Hurrah for Haynes!
How did you start out fixing bikes? For me, it was a combination of things. My dad was a former car mechanic, and he was regularly out on the street outside the house, fixing up a selection of crappy 1970s cars.
So although the landscape was Vauxhall Vivas and Austin Allegros rather than Honda CB400/4s and Kawasaki Z650s, I was well aware of the importance of a good socket set, the misery of points ignition, and the benefits of regular oil changes. Plus, I didn’t have the money to buy new bikes, or pay for servicing and repairs. So when my succession of early crappers blew up, or broke when I crashed them (again), unless I fixed them, they weren’t getting fixed…
It was my old mate Eddie Guiller who got me into bikes, giving me a lift to my part-time shelf-stacking job at Tesco on his Honda CB250N Superdream. I was hooked from the off, so Eddie helped me get my
