Had a good laugh at my Honda dealership

So its time to replace the fork seals on the spear set of 750 forks. My dad picks me up from school on the 750 and we have a ride round to some of the local bike shops on the hunt for some 20w fork oil. One shop wasn’t open another only had 5w and the other had none at all, so last call was my local Honda dealer. We go into the shop two dudes at the counter I ask for some 20w fork oil and get thrown a dirty look as if I had just asked for £20 of crack cocaine. One dude just says “sorry we only stock up to 15, most bikes usually take 5-10w and 15 is more of an upgrade”. Then the other dude chips in saying that 20w fork oil doesn’t exist and that he couldn’t think of any bike ever that would need fork oil that heavy, also that it would be like poring concrete into the fork tubes. I may also add he said this in a very smug manner; he is the top technician/mechanic for the Honda dealer (motorcycle section of course) he’s older than my Dad and also does a lot of track days, oh yeah his son is in my year at school. So we purchased the 15w walked out very puzzled wondering if we had both tripping out when we purchased 2litres of 20w for my TZR and the other 750 last year, we both always thought fork oils went up to 25w possibly 30.

So on the way back home I realized we still had about 500ml of 20w left over in stock at home, once home I dug out the old 20w to proved to our self’s we were right in the first place. My Dad has an idea to bring the 20w back to the Honda dealer to prove him wrong, normally he wouldn’t have normally bothered him but the guy was really smug when saying this. We turned round and head back out to Honda to find just the first dude on the shop flaw helping a customer with some jackets, we pull out the 20w and he laughs and asks if he can take it into the back and show the guy that clamed 20w oil did not exist. He took a couple of minutes to return with the oil (the other guy didn’t come out to show his face) and asked if we would like to return the 15w, my Dad just said no it will do for some other bike probably the TT600 and that if he did want to use if for the Xj he would poor some concrete in to thicken it out.

Pretty poor performance really from a man who has had bikes long than my dad and has been a bike mechanic for pretty much all his life. I appreciate that spring and fork technology have greatly improved since the 80’s there for you my not need such heavy oils any more, but what got me was the fact he was very confident that 15w was the heaviest fork oil you could every buy and that there was never a bike that would need oil so heavy.
Just thought I would share it with you guys and see if any one has had any similar experiences.
Sorry if the spelling and grammar is poor Microsoft Word wasn’t working.

Al

 

It may be petty, but nothing like proving some smug a@@wipe wrong, and it's even better when they can't own up to their mistake. Way to go!

Massimo

 

Hey Al-I've had similar experiences around here when searching around for 20W fork oil. I get all the strange looks, wisecracks & the feeling they just want me to get the hell out of their store. Apparently, this smug & unprofessional attitude at these dealerships is worldwide..

 

Reminds me of the conversation I had not too long ago with a former bike shop owner.........told me "yeah, those XJ's--I broke apart so many of them it's not even funny. They made so many of them, but they only did that for a couple years because those engines were junk. They were a major design flaw. They kept overheating because the generator is behind the cylinders".

I simply smiled and said, "Hmm."

Dave F

 

Had a local dealership try to sell my son-in-law and me a 9 year old front tire. The manager assured me that it was good and had been kept in a climate controlled warehouse. Told him to put it on his bike then and order a new one for us.

 

So I am not the only one, some of these so called “mechanics” just chat pure S$@t. it makes you feel really bad for people who actually take there bikes to these places for services and repairs. I have heard various story’s from other bikers that have taken there bikes to local bike shops, including leaking petrol onto an exhaust header pipe, tyres installed the wrong way around and forks being returned with no oil inside!
Personally I think I would rather take my own chances doing a job I am not comfortable with than sending my dads bike’s to some of these clowns that call them self’s motorcycle mechanics, at least if I mess up I could find out were I went wrong through this forum and correct it my self wear as I don’t really have much comeback on a shop as they always seem to accuse you of tampering with there work.
Keep’em coming and cheers for the responses.
Al

 

i worked for a harley,honda yamaha dealership. they only good people in it were in service, sales and partd counter were asswipes.

 

my local shop put my rear tyre on back to front for the xj,which can happen i guess if your not familiar with them, then sold me some hi performance 2 stroke go kart oil for my rd cause it was the dearest (BEST) even though its not suitable for road bikes or autolube pump,thats what the manufactures website said anyway, but i cant go there anymore cause i took a crank there to be overhauled and i took a written quote in with me to see if they would match it and just handed it back saying they cant do it for free,i was in the shop one day and a bloke walks in and they quoted him about 245 for basically an oil change and he was happy. you have to watch these buggers, if they think they can get away with it they will have a go.

 

I second that!

 

A lot of these guys know much more than almost anyone else around them. They deal with people who are clueless all day. As a result, they get a huge ego--people kind of look at them as gods of sorts, with comprehension of machines vastly outside of their realm of understanding.

Arrogance is what it comes down to. And arrogance is the enemy of learning or understanding. Once you think you know it all, you can't really learn anything new.

The other thing is money. Greed gets the best of most people, and it's just too easy to tell people they need something when they don't know better and it's their vehicle that they can't live their life without, can't go to work without, etc. Ruins a lot of people.

When you find a good, honest mechanic, you hold on to him and tip him well to make up for all the easy money all his competitors get scamming people. They're hard to find, and deserve to be rewarded.

On a side note; my forks have been ridiculously soft since I got it, so I finally checked them: 0 pressure. Not anything. No noise when I put on the pressure meter. I put 11 in both with a hand pump, but wow. Got me wondering about oil in them; how can I check? Is that an ordeal? I'm kind of intimidated of dealing with forks. They sound like the same kind of hassle tires are: not bad if you have the right specialty tools, agonizing otherwise.

 

I forget...have you GOT a manual? If so, it's all in there. Forks are straightforward.

By the way,have you studied this part of the forum? It' has a great number of how to's including one on forks :wink:

http://www.xjbikes.com/Forums/viewforum/f=21.html

 

http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=1 ... art=0.html
Im glad im not alone guys, I suppose all it takes is some one who knows what there talking about to take there bike into one of these places and for them to mess it up and see what happens. Forks are not something you should be afraid of, hears a great walkthrough on how to rebuild the 750 forks. I know you have a 650 maxim but in theory that should be easier because you don’t have to fart about with those pesky anti-dives. You just need all the tools listed in the walk through although you my need a tool to hold your dampening rods in place, if you have any questions feel free to pm me and refer to your Haynes book of lies. I think the only real way of checking is to drain each fork leg from the screw in the bottom and catch the oil in two separate containers, measure it and check oil condition. If you wanted to stiffen up your front end you could go with progressive springs and or harder oil, a cheap way is to place some appropriately sized washers or coins between the fork plugs and the tops of the springs.
Al

 

I don't like the idea of coins or washers. They could possibly get jammed.

I would instead recommend making spacers from a correct diameter pvc pipe.

Dave Fox