I'm confused by all of these rave reviews. A buddy of mine gave me a bite to ride for…read moretransportation before I had any way to get around when I hit town after a hard break up and had nothing left. But it had major issues, so I figured well, it's free, so I'll just go get everything fixed and then I'll give it back to him for the kind act of letting me use it.
When I first arrived, he was on the phone, and I sat there for literally 15 minutes while he talked to a person, and then took another call for another 10 minutes while I sat there in his office, waiting for him to get off the phone. I should've left right then.
The bike had a serious coolant leak, bad rear brake, a rear tire that had been burned on one spot all the way down to the threads, which I didn't know, the clutch was terrible, and worst of all, and the thing that I wanted to fix the most was that the bike sputtered when you took off, and this with a bad clutch as well, which made the bike actually quite dangerous to ride, This is what I wanted him to fix most besides the coolant leak. I had already done a bunch of research about it and found that this was a failing common to this model 2002 YZF-600R, which is the little cousin of the Yamaha R6. I told him as respectfully as I could that I had done a lot of research and the problem was almost always one of the coils on one of the cylinders and that the fix was pretty simple. He said with all the bravado I'm sure he could muster, and I'm paraphrasing, "well I have a whole bunch of other sources that have actually worked on bikes for many years "or something like that, completely dismissing anything I had said to him. So instead, he rebuild all four carburetors which cost me $1400. Totally unnecessary.
I also said to him, please look over the entire bike, examine it and tell me what it needs and please find anything that needs fixing and I'll pay for it.
I dropped the bike off in mid December. Two weeks or three weeks later, I called him and he said he hadn't had time to look at it. I called two weeks later and he said the same thing. Right before I was ready to just come get the bike, and go to someone else, he said he was waiting for some back ordered parts from China. Or somewhere. And every time I called him, he said they were back ordered and he still hadn't received them. These were just hoses. Finally in like March he said that the hoses had arrived, but they were the wrong ones. And then he said the old ones are OK so I'll just put those in.
I came to get the bike, the sputter was still there, I found the horribly defective rear tire, that was a horrible accident, waiting to happen, noticed the clutch was the same as when I left it, and the sputtering was still there,. When I called him and told him about this, he said that he had ridden it and he didn't notice that. That's absolute bullshit. Anyone that's ever ridden a motorcycle,( I have ridden motorcycles, my whole life and I'm 55 years old) known immediately that that bike sputtered when you were initially taking off. So he said bring the bike back and I'll look at it again. He lied straight to my face. I'm sure of it.
Reluctantly, I did take it back because I already had so much invested I wasn't gonna go anywhere else.
He called me in May. This is five months after I drop the bike off. Five. Months. And guess what the problem was? A bad coil on one of the cylinders.
I bought a new rear tire and he said he would install it for free. When I showed up, he said he needed $100 for the rear tire installation and then I told him that he had told me that he would install the rear tire for free.
Then he got all shitty and said " why don't we just stop this here and you can just go. Take the bike."
This guy had my bike for five months, totally ignored everything I said about what I wanted, charge me $1400 for something it didn't need, failed to inspect the motorcycle, didn't adjust the clutch, and totally lied about riding the bike after he had rebuilt the carburetors, unnecessarily.
I have no doubt that this guy is a good motorcycle mechanic. And I have no doubt that he has his fans. And I also have no doubt that he can fix your motorcycle. But you better ask him when you're gonna get it back, because if you don't, he might keep it for five damn months and not fix it.