Surf City Tech Day 2003

This is the third Surf City Tech Day, The Return of the Son of Surf City Tech Day.

Tech Days are an Airhead idea that is very popular. Someone agrees to host a tech day by opening their garage and making available whatever tools they might have and perhaps supplies like oil, grease, and so on. If that's not sufficient, others agree to bring tools for specialty work. Usually food and drink are arranged for as well. Camping out (on the living room floor or in the backyard) may happen, too. The idea is to have a get together, and see how some aspect of our bikes is maintained or repaired.

In my case, because my interests cover pre-airhead BMW motorcycles as well as the airheads themselves, I have been inviting my vintage friends to join in. This year, my friends Steve and Martin happened to be visiting when I had scheduled the SCTD because we were all going to a track day the following week.

It was first necessary to clean out my garage, which meant moving the new-fangled oilhead bikes out of the way.

Also, my airhead and vintage bikes needed to be moved so as to provide room in the garage for people to work.

Then there were people arriving.

There's always some tire kicking to do.

But a number of people did get down to business. Here's a carb adjustment going on on an R75/6:

And a Brown Sidestand getting installed:

For some reason, the wiring harness that goes to the instruments in the fairing in this pristine R100CS needed replaceing.

Looks like this 1979 R65 is getting a valve adjustment.

While all the work was going on, coffee and muffins were available. About 1pm, lunch was served. I had smoked 2 sirloin butts over the trimmings from my neighbor's apple orchard for 8 hours the previous day, and then sliced it up so it only had to be warmed up. Besides BBQ beef sandwiches, there were baked beans and cole slaw. Several people brought desserts. And there were plentiful soft drinks and microbrews that the club donated.

Naturally, there was a bit of bench racing as well...

By 5pm, everyone had cleaned up and taken off, though I was prepared to host anyone who's bike wasn't running at the end of the day.

BTW, here's a link to the original web page advertising the event.