Motorbike repair for beginners: mirror replacement made easy
15.7.2020
Translation: machine translated
Support: Carla Opetnik
Motorbikes are mechanically simple devices. This goes back to the history of motorbikes, because before a chopper was a chopper, it had to be able to be repaired under fire by amateurs.
It's actually Carla's fault.
Last Friday, Carla Opetnik, the zero-waste lifestyle woman, book author, seamstress and hair braider, did her first laps on a motorbike in a car park. My motorbike. Before she fully commits to the biker lifestyle, she wants to know whether she actually likes life in the saddle.
"What could possibly go wrong," I think to myself and offer her my Harley-Davidson Street Rod.
200 metres later, the Harley is lying on its side, the left side mirror a few metres off. Carla is uninjured.
The legacy of the Second World War
It turns out that the street rod is extremely good at lying on its side. The mirror and the left footrest absorb the weight, the beautiful parts remain unscratched. Only the side mirror needs to be replaced. The spare part is quickly ordered and a few days later the phone rings in the office. I could come round to the workshop and have the mirror replaced. So I finish work early. Priorities.
I seem to have misunderstood "have it replaced". "You want me to do it? No, I'll give you some tools and you can do it yourself. It takes ten minutes. Maximum," says Joël Brönnimann from the Service and Parts department at Harley Heaven in Dietikon. It is important to him that every biker can cope on the road and can help themselves in an emergency.
Because Joël knows what Ralph Hubert Barger, better known as Sonny Barger, already knew. The founder of the Oakland chapter of the motorbike club Hells Angels describes in his autobiography what bikers still have to live today.
These days bikes are a lot more reliable and everyone has a cell phone; if something does go wrong, you can just call for help. But back then if your bike broke down, you had two choices: fix it or walk. To be a motorbike rider in the early days of motorcycling meant that you had to be a decent motorbike mechanic, too.
In short: every biker also has to be a bit of a mechanic. Because motorbikes have a secret: they are amazingly simple mechanically. This is partly due to the emergence of chopper culture in the USA after the Second World War. After the Nazis were defeated, the motorbikes of the Allies - Harley-Davidson WLA, also known as Liberator - stood around uselessly. Soldiers, now civilians again, buy them because they have learnt to love the one-handed machines over the years. And they are cheap.
Liberators are built so that they can be repaired with minimal mechanical knowledge in Europe's war zones. Spare parts are rare or expensive or not particularly stylish. That's why the bikers of yesteryear took their Liberators apart - "chopped apart" - and reassembled them. Voilà: the chopper.
The legacy of the ancestors still characterises Harleys today. The mirror on my 2020 Street Rod consists of a metal bar with a mirror on it. No blind spot sensors or lights or mirror heaters.
That's exactly why Joël doesn't want to tinker with my bike. There are hardship cases and tuning projects in the workshop that require attention and time. A biker is also a mechanic. And if Liberators from the Second World War are still turning around today, then a mirror can't be that crazy complicated.
"If you need help, let me know. I'll help you, but first you do it yourself."
10 minutes to a new mirror
Repairing a mirror on the handlebar ends is simple. You need the following tools and about ten minutes of your time:
The mirror glass is attached to a mirror bracket. The bracket is standardised, so you can fit pretty much any handlebar end mirror to your bike. The exterior mirrors are sometimes screwed on with hexagon head screws, sometimes with other screws. That's where style comes into play. My mirror is attached quite brute force.
If you look at the handlebars from the side, it looks like this:
The square in the centre is the same size as the part of the ratchet on which you place the nut. So you don't need an attachment.
Underneath is an Allen screw.
The rest is simple. Square bolt - I'll just call it that, I'm a journalist, not a mechanic - on, hexagon bolt on. Broken parts off, new parts on, write WhatsApp to Carla, drink a Coke, drive off.
In short: You can do many small repairs on your bike yourself. Your mirror may be in a different position, perhaps with a different screw system. But since a motorbike is a mechanically simple device, all you need is a good toolbox and you're off to the races. Just tighten all the bolts properly and correctly. Because if a screw is too loose at 80 km/h, it will really ruin your day.
And Carla? She has discovered the joy of riding a motorbike. We're going to buy a helmet soon. It was worth the few francs for the mirror, because we'll soon be eating up kilometres together over the passes and mountains of Switzerland.
So, that's it. If you've ever wondered what all those weird fabric rolls on the front of the choppers in all those films are supposed to be: They're toolboxes. Because as Sonny Barger says: every motorbike rider is always a bit of a motorbike mechanic too.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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