If you’ve been working on wrenching on or other wise taking care of your motorcycle, you might have come across this strange phenomenon I call ‘magic floors.’ And maybe you already know where I’m going with this, and I will get into it shortly, but first I thought I would catch you up on my efforts to start a 1974 Honda CB550 Four that I’m trying to bring back.

I had tried to start it after I had rebuilt it completely, and was unsuccessful – the bike made a strange thrashing noise when I hit the starter, I made a weird noise after I heard that thrashing sound, and much to my annoyance with myself I had to take the engine out - AGAIN – tear it down – AGAIN - and put it back in the frame to see what’s what.

“There’s always time to do it twice, never time to do it right,’ a wise wrencher-friend of mine once told me, and as I’ve found out over the years of riding and wrenching he’s pretty darn accurate...so once again I set to it, tore it down, took it out of the frame, replaced it in the frame (lots of fun when you’re working alone – watch those fingers!), and after literally a week of futzing with the points that were being coy and just did not want to behave, I said ‘screw it’ and put in an electronic ignition. Electric ignition is supposedly the best way to go if you want to avoid all the hassle of points, but does come with some unique hazards, as I found out.

Lemme preach on it – when you install an electronic ignition, you have to set the points cam for cylinders 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4, too, but I digress) at the far-advanced mark, turn the bike on and set the run switch to ‘Run’, so you can get power to the coils which in turn sends the appropriate signal down the line to spark plugs 1 and 2 as the little sensor on the EI (Electronic Ignition) passes one of the pickups, breaks the field and creates a spark in the appropriate spark plug. To read this and make sure you’re doing it right, you insert a timing light probe into the Switched On/Hot wire coming off the wiring harness and ground it to the bike’s frame - as the sensor passes the pickup the light (hopefully) lights and you know your timing is where it should be.

But now the probe is touching the Switched On/ Hot wire, which is carrying twelve volts of electricity to the EI...the frame of the bike is essentially one big ground...and as I found out, somehow the alligator clip on the opposite end of the ‘hot’ probe touched the frame - it could’ve been the steel lift table I have, I don’t know – while I had my hand on it and Lit Me Up! Twelve volts doesn’t sound like much, but if you’ve ever been bitten by it, You Know! I’m thinking about naming the bike ‘Ole’ Sparky’ after the electric chair of the same name…So yeah, I decided to take a break. My head felt a little funny anyway.

The Magic Floor

While I was catching my breath, I decided to put together a 1972 CB350 Four basket case I had laying around. It was all in pieces, but I had already prepped everything I had for it – shined the fenders up real nice, power washed the engine, repainted the frame and all those parts that needed it, etc. Here’s a pic of the bike after I got the rebuild going, it’s not looking so ‘baskety’ here...

While I was putting the bike together, I of course dropped things, but if you work on bikes, or cars, or anything that takes tools, have you ever noticed that you can sometimes drop things – a wrench, a nut, the infamous 10mm socket – and they disappear! They hit the floor, you SEE or HEAR them hit the floor and you go to pick them up and they are GONE! Totally GONE! Only to find them minutes/hours/days later in the most out-of-the-way places. It’s like magic! And very annoying!

Nuts are the worst – drop one of them and those little suckers take off and roll to the most incredible places – usually ten to fifteen feet from the bike and under the direct center of the nearest vehicle, work bench or hiding in some inaccessible place that is an absolute pain to get to. Kinetic energy is a Bitch!

10mm Nut Trying to Escape!

The above is a picture of where I found a nut I dropped while working on the 350 Four; I saw it drop, and I heard it drop - then it disappeared! It was GONE!  This is where I (finally!) found it, under my 1975 Goldwing...Now go look at the above picture of the CB350 Four...notice how far away that bike is from my red Goldwing, seen in the upper left with the brown seat...also note the yellow portable air compressor laying on the garage floor, and all the crap in between...HOW this nut made it off the bike, past the compressor and finally rolled to a stop almost underneath the Goldwing, I Do Not Know! It’s MAGIC!

But the weirdest incident I have encountered so far was a crenelated nut that goes on the end of the 350's swing arm bolt; it’s a big sucker, probably a half-inch around. I had the bolt through the frame and was test-fitting the washer and nut. I had to make some more room for the nut to fit, so I went round the other side of the bike, tapped the bolt, I heard the washer and nut hit the floor, but when I went to look for them, all I found was the washer…! I looked all over the floor for that nut, but it was gone! Totally Gone! ‘Not There’! Desparu! Desaparecido! It drove me Nuts – no pun intended! 

I finally found it on the workbench – right here! - ten feet away and 43 inches above the floor, hiding under a shop towel. Upside down. Hiding in plain sight, suspiciously next to a 10mm extension socket. Coincidence?? I think Not...I have no idea how it got there; maybe somehow I put it there, but I don’t remember doing it – it was ON the swing arm bolt!

My Magical Swing Arm Nut – Suspiciously Close To a 10mm Socket...on the Workbench!