I like the word "gumption" because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn't likely to
reject anyone who comes along. It’s an old Scottish word, once used a lot by pioneers, but which, like "kin," seems to have all but
dropped out of use. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with
gumption.
A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own
awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.
The gumption-filling process occurs when one is quiet long enough to see and hear and feel the real universe, not just one's own stale
opinions about it. But it’s nothing exotic. That’s why I like the word.
If you're going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven't got that you
might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won't do you any good.
Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven't got it there’s no way the motorcycle can possibly be
fixed. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there's absolutely no way in this whole world that motorcycle can keep from
getting fixed. It's bound to happen. Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the
gumption.
But there’s another kind of detail that no shop manual goes into but that is common to all machines and can be given here. This is the
detail of the Quality relationship, the gumption relationship, between the machine and the mechanic, which is just as intricate as the
machine itself. Throughout the process of fixing the machine things always come up, low-quality things, from a dusted knuckle to an
accidentally ruined "irreplaceable" assembly. These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to
forget the whole business. I call these things "gumption traps."
What I have in mind now is a catalog of "Gumption Traps I Have Known." I want to start a whole new academic field, gumptionology,
in which these traps are sorted, classified, structured into hierarchies and interrelated for the edification of future generations and the
benefit of all mankind.
Gumptionology 101. ..An examination of affective, cognitive and psychomotor blocks in the perception of Quality relationships...3
cr,Vll,MWF. I’d like to see that in a college catalog somewhere.
In traditional maintenance gumption is considered something you're born with or have acquired as a result of good upbringing. It’s a
fixed commodity. From the lack of information about how one acquires this gumption one might assume that a person without any
gumption is a hopeless case.
In nondualistic maintenance gumption isn't a fixed commodity. It’s variable, a reservoir of good spirits that can be added to or
subtracted from. Since it's a result of the perception of Quality, a gumption trap, consequently, can be defined as anything that causes
one to lose sight of Quality, and thus lose one's enthusiasm for what one is doing. As one might guess from a definition as broad as
this, the field is enormous and only a beginning sketch can be attempted here.
As far as I can see there are two main types of gumption traps. The first type is those in which you're thrown off the Quality track by
conditions that arise from external circumstances, and I call these "setbacks." The second type is traps in which you’re thrown off the
Quality track by conditions that are primarily within yourself. These I don't have any generic name for.. ."hang-ups" I suppose. I’ll take
up the externally caused setbacks first.
The first time you do any major job it seems as though the out-of-sequence-reassembly setback is your biggest worry. This occurs
usually at a time when you think you’re almost done. After days of work you finally have it all together except for: What's this? A
connecting-rod bearing liner?! How could you have left that out? Oh Jesus, everything's got to come apart again! You can almost hear
the gumption escaping. Pssssssssssssss.
There’s nothing you can do but go back and take it all apart again — after a rest period of up to a month that allows you to get used to
the idea.
There are two techniques I use to prevent the out-of- sequence-reassembly setback. I use them mainly when I'm getting into a complex
assembly I don’t know anything about.
It should be inserted here parenthetically that there’s a school of mechanical thought which says I shouldn't be getting into a complex
assembly I don’t know anything about. I should have training or leave the job to a specialist. That’s a self-serving school of mechanical
eliteness I’d like to see wiped out. That was a "specialist" who broke the fins on this machine. I’ve edited manuals written to train
specialists for IBM, and what they know when they’re done isn't that great. You're at a disadvantage the first time around and it may
cost you a little more because of parts you accidentally damage, and it will almost undoubtedly take a lot more time, but the next time
around you’re way ahead of the specialist. You, with gumption, have learned the assembly the hard way and you've a whole set of
good feelings about it that he’s unlikely to have.
Anyway, the first technique for preventing the out-of-sequence-reassembly gumption trap is a notebook in which I write down the
order of disassembly and note anything unusual that might give trouble in reassembly later on. This notebook gets plenty grease-
smeared and ugly. But a number of times one or two words in it that didn’t seem important when written down have prevented damage
and saved hours of work. The notes should pay special attention to left-hand and right-hand and up-and-down orientations of parts, and
color coding and positions of wires. If incidental parts look worn or damaged or loose this is the time to note it so that you can make
all your parts purchases at the same time.
The second technique for preventing the out-of- sequence-reassembly gumption trap is newspapers opened out on the floor of the
garage on which all the parts are laid left-to-right and top-to-bottom in the order in which you read a page. That way when you put it
back together in reverse order the little screws and washers and pins that can be easily overlooked are brought to your attention as you
need them.
Even with all these precautions, however, out-of-sequence-reassemblies sometimes occur and when they do you’ve got to watch the
gumption. Watch out for gumption desperation, in which you hurry up wildly in an effort to restore gumption by making up for lost
time. That just creates more mistakes. When you first see that you have to go back and take it apart all over again it’s definitely time for
that long break.
It’s important to distinguish from these the reassemblies that were out of sequence because you lacked certain information. Frequently
the whole reassembly process becomes a cut-and-try technique in which you have to take it apart to make a change and then put it
together again to see if the change works. If it doesn’t work, that isn’t a setback because the information gained is a real progress.
But if you've made just a plain old dumb mistake in reassembly, some gumption can still be salvaged by the knowledge that the second
disassembly and reassembly is likely to go much faster than the first one. You've unconsciously memorized all sorts of things you
won’t have to relearn.
The intermittent failure setback is next. In this the thing that is wrong becomes right all of a sudden just as you start to fix it. Electrical
short circuits are often in this class. The short occurs only when the machine’s bouncing around. As soon as you stop everything’s
okay. It's almost impossible to fix it then. All you can do is try to get it to go wrong again and if it won’t, forget it. Intermittents
become gumption traps when they fool you into thinking you’ve really got the machine fixed. It’s always a good idea on any job to
wait a few hundred miles before coming to that conclusion. They’re discouraging when they crop up again and again, but when they do
you're no worse off than someone who goes to a commercial mechanic. In fact you’re better off. They’re much more of a gumption
trap for the owner who has to drive his machine to the shop again and again and never get satisfaction. On your own machine you can
study them over a long period of time, something a commercial mechanic can’t do, and you can just carry around the tools you think
you’ll need until the intermittent happens again, and then, when it happens, stop and work on it.
When intermittents recur, try to correlate them with other things the cycle is doing. Do the misfires, for example, occur only on bumps,
only on turns, only on acceleration? Only on hot days? These correlations are clues for cause-and-effect hypotheses. In some
intermittents you have to resign yourself to a long fishing expedition, but no matter how tedious that gets it's never as tedious as taking
the machine to a commercial mechanic five times. I'm tempted to go into long detail about "Intermittents I Have Known" with a blow-
by-blow description of how these were solved. But this gets like those fishing stories, of interest mainly to the fisherman, who doesn’t
quite catch on to why everybody yawns. He enjoyed it.
Well, those were the commonest setbacks I can think of: out-of-sequence reassembly, intermittent failure and parts problems. But
although setbacks are the commonest gumption traps they’re only the external cause of gumption loss. Time now to consider some of
the internal gumption traps that operate at the same time.
As the course description of gumptionology indicated, this internal part of the field can be broken down into three main types of
internal gumption traps: those that block affective understanding, called "value traps"; those that block cognitive understanding, called
"truth traps"; and those that block psychomotor behavior, called "muscle traps." The value traps are by far the largest and the most
dangerous group.
Of the value traps, the most widespread and pernicious is value rigidity. This is an inability to revalue what one sees because of
commitment to previous values. In motorcycle maintenance, you must rediscover what you do as you go. Rigid values make this
impossible.
The typical situation is that the motorcycle doesn't work. The facts are there but you don't see them. You're looking right at them, but
they don’t yet have enough value. This is what Phaedrus was talking about. Quality, value, creates the subjects and objects of the world.
The facts do not exist until value has created them. If your values are rigid you can’t really leam new facts.
This often shows up in premature diagnosis, when you’re sure you know what the trouble is, and then when it isn't, you're stuck. Then
you've got to find some new clues, but before you can find them you've got to clear your head of old opinions. If you're plagued with
value rigidity you can fail to see the real answer even when it’s staring you right in the face because you can’t see the new answer’s
importance.
The birth of a new fact is always a wonderful thing to experience. It’s dualistically called a "discovery" because of the presumption that
it has an existence independent of anyone's awareness of it. When it comes along, it always has, at first, a low value. Then, depending
on the value-looseness of the observer and the potential quality of the fact, its value increases, either slowly or rapidly, or the value
wanes and the fact disappears.
The overwhelming majority of facts, the sights and sounds that are around us every second and the relationships among them and
everything in our memory. ..these have no Quality, in fact have a negative quality. If they were all present at once our consciousness
would be so jammed with meaningless data we couldn't think or act. So we preselect on the basis of Quality, or, to put it Phasdrus'
way, the track of Quality preselects what data we’re going to be conscious of, and it makes this selection in such a way as to best
harmonize what we are with what we are becoming.
What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down. ..you’re going to have to slow down
anyway whether you want to or not. ..but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you've been over before to see if the things
you thought were important were really important and to — well — just stare at the machine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just live
with it for a while. Watch it the way you watch a line when fishing and before long, as sure as you live, you’ll get a little nibble, a little
fact asking in a timid, humble way if you’re interested in it. That’s the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it.
At first try to understand this new fact not so much in terms of your big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as
you think it is. And that fact may not be as small as you think it is. It may not be the fact you want but at least you should be very sure
of that before you send the fact away. Often before you send it away you will discover it has friends who are right next to it and are
watching to see what your response is. Among the friends may be the exact fact you are looking for.
After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting than your original purpose of fixing the machine. When that
happens you've reached a kind of point of arrival. Then you're no longer strictly a motorcycle mechanic, you're also a motorcycle
scientist, and you've completely conquered the gumption trap of value rigidity.
All kinds of examples from cycle maintenance could be given, but the most striking example of value rigidity I can think of is the old
South Indian Monkey Trap, which depends on value rigidity for its effectiveness. The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained
to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey’s
hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped. ..by nothing more
than his own value rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it.
The villagers are coming to get him and take him away. They’re coming closer — closer! — now! What general advice. ..not specific
advice. ..but what general advice would you give the poor monkey in circumstances like this?
Well, I think you might say exactly what I've been saying about value rigidity, with perhaps a little extra urgency. There is a fact this
monkey should know: if he opens his hand he's free. But how is he going to discover this fact? By removing the value rigidity that
rates rice above freedom. How is he going to do that? Well, he should somehow try to slow down deliberately and go over ground that
he has been over before and see if things he thought were important really were important and, well, stop yanking and just stare at the
coconut for a while. Before long he should get a nibble from a little fact wondering if he is interested in it. He should try to understand
this fact not so much in terms of his big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as he thinks it is. That fact may
not be as small as he thinks it is either. That’s about all the general information you can give him.
The next one is important. It's the internal gumption trap of ego. Ego isn’t entirely separate from value rigidity but one of the many
causes of it.
If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. Your ego isolates you from the Quality
reality. When the facts show that you’ve just goofed, you’re not as likely to admit it. When false information makes you look good,
you're likely to believe it. On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always
making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of
them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you’ll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet.
There are exceptions, but generally if they're not quiet and modest at first, the work seems to make them that way. And skeptical.
Attentive, but skeptical. But not egoistic. There’s no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except
with someone who doesn’t know what you’re doing.
• I was going to say that the machine doesn't respond to your personality, but it does respond to your personality. It’s just that
the personality that it responds to is your real personality, the one that genuinely feels and reasons and acts, rather than any
false, blown-up personality images your ego may conjure up. These false images are deflated so rapidly and completely you're
bound to be very discouraged very soon if you’ve derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.
If modesty doesn’t come easily or naturally to you, one way out of this trap is to fake the attitude of modesty anyway. If you just
deliberately assume you're not much good, then your gumption gets a boost when the facts prove this assumption is correct. This way
you can keep going until the time comes when the facts prove this assumption is incorrect.
Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You’re so sure you’ll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything
at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results
from overmotivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don’t need fixing, and chase after
imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness.
These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more
underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle.
The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject.
Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down. You should remember that it's peace of mind you're
after and not just a fixed machine.
When beginning a repair job you can list everything you’re going to do on little slips of paper which you then organize into proper
sequence. You discover that you organize and then reorganize the sequence again and again as more and more ideas come to you. The
time spent this way usually more than pays for itself in time saved on the machine and prevents you from doing fidgety things that
create problems later on.
You can reduce your anxiety somewhat by facing the fact that there isn't a mechanic alive who doesn't louse up a job once in a while.
The main difference between you and the commercial mechanics is that when they do it you don't hear about it. ..just pay for it, in
additional costs prorated through all your bills. When you make the mistakes yourself, you at jeast get the benefit of some education.
Boredom is the next gumption trap that comes to mind. This is the opposite of anxiety and commonly goes with ego problems.
Boredom means you’re off the Quality track, you’re not seeing things freshly, you've lost your "beginner’s mind" and your motorcycle
is in great danger. Boredom means your gumption supply is low and must be replenished before anything else is done.
When you're bored, stop! Go to a show. Turn on the TV. Call it a day. Do anything but work on that machine. If you don’t stop, the
next thing that happens is the Big Mistake, and then all the boredom plus the Big Mistake combine together in one Sunday punch to
knock all the gumption out of you and you are really stopped.
My favorite cure for boredom is sleep. It’s very easy to get to sleep when bored and very hard to get bored after a long rest. My next
favorite is coffee. I usually keep a pot plugged in while working on the machine. If these don't work it may mean deeper Quality
problems are bothering you and distracting you from what's before you. The boredom is a signal that you should turn your attention to
these problems, .that’s what you’re doing anyway., and control them before continuing on the motorcycle
Here by far the most frustrating gumption trap is inadequate tools. Nothing’s quite so demoralizing as a tool hang-up. Buy good tools
as you can afford them and you'll never regret it. If you want to save money don’t overlook the newspaper want ads. Good tools, as a
rule, don’t wear out, and good secondhand tools are much better than inferior new ones. Study the tool catalogs. You can learn a lot
from them.
Apart from bad tools, bad surroundings are a major gumption trap. Pay attention to adequate lighting. It’s amazing the number of
mistakes a little light can prevent.
Some physical discomfort is unpreventable, but a lot of it, such as that which occurs in surroundings that are too hot or too cold, can
throw your evaluations way off if you aren’t careful. If you’re too cold, for example, you’ll hurry and probably make mistakes. If
you’re too hot your anger threshold gets much lower. Avoid out-of-position work when possible. A small stool on either side of the
cycle will increase your patience greatly and you'll be much less likely to damage the assemblies you’re working on.
There’s one psychomotor gumption trap, muscular insensitivity, which accounts for some real damage. It results in part from lack of
kinesthesia, a failure to realize that although the externals of a cycle are rugged, inside the engine are delicate precision parts which can
be easily damaged by muscular insensitivity. There's what’s called "mechanic’s feel," which is very obvious to those who know what it
is, but hard to describe to those who don't; and when you see someone working on a machine who doesn't have it, you tend to suffer
with the machine.
The mechanic’s feel comes from a deep inner kinesthetic feeling for the elasticity of materials. Some materials, like ceramics, have very
little, so that when you thread a porcelain fitting you're very careful not to apply great pressures. Other materials, like steel, have
tremendous elasticity, more than rubber, but in a range in which, unless you’re working with large mechanical forces, the elasticity
isn't apparent.
With nuts and bolts you're in the range of large mechanical forces and you should understand that within these ranges metals are
elastic. When you take up a nut there’s a point called "finger-tight" where there’s contact but no takeup of elasticity. Then there’s
"snug," in which the easy surface elasticity is taken up. Then there's a range called "tight," in which all the elasticity is taken up. The
force required to reach these three points is different for each size of nut and bolt, and different for lubricated bolts and for locknuts.
The forces are different for steel and cast iron and brass and aluminum and plastics and ceramics. But a person with mechanic’s feel
knows when something’s tight and stops. A person without it goes right on past and strips the threads or breaks the assembly.
A "mechanic’s feel" implies not only an understanding for the elasticity of metal but for its softness. The insides of a motorcycle
contain surfaces that are precise in some cases to as little as one ten-thousandth of an inch. If you drop them or get dirt on them or
scratch them or bang them with a hammer they’ll lose that precision. It’s important to understand that the metal behind the surfaces can
normally take great shock and stress but that the surfaces themselves cannot. When handling precision parts that are stuck or difficult
to manipulate, a person with mechanic’s feel will avoid damaging the surfaces and work with his tools on the nonprecision surfaces of
the same part whenever possible. If he must work on the surfaces themselves, he’ll always use softer surfaces to work them with. Brass
hammers, plastic hammers, wood hammers, rubber hammers and lead hammers are all available for this work. Use them. Vise jaws can
be fitted with plastic and copper and lead faces. Use these too. Handle precision parts gently. You’ll never be sorry. If you have a
tendency to bang things around, take more time and try to develop a little more respect for the accomplishment that a precision part
represents.
