This bike is vibrating my nuts off!

On the way home tonight, as I was almost there, I tapped the shifter and found it was­n’t there. I looked down to find my heel-toe shifter and its link­age dan­gling. I was just a cou­ple blocks from home, so I kept it in sec­ond until I got in front of the garage, and got down to exam­ine the damage.

One nut that held the link­age was just miss­ing. I could put the bolt back through and shift again, but it was still hang­ing loose and could­n’t go more than a cou­ple of taps before falling out again. I looked in my toolk­it for a wrench that fit nuts sim­i­lar to the one I was miss­ing, but did­n’t have any­thing that small.

So it became my mis­sion: find a hard­ware store before they all close. I put the Moto Guzzi into first and did­n’t take it out of first until I arrived at Cole Hardware.

I explained to the first per­son I found that I need­ed a nut, but that I did­n’t know what size, and he walked out to look with me. I told him it would be met­ric, and he said, “wait here, I’ll bring the box out and we’ll try ’em”

Turned out to be a 6mm, and they lent me a set of chan­nel locks, which I did­n’t let them see that I did­n’t use (I have a small cres­cent wrench in my kit). Thir­ty cents for the nut and a lock­wash­er and a few thank-yous lat­er I was on the road again.

I did­n’t get the nut tight­ened as much as I’d like but it will hold for now. Hope­ful­ly has some met­ric wrench­es that I can use when I see him tomor­row. I need nee­dle-nosed pli­ers or a very nar­row wrench to fit on the oppo­site side, because at this point tight­en­ing the nut just rotates the bolt, and I’ve got noth­ing nar­row enough to hold the oth­er side in place. I used my fin­gers as best I could, but I think that pret­ty much counts this nut as “fin­ger-tight” which means it’ll come off as soon as it can. I’m sure it’ll be fine until tomor­row, but it won’t hold for long.