck around with shit that's gonna void your warranty. You go to a hunter shop and tell them you want to build a fucking stretch swinger motor and this and that, and they're like, get the fuck out of here.

Aaron Staudinger  1:10:44  
Yeah, man, is it

Roy Merritt  1:10:48  
I was just about to say a lot of Harley ships, or dealerships have the same way.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:53  
Yeah, um,

Mike VO  1:10:55  
I think the difference between dealerships in Harley now and Japanese. Is the the unfortunate truth with Japanese motorcycles. If they don't hold their value, so no, at a dealer at a Japanese dealership? All you do is warranty work. Well, yeah, but

Roy Merritt  1:11:12  
how many how many aftermarket or not aftermarket how many cool things does Honda make for

Mike VO  1:11:16  
there, but it makes a cool ship.

Roy Merritt  1:11:20  
But I'm just saying Honda like if you bought a goldwing and went to the dealership was like, man, I want to put some cool shit on my goldwing What you got there like, stock fuckin price.

Shane Langdon  1:11:28  
Yeah.

Roy Merritt  1:11:30  
You know, there's not it's not like Honda has this big DNA business like Harley does. Yeah, Harley, you know that that's what's made Harley is the fact that no two are really exactly like, the funny thing with everybody does one thing or something a little bit different changes it from everybody else.

Mike VO  1:11:50  
The funny thing is in the job market, it's the dirt bikes that are like that. Yeah. The dirt bikes. There's all kinds of shit. Yeah, you know, you can get all well you

Roy Merritt  1:12:00  
know, the offroad market is bigger than the onroad mark.

Mike VO  1:12:02  
Yeah, so yeah, but the road market for you know, if you want to put different wheels on your

Shane Langdon  1:12:06  
are what

Mike VO  1:12:08  
the dealership is gonna be like, Why? Why?

Shane Langdon  1:12:12  
You know,

Mike VO  1:12:13  
already pretty much maxed out. Yeah, they're like, really? Seriously, why are you gonna do that? Yeah. Norman fiber wheels.

Roy Merritt  1:12:18  
Do you want carbon fiber wheels?

Unknown Speaker  1:12:20  
Yeah,

Aaron Staudinger  1:12:21  
my neighbor did that. Don't do that ever saw BST wheels has been an r1

Shane Langdon  1:12:25  
I really

Roy Merritt  1:12:26  
yeah. We might have talked about this before because I've one of the nastiest bikes I ever wrote was in our road and r1 and I wrote it for about a half a mile and turned it around and was like I can't I'm not riding this is the first time I see it right the fuck up and was fat way faster than I was expecting and I was like what was running around I was like nope, I'm not killing myself on

Shane Langdon  1:12:45  
this night. Good night what it was all worked

Aaron Staudinger  1:12:48  
out the supercharged Kawasaki they wish to Did you see it twice on the dyno on the dyno drags that what I heard

Unknown Speaker  1:12:55  
Yes. Holy fuck I was in here and I was like what the fuck is on the dyno? Dude that thing is an absolute Slayer and I watched the guy

Aaron Staudinger  1:13:03  
pull it off the dyno got a little hot Yeah, so he's like you know kind of running it circulate in the water and stuff and he gets on it takes off. He makes the rip down the road. Like tie and everybody does short shifting it. Yeah, it's yanking the front wheel off the ground he's not even trying

Shane Langdon  1:13:18  
Yeah

Aaron Staudinger  1:13:19  
Ah yeah. Three I think it's 300 horsepower.

Roy Merritt  1:13:23  
Yeah they're fucking ridiculous oh my god

yeah, why hurt? Like like sounded like demons Jamie yeah easy. I heard I was eating here and it was like it was like what the fuck is on the dyno drag

Aaron Staudinger  1:13:38  
here took poor john and put him on the dyno and next to that yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:41  
On his on his dualsport

Unknown Speaker  1:13:43  
Yeah, yes, I saw I was like oh maybe that's John's

Unknown Speaker  1:13:48  
bike I guess we can see what happens yes

Roy Merritt  1:13:51  
late so yeah, we had to for those who don't know we had dyno drags off around which is like a trailer with two dyno things set up and you drag race and yeah, but people came out brought some crazy shit it's always fun you know we the first year we had like nobody there so we did like add three drags and dumb shit you know yet but this year we're just so damn busy. I don't think anybody got

Shane Langdon  1:14:13  
bad weather the first week and dad came out on the dyno half the days I don't even hear that Tally.

Mike VO  1:14:18  
Yeah, that first day nobody came out. Jamie and I digress the live wires Yeah. topped out at 160 miles an hour every single time Yeah. When the for the 330 foot mark 98 miles an hour. And this book is crazy dude from zero to 98 miles an hour and 330 feet so I

Unknown Speaker  1:14:36  
think if you could get

Roy Merritt  1:14:38  
like that limiter off. I don't think there'd be very many bikes on the road. We got about this like early on like

Aaron Staudinger  1:14:44  
who's gonna be the first one to come to market with some kind of it's I think

Mike VO  1:14:49  
somebody's holy, dude. There's no money.

Roy Merritt  1:14:54  
Yeah, there's only 7300 a year me

Mike VO  1:14:56  
I spend like you know 1520 thousand dollars in r&d to sell to them. Man, people hop up Tesla.

Aaron Staudinger  1:15:05  
There's a company

Mike VO  1:15:08  
you know, they sell 500,000. Tesla's a year they sell like they sold like maybe 1000 live wires.

Roy Merritt  1:15:16  
Supposedly they're making like seven 800 a year. So why why 82 year? Yeah, maybe they've made 1500 2000 of them maybe I'm gonna say they've sold 1200

Aaron Staudinger  1:15:26  
but I haven't paid enough attention to what's going on in the market with it is there like a like a niche like a little people that really love that bike and are gonna maybe want to do something with it.

Mike VO  1:15:35  
It's just collectors. Okay, and they're gonna

Roy Merritt  1:15:39  
I'm gonna group on Facebook, this live wire owner. So a couple of library owners. There's quite a few people out there that are very avid riders.

Aaron Staudinger  1:15:48  
There you go. That's what it takes old guys that are just really enthusiastic about that bike that will connect with the right person that will

Roy Merritt  1:15:56  
there's been some issues get run. There's been some charging issues along the way. That's why there's been a recall. There's a recall now for the onboard charger. It's just an update some stupid, but I actually like by six months or so watch. People were having trouble so that they go out ride their bike all day come back into wouldn't want to charge and like weird things. They go out to a charger and it wouldn't fast charge or whatever's going on. There's a bunch of charger issues going on. And the recall that came out. I wasn't surprised when I saw it. I was like, Yeah, I've been seeing there's been a bunch. And people were kind of said the same thing. Like why brought into the dealership, they update? Everything's fine. You know what I mean? It was like, there wasn't like, Oh my God, this thing's a piece of shit or whatever. They're like, well, I brought it to the dealer and they did this and everything was fine. You know. So I think that's why they recall it to say, all right, those of you that aren't having problems. Need to get in here and update your shit. And it'll fix it to make sure you don't. Yeah, yeah, to make sure you don't. So

Shane Langdon  1:16:58  
let's call the wife and check in with him in the kids. Yeah,

Aaron Staudinger  1:17:03  
look at your phone and text me Shane.

Shane Langdon  1:17:05  
Oh. Whoops.

Aaron Staudinger  1:17:13  
To distract him with all kinds of weird ass photos.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:22  
that have been

Shane Langdon  1:17:24  
coming in. I'll come get you. I think I'm in at nine tomorrow. Later later, brother. Yeah. So but yeah, you know it.

Roy Merritt  1:17:35  
As you know, as a anybody in any job. I think you have to be proactive on trying to make yourself better. Yeah. You know, you're you're really good at it too. But sometimes you kind of have it sounds really bad. But the social media, the YouTube, the things like that aren't all bad. When somebody brings out something cool.

Unknown Speaker  1:18:00  
Like, man,

Roy Merritt  1:18:01  
holy shit, I've never seen that before. And then you only Google it. Some guys got a fucking video where he installed it. That that is, you know, that's learning that's preparing yourself for maybe when it comes in your shop that keeps you current. We've been lucky here. And you know, we joke about it. But you know, we went to the drag show last year, and that recluse clutch was out. You know, all three years. I think we're like, yeah, we're gonna sell some of those. Yeah, we're gonna fuckin see how these perform. And we've had the ability to do that. But you know, when you see cool shit, if nobody's making a video or nobody, you know, has done it. Ah, there's only one way to do it. And that's sell it and look at hoping things that haven't,

Aaron Staudinger  1:18:45  
you know, gone again. Oh, absolutely. Fried something.

Roy Merritt  1:18:48  
That's one thing I don't realize is Yeah, we've done a lot of motors and we've done a lot of shit. But we've done shit that didn't work. That's how we knew that this works better.

Aaron Staudinger  1:19:00  
Don't do that. You

Shane Langdon  1:19:01  
know what I mean? Like,

Roy Merritt  1:19:03  
you know, Mike, Mike did a lot of that, you know, when he was back there building this shit was you know, this works. This doesn't Hey, man, we put this together. And I've seen Mike many times put something together and be like, nope, we're gonna change the cam. Or we're gonna do something different. Because this is not working. You know, there's, there's a, there's a dip there is on

Aaron Staudinger  1:19:26  
it's gonna get it's gonna become more and more because there are more and more combinations being developed this platform all the time. There's more and more stuff to try.

Roy Merritt  1:19:34  
Now we got new stuff coming. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with that too.

Shane Langdon  1:19:39  
Yeah, that we're doing now it's great. Yeah.

Roy Merritt  1:19:46  
Yeah, you guys got some stuff going on to be discussed in my head that way. Definitely above my head, so I knew where I know where my my strengths and weaknesses are. That's, that's out of my wheelhouse. But

Unknown Speaker  1:20:02  
yeah, we're pushing the envelope. Yeah, yeah,

Roy Merritt  1:20:06  
we'll wait till shit solid.

Shane Langdon  1:20:08  
There's no nondisclosure agreements

Mike VO  1:20:09  
on this episode.

Shane Langdon  1:20:11  
Yeah, just

Mike VO  1:20:14  
YouTube, right?

Shane Langdon  1:20:16  
Yeah, pretty much. And

Roy Merritt  1:20:19  
one of these days, the video is running one of these days I'm gonna get shut up on my YouTube too but shit

Aaron Staudinger  1:20:25  
is actually it's still running and believe that. Yeah,

Roy Merritt  1:20:29  
I got a plug in every time I have a problem, man, I try to fix that problem. We're getting to a point. Look at this. We've made it. It's working.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:37  
It's big.

Roy Merritt  1:20:38  
It's big. It's hard. It's

Unknown Speaker  1:20:43  
it's a big heart. You got

Aaron Staudinger  1:20:49  
a bunch of pictures of naked dudes.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:52  
And I texted him. I'm like, Man, I'm

Aaron Staudinger  1:20:53  
trying to break your concentration. You're like, dialed in man. Can't get you.

Roy Merritt  1:20:59  
You know what's funny is somebody put a men's calendar on the new guys toolbox.

Shane Langdon  1:21:06  
like one of those that was nap

Roy Merritt  1:21:09  
on? Yeah, it was was a snap. It's got like dudes all over it.

Mike VO  1:21:17  
Got some calendars. And I was like, oh, man, and he's like, Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker  1:21:24  
was like, Who the hell you? Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker  1:21:27  
there's like this dude with a shirt off or whatever. And then somebody put a little heart and an arrow and Marcus.

Roy Merritt  1:21:39  
And somebody was like, What the fuck is this? And I look over and I was like, That's fucking awesome is what that is. Well, it's

Mike VO  1:21:44  
like, you know, on Tyler II know, when Mac brought in those magnetic wish lists. And he like slept on this thing. And I went over and wrote number one in 10 strength.

Shane Langdon  1:22:00  
Book, you

Roy Merritt  1:22:02  
gotta get a I'm not like I ain't gonna go to a gym and throw around a bunch of weight. But my hand strength has always been very good

Mike VO  1:22:12  
way it works that you just like Dude,

Shane Langdon  1:22:15  
we had a gripper

Roy Merritt  1:22:16  
in my high school, which is like, if you were to be sure to iron bars like this, about that far part of that you could grab like, they came together and then down below was a straight up Oh, you like 45 pounds regular weight so you would do and I was in like, a couple hundred pounds. Hmm. And people were like, you know cuz I was 160 pounds soaking wet and high school. But I could fucking grip more than I could bench II.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:45  
Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:47  
God Damn, dude,

Roy Merritt  1:22:48  
you got a strong grip on like, buck. Yeah, do it strong in the arms, but I got a strong as

Shane Langdon  1:22:57  
your motherfucker. I'll

Roy Merritt  1:22:58  
choke you. Yeah, it takes 11 pounds of pressure to pop your eyeballs out.

Aaron Staudinger  1:23:04  
That is a fact

Roy Merritt  1:23:06  
loving, like pushing in on your eyeballs. 11 pounds of pressure and they'll pop up

Mike VO  1:23:11  
while they pop out if you push them in. Because they're like elastic.

Roy Merritt  1:23:16  
You're gonna mean they're gonna be aggressive to get out so you like Yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe maybe it's a side thing, but I know it only takes 11 pounds of pressure to pop gravel. I don't know where I learned that but that's fine, right? Yeah, it is terrifying. Yeah. It's like dude. Oh god don't pop my fucking eyeball. How do I so I wonder like if somebody could you've seen this shit. Everybody seen the SMEs eyeball pop out. I've never seen somebody pop up. I have

Mike VO  1:23:46  
everybody see somebody? Like,

Roy Merritt  1:23:49  
do you think their site like state?

Mike VO  1:23:53  
Yeah, it's still continue to ask them you saw it happen? No. Like, Hey, can you see the ground? And I mean, there's your eyeball popped out. Hey, can you see me and

Roy Merritt  1:24:07  
thanks for listening Talkin Braap Talkin braap.com

Aaron Staudinger  1:24:10  
next episode, I promise four and a half. MV.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:13  
Oh hatless.

Roy Merritt  1:24:15  
Yeah, we need to we need to work on that. We might have to wait till next season.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:19  
Because I think so good.

Roy Merritt  1:24:21  
So we got Thanksgiving coming up. Yeah. And I don't think I'm going to get a second episode out this month. Just a warning for the listener. But I think we can probably record one in early December. And then Christmas, New Year's, all that shattering for that car, he's

Aaron Staudinger  1:24:36  
fired up,

Roy Merritt  1:24:37  
he's ready to go. Alright. Well, that we need to figure out some kind of intro like to kind of

Unknown Speaker  1:24:43  
overcome that. But

Roy Merritt  1:24:45  
I think we're gonna do one more this year, which will give us 60. And then we'll see how January February that goes. We will either do nothing or send back We will see But thanks for listening like said Jeff check us out Talkin braap.com

Unknown Speaker  1:25:09  
Instagram that's really

Roy Merritt  1:25:12  
pay off the other

Transcribed by https://otter.ai