Soichiro Honda, the founder and namesake of the Honda Motor Co., was heard to say that so many degreed engineers lacked the mechanical understanding, i.e., intuition or conceptual knowledge, about how things actually worked, that would help them design better systems. Honda insisted that the mechanical knowledge he wanted his engineers to have would come from working with their hands, famously observing that people with only academic training were not as effective as experienced mechanics. He was, not surprisingly, also known for valuing real-world testing over esoteric design efforts, which led to his legendary confrontations with his engineers.

The roll of self-taught engineers and designers is long and illustrious. Consider Garrett Morgan, the inventer of the traffic light. Also Edison, Einstein and Franklin, Pitts, Ford and Faraday, Eiffel, Wright and the hundreds more non-degreed fathers of science, whose contributions will forever be significant despite the absence of formal academic sanction.

It should not be surprising then that powersports forum expert wannabes, many with formal electrical or mechanical engineering credentials, just don't know the real world of motorcycle maintenance.