Fear. There's a certain amount of "oh shit if it breaks I'm fucked" that I, too, suffer from. The beastie did 5,000 miles in three months back and forth from work so when I was done with that gig, I parked it and vowed not to ride it again until it'd had its oil changed, its chain tensioned and its fuel injection rebalanced. Then, of course, I also changed out the pipe, put crash bobbins on and gave it heated grips so right now it's suffering from some serious I-don't-have-time-to-finishism. Benelli, in their infinite kindness, put up the shop manuals as PDFs. I printed mine full color using my wife's discount. It's an impressive document - a 3" binder of tweaky Italian Engrish. But it also gives you the fortitude to do obnoxious things like exchange the fuel injectors for Densos. The 25,000 Euro price tag (without engine)? The lack of a garage to build it in? Lots of things. Besides, I can't ride more than one motorcycle at once and the one I have is a peach. Engineers, as a general rule of thumb, know fuckall about taking things apart. I was stunned to learn that of the entire UW department of Mechanical Engineering, I was the only person in my graduating class that had ever repaired a vehicle large enough to ride in. In my opinion, the best way to learn how to wrench is to own a VW Bug. The parts cost nothing, you can take the whole thing apart with a Leatherman and there are enough gotchas in the design that it will not instill you with a sense of awe for "superior German engineering." Build a dune buggy or sand rail. You'll learn. ALL HAIL CHENOWTHEver find out why it got sold in the first place?
I'm at about the level of Lego Technics/Erector Set. Break something on a Honda? No problem.
Anything in particular that's stopping you from building that thing?
I guess I could ask various friends who are engineers to give me a hand if I run into problems at some future time, but then again, my friends with engineering backgrounds seem to think they can take just about anything apart and put it back together the right way, whether or not that's really the case.
