A Lesson in Tenacity "The Yamaha Experience"

As some of my readers may know over the last couple of years I have been putting together a book about business, success, and living a well engineered life. I have put together many short stories and examples throughout my life that I think help explain and maybe help others understand the traits and techniques that have continued to allow me to find success and happiness in life. I have shared below one of those stories of which I intend to share in the book. With Fall now upon us and the cold weather on its way I intend to get back to work on the book and thought I would share this little story with my readers! Enjoy---

"The Yamaha Experience"

The Yamaha experience, I think I was 12 or 13 years old. With little money and limited ability my friend Fred and I went all in on a couple of junked out Yamaha motorcycles. There was a guy at some low end apartment houses across town that had 2 incomplete bikes with a few boxes of parts and half of an engine. If memory serves me correct the models were IT and YZ. They were both 250cc two strokes and we thought with enough work and ingenuity we would be able to put together one ride able machine. The parts boxes had a manual for the IT included in them and I had multiple copies of old dirt rider magazines with enough tech articles to conquer anything. After some horse trading of old stereo equipment; rounding up every penny we had from our paper routes and misc after school jobs, we were able to swing a deal and Fred and I were to be touring the mountains on our new bike in no time.

Once the treasure was acquired two proud young boys smiling from ear to ear drug the bounty across town to my grandmother’s shop for the build project. When we arrived at my grandmothers my father was there out working in the family shop. He took one look at our newfound treasure and just shook his head. He asked what we were going to do with all of that junk. We told him we were going to build the coolest hill climbing machine ever. He asked if we realized that we had two different models of bikes and two different models of engines IT bottom half and YZ top half. We emphatically said yes isn’t it awesome, we will have the only one and the IT gears are lower and the YZ top end is better and it’s going to be awesome. Now remember we were 12 or 13 years old and Fred and I did have a little experience working on stuff but we did not have enough experience to have any understand of why this wouldn’t work. My dad again shook his head and said good luck!

Over the next several weeks Fred and I spent every extra minute working on our new hybrid hill climbing machine. We took the old bikes apart and mixed and matched the best parts from each machine. We swapped shocks and forks, wheels and tires, controls and cables, and any other miscellaneous parts that made sense. We cleaned, prepped, and painted everything. Every once in a while my dad or my uncle or some other adult that thought they were much smarter than us would come by and take a look at what we were doing. It was always the same thing, they would congratulate us on our efforts and tell us our tenacity would pay off someday, but this particular idea was not going to work and we were wasting our time. Over the time period that we worked on the bike I did as much research as I could. This was back before the internet and I made many trips to the public library. I looked over old manuals and called anyone that would listen. I was out to absorb all of the information that I could on IT and YZ 250 Yamaha motorcycles. As the time went on Fred and I got the 2 bikes turned into one. We managed to mate the upper and lower halves of the IT and YZ engines together even performing a new piston and ring install in the YZ cylinder that Fred and I honed ourselves. The final icing on the cake was the ignition. The only way to fire the engine that we had was to use the ignition from the YZ and it mounted on the IT crankshaft. We installed the ignition components and coil and then put the magneto on the side of the engine. I can remember to this day the old Dirt Rider magazine laying in the sunshine next to me in Granny’s gravel driveway. I was looking over an article on setting the timing on a two stroke engine when installing a new magneto. The article had us lowering a piece of rope through the spark plug hole down into the cylinder and turning the engine over bringing the piston up against the rope to find Top Dead Center for firing position of the ignition system. Well again while performing this task my father happened to come by and take a look at what we were doing. When he saw the contraption that we had created and realized what we were trying to do with the ignition he informed us emphatically that this could not work and we were wasting our time. My father turned walked back in the shop shaking his head and we went back to work timing the engine on our ultimate hybrid hill climbing machine. It was about 20 minutes after my father walked by that Fred ran in the shop to grab our helmets. Moments later, followed out by my father Fred reappeared with helmets in hand and grinning ear to ear. I had the bike propped up. Kicker pedal out and was ready to fire it up. I will never forget the expression on my father’s face or the feeling I had inside when on the second kick I heard the whing ding ding of a classic screaming two stroke! Fred and I threw on our helmets, jumped double onto the bike and rode off up into the mountains just like we had envisioned all those weeks prior when we started the project. Had we listened to the naysayers we would have never completed our project and never would have gone for that ride. Fred and I kept that machine for a few years and rode it often. This is just one of many examples were confidence in our abilities, belief in ourselves and our idea and tenacity in working through the trials and tribulations of something paid off. To this day my father loves to tell the story of how he was sure that bike would never run!