I’m insufferably pleased with myself

I bought some parts to replace some dam­aged items on my Vira­go in antic­i­pa­tion of sell­ing it. One of the eas­i­est to replace was the tail­light lens, which had been bro­ken when the bike was acci­den­tal­ly backed into some­thing. I also bought six rub­ber grom­mets of the type that eas­i­ly come out and are lost, and which are inex­pen­sive to replace if one does­n’t mind wait­ing a cou­ple weeks for the fifty-cent part to arrive from Yamaha.

The item that was real fun, though, was the hel­met hang­er. It was almost a year ago that my hel­met was stolen by a thief who pried open the hel­met lock. I nev­er both­ered to replace it lest I ever trust it again. The bro­ken lock served as a hel­met hang­er any­where I’d trust that an unlocked hel­met would remain, but offered no false promise of security.

In the inter­est of sell­ing a bike on which all dam­age had been repaired, I ordered a replace­ment hel­met lock with my last parts order.

When it arrived, I real­ized that there was a flaw in my plan. The new hel­met lock came com­plete with its own set of keys. The orig­i­nal lock had oper­at­ed with the same key as the igni­tion. An addi­tion­al key might not be too much trou­ble, except that the new keys appeared iden­ti­cal to the old ones: the same key­stone-shaped grip on the same type of key blank. Put these on the same keyring if you want to be for­ev­er con­fused as to which is which.

On a hunch I looked at the under­side of the assem­bly. Sure enough, there were screws hold­ing the back­plate on. I unscrewed them and dis­sas­sem­bled each of the locks, saw how the new one func­tioned as the old one did not, and man­aged to pull the lock bar­rel from the old lock and put it in the new one.

The result is that I now have a hel­met lock keyed to the bike’s igni­tion key. I also reassem­bled the old lock, repair­ing the dam­age done by straight­en­ing one bent pin. This means that I could have fixed the orig­i­nal and not spent $27 on the replace­ment part.

The old lock (with the new key bar­rel) is cos­met­i­cal­ly marred, so hav­ing a brand new replace­ment part is prob­a­bly for the best. Also, I could not have known that the lock was so eas­i­ly fix­able with­out get­ting it apart first. Hav­ing to switch the bar­rels meant that I had to take the parts all the way apart, and I got to see more of the mech­a­nism than I oth­er­wise would have.

Now I need to find some­thing to attach this old lock to. It’s got­ta be good for something.