My formal mechanics training began at Los Angeles Trade Tech in 1973 under instructors Joe Minton (Motorcyclist, Rider, and American Rider and American Iron magazine columnist and Mikuni corporate tech guy) and Pat Owens (formerly Gene Romero's tuner and later world-renowned Triumph expert). What a wonderful experience! Fellow alumni of LATTC include the 1980s road racer Bruce Hammer (Team Hammer Suzuki), recent president of Motul Dave Wolman, one time factory Honda motocross team manager Dave Arnold, 200-mph clubber/top fuel Harley racer/LSR rider Wayne Pollack, race car fabricator Chuck Rust, and many other bright lights in motorsports.

For the next 20+ years I paid my dues in metro southern california motorcycle shops gaining invaluable concentrated experience in all kinds of motorcycles, doing literally all kinds of work on them. At various times throughout this period I also ran a suspension shop, managed a couple service departments, got Honda factory certified (factory Honda registered tech 1983), and eventually landed a job at corporate Honda in a field support role. I was at corporate Honda for the rollout of the first Honda V4s, the Turbo, the earliest days of the CBX and its cousins the CX500, DOHC 750, 900, and 1100, and GL1100; the days of AHM's superbike racing effort with the 1024cc fours and Spencer and McLaughlin, and the infamous NR500. My group assisted dealers and customers with field issues. CBX cylinder studs. CB750 cam chain guides. Later I took more Honda classes, adding modern courses such as fuel injection, and qualified in fuel systems, V4 engines, electrical troubleshooting, and turbocharging, eventually accumulating over 350 credit hours of OEM factory training, including from Honda, Kawasaki, and Harley-Davidson.

During the remainder of the 1980s I was with Motorcycle Mechanics Institute (MMI) in Phoenix, AZ. As an instructor I helped develop the school's material on carburetors and high performance engines, and was promoted to the institute's full-time curriculum developer, a position in which I was responsible for over 4000 credit hours of instruction, essentially all the powersports material at the school at that time. During this time I started the Motorcycle Project, originally simply a repository of technical articles, but which would later become commercial with the advent of my how-to books and ultimately was expanded to become a vintage Honda repair shop.

In the late 1990s I left MMI to work for a well-known speed shop for whom I built H-D clone hotrods, GSXR and ZX11 dragbikes, and did a few one-off customs. During this time I accumulated well over 1000 hours on a Dynojet dyno, built nitrous systems, did a ton of carb rebuilds, and more than a few cylinder bores and valve jobs.

The bike in the background is of course the superlative Ninja H2R, the first year 2015 model. I designed the initial dealer technical training for this bike, an awesome privilege. Picture taken in the lobby of the then (1987 through 2016) Kawasaki corporate office in Irvine, California. The company moved to nearby Foothill Ranch, California shortly after.

In 2005 I joined corporate Kawasaki as their Instructional Designer, a post in which I created and often facilitated hands-on and online courses, webinars, and videos, in addition to conducting numerous seminars for all sorts of technical venues all over the country, on the road some three months out of every year, training both technicians and their supervisors. Prior to leaving Kawasaki in April 2016 after almost 11 years, I was tasked with the supervision and oversight of all dealer technical training. For over 1200 dealers, I designed and implemented technical courses, managed all training resources, including six full-time company training centers and over 50 satellite locations across the US, and supervised twelve instructors. I designed, set up, implemented and managed the company's first-ever nationwide dealer technician recognition program, maintained relationships with partner institutions, met yearly to network with my counterparts at Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, BMW, Harley-Davidson and KTM, and controlled all aspects of Kawasaki training, including scheduling, training materials, certification, marketing, purchasing, managing the company's online training records database, dealing with vendors, providing vehicles, tools and equipment, and overseeing training locations. I wrote, equipped and supported the supercharged Ninja H2 dealer training, as well as for the superlative gyro-equipped 2016 ZX-10R (for which I went to Japan), and much more. Mine was a unique opportunity for which I will always be grateful and about which I will forever have many good memories.

A sampling of my customer's carburetors. I rebuild a lot of Honda motorcycle carburetors, with a strong focus on the Honda multicyclinder carbs of the 1970s and 1980s. Click on this image to go to a customer gallery.

Upon leaving Kawasaki, I was offered Stu Oltman's job at Motorcycle Consumer News. Talk about a hard act to follow (and a great guy--I got to know him and his wife a bit)! Though I hated to, I turned it down and suggested a friend and business aquaintance who excelled at that position until MCN closed their doors in late 2019, Motorcycle Mechanics Institute's Kevin Shockency. Today, full time is devoted to my carburetor business, the Motorcycle Project. I rebuild well over 100 carburetor sets each year, take on two to three special engine projects, publish how-to booklets, continue to enjoy relationships with many leaders in the powersports industry, and am privileged to serve yearly on MMI's industry advisory board, meeting with the institute regularly to help keep the nation's 51 years and going strong premier technical school current and relevant.

It's no secret I have written a lot of negative things about motorcycle forums and Internet "experts". You might have trouble understanding the issues I contend with, if you haven't training or experience in mechanics. Maybe you're disturbed at what appears to be a war. I probably would be too, if I were you.

But it's not really a war. Not with people anyway. If a war, it's a war of ideas. Ideas matter. In case you weren't aware, life can be characterized by this struggle, this competition in the marketplace of ideas. The strange thing is, in today's society, ideas are conflated with people. That is, folks insist on hating you when they disagree with you. What has happened? It's "kill the messenger" time; there is no reasoning.

I didn't set out to refute virtually everything on forums. I set out to help people understand the reality of Honda technology and maintenance best practice. That there is in fact such a thing as best practice, an idea that is itself, surprisingly, vigorously debated on forums. I discovered that forums are countering virtually every principle I espouse. I did not become the enemy of forums, they made themselves the enemy. Forums are the antagonists, the adversaries, of all who are serious about maintaining their machines properly and who respect the Honda product and Honda technology.

Look at my record. I have never been antagonistic, abusive, or arrogant in my forum posts or on my website. I have tried hard to exercise restraint on forums. I have never attacked any person, only ideas. Yet if not actually banned from forums I am in effect, as I am shunned and discredited on any forum on which I have said something that didn't toe the party line. Do this: Ask one of your trusted Internet "experts" to take this test. They won't becable to answer very many of the questions. And to a career mechanic, this test is easy. It is partly derived from a scholarship exam for beginning mechanics school students.

Let me be clear. I have opinions, and more than that, convictions, on many subjects including electric vehicles, politics, education, the English language, computers, US history, music, religion, and a range of social issues--all the usual things people are passionate about. That's normal for any thinking individual. But I don't burden others with them. Why then do I speak my mind about powersports? Why am I so passionate about industry best practices? Perhaps the investment of more than a half-century in the industry at a fairly high level has given me a perspective that can't be quiet about powersports maintenance nonsense. Maybe the willfull destruction by iconoclastic individuals of something dear to me, that has been my lifelong pursuit, I take offense to. Think about it. And while you're thinking, do one more thing. Instead of listening to the ad hominem and the extemporaneous online, do this: compare the backgrounds, the experience, the qualifications of those giving advice. Then you will know who and what to believe.