I'm not a very good mechanic

I'm not a very good mechanic. This should come as no surprise to anyone. I've never boasted of my mechanical abilities. I had never turned a wrench, never so much as changed oil in my own car, before I owned a motorcycle. But owning a motorcycle has changed that.

When I started in the world of motorcycling, I had no spare cash. I scraped together $1000 bucks by selling crap out of my attic, and bought a 20 year old Honda on eBay.

Having no money, and a 20-year-old bike, and wanting to ride it -- those were the formula for learning how to wrench on my own bike. It was borne of necessity.

So along the way I've learned a thing or two. Changed my own oil. Rebuilt brakes. Cleaning and balancing carburettors. Basically, when something broke, that's when I learn how to fix it. Because I had no choice. I can't wheel a 20 year old bike to a mechanic and ask them to fix it. Most shops won't take bikes that old. And I couldn't afford their prices if they did.

So I learned.

Fast forward to today.

It's not a 20-year-old bike I'm working on. It's a one-year-old Harley Davidson I bought for my wife last year. It's not broken down, I'm just adding accessories.

But once again, budgetary reality plays a role in my mechanical training. I bought saddlebags for her 2009 Dyna Super Glide, and along with them, the requisite turn signal relocation kit.

The Harley Dealer wanted three hours of labor, at $95.00 per hour, to install the bags and relocate the turn signals.

That was half-again the price I'd spent on the accessories. I could save a lot if I did it myself. And it didn't look too complicated, compared to, say, rebuilding and balancing, (and reinstalling!) the Magna's four-barrel carburettor.

But I knew at least enough to carve out plenty of time to do the work. If it takes a trained Harley mechanic three hours to do it, it'll take me longer. At least the first time.

I was right about that.

Relocating the turn signals was the first step. The kits instructions were pretty good, and I managed to relocate the turn signals in about an hour.

It involved:

• unbolting the stock turn signals from their fender-mounted stems,
• cutting the plugs on the end of the turn signal wires,
• unthreading the wires from the stock stems,
• rethreading the wires through the new license-plate mounted stems,
• re-soldering the wires.

I was pleased to note that, contrary to the instructions, I did not have to drill a hole through the stock fender in order to rewire the turn signals. Harley was smart enough to drill a hole in the stock fender, cleverly plugged with a plastic cap and hidden beneath the stock license plate mount. This pre-drilled hole was perfectly positioned for use with the turn-signal relocation kit. This little bit of foresight on Harley's part took some of the stress out of the job for me, as I was worried about drilling through the fender. Though I can drill through metal easy enough, I have the right tools for it, I feared a slip of the hand would result in a scratched fender, or a punctured tire.

One unexpected snag I hit was the stock wiring harness was frayed. Right where the stock wires pass through the retaining clips under the fender, the wires were frayed through the insulation. I decided to make my splice there, at the location where the wires were already frayed, which was the "correct" spot. According to the instructions, I should cut the wires 4 to 6 inches from the turn signal housing.

In retrospect, I wish I'd made the cuts in a different place. By cutting and splicing the wires where I did, my splices, and the requisite shrink-wrap sleeve which hides my soldering joints, sits above the fender, right behind the license plate. The solder joints themselves are frustratingly close to the point where the wires emerge from the license-plate mounted stems.

If I had it to do again, I'd have made the splice closer to the plug end of the wires. The splices would have been beneath the fender. I imagine Harley wanted the splice to be out of the way of the wheel spray and gunk which happens under the fender.

From there I tackled the saddlebag installation.

If I had it to do over again, having learned what I've learned in the process, it would have taken me an hour, and I wouldn't have broken a sweat.

Ah, but the learning process, getting from "I've never done this before" to "I know how to do this" was a 3 and a half hour journey, fraught with sweating and cursing.

What should've been a simple job was complicated because I misunderstood the directions. The saddlebag installing kits are multi-fit, meaning they fit a variety of models of bikes from a variety of years. There are extra spacers and miscellani that are included in the kit, and the instructions carefully outline which assortment of spacers are used in which configuration for your specific bike.

It's actually pretty well laid out and easy to follow.

But I missed a piece. I misread a statement which lead me to attempt, which great frustration, to install the saddlebags with the stock under-fender bracket. After wasting a lot of time with this -- the bolts simply would not seat properly -- I noticed the new under-fender brackets which had been included with the kit, quietly waiting to the side. I re-read the directions and discovered my error. I had missed that sentence about my particular model and year requiring the new under-fender bracket.

Once this error was discovered, the saddlebags were on the bike in less than half an hour.

As I said, I'm not a very good mechanic, because a good mechanic would've realized "there must be something wrong here" much sooner, and a very good mechanic wouldn't have made the error to begin with.

But at the end of the day I was successful. I got the turn signals relocated and the saddlebags installed. I didn't kill anybody or damage anything. I saved the household budget the $285 in labor that would've been paid to the Harley mechanic to do this job.

And I learned.