THIS TRANSCRIPTION WAS DONE BY OTTER AI SO THERE ARE MANY ERRORS. WE DO PLAN TO COME BACK AND CORRECT THEM, BUT IF THIS MESSAGE IS STILL HERE WE HAVE NOT DONE SO YET]

Roy Merritt 0:11
Once again, it’s time to open your ears and expand your mind. Or maybe it’s still your mind. Either way, I think these boys have something to say. So sit back, grab a brew, we’re gonna have some to give you our point of view, here on Talkin Braap

well I think it’s about time we usually start coming in right?

Mike VO 1:03
Yeah. I don’t know You yelled at me so I know.

Roy Merritt 1:05
Talkin Braap season two, Episode Three, yeah. Episode Three so check us out Talkin braap.com Instagram talkin braap Facebook talkin braap twitter BraapTalkin whatever find us anywhere

check out our website.

We got some cool stuff coming out on the website. Now I finally got to release the new website got a blog feed and all kinds of stuff going on. So check it out, sign up for newsletters and blah blah blah and all that stuff we’re gonna be doing. So the topic of the day is m m i worth it. If you don’t know what MMI is. MMI is a division of UTI and it is the motorcycle mechanics Institute. We got Mike and Shane and Aaron here today.

Jason Widger 2:01
The under the urinary tract infection Institute did his secretary attractants

Shane Langdon 2:05
Okay. Yes, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:06
yes. They

Roy Merritt 2:09
know me, Shane Mike. I mean, we all went to MMI. You know, Aaron didn’t go Aaron’s not really the techie guy back here. So he didn’t go. So he hasn’t had quite the input on this that we have. But I think each one of us went through school with quite a few people. Yeah. And of those people, but how many do you think are still in the business? Probably

Shane Langdon 2:35
three.

Roy Merritt 2:37
Okay, and that’s about what I was gonna say three to four of the 60 to 100 people I started with probably four, maybe five that are still in the business doing anything worth a shit. What do you think of that? Is

Aaron Staudinger 2:50
it like a lack of desire to want to do it? What’s a lack of desire to want to do it or burned out or what’s the reason for not wanting to stay

Roy Merritt 2:59
has nothing to do with Wanting to say just because you want to fly a plane doesn’t mean you can.

Aaron Staudinger 3:05
With all the instruction in the world, some people are just not going to be able to fly a fucking plane. Yeah. What’s that guy’s name? Bob Denver. john john Connor. Yeah and ask him about it. I’m gonna fly and Kobe, Kobe Bryant and he was like a helicopter that up pretty good. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 3:23
So you know

Roy Merritt 3:25
some people ride like that. I mean, you know when you’re in school and I don’t think this holds true it just MMI I think this is something that holds true on anything, any kind of schooling anywhere, which is you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink. So um, you know, you can teach people all the stuff in the world, but it doesn’t mean they’re gonna soak it up and be able to use it.

Jason Widger 3:54
What he’s raising his hand over in the corner

Roy Merritt 3:56
when you’re in school, and I’m sure you know Mike and shame for you guys can agree with this. I would say about 30% of the people, you know, within the first couple of days that are not going to make it. You know, I just can’t wrap their heads around things. You know, just because you want to work on motorcycles does not mean you have the aptitude for it. You get guys that decide, oh, man, I’ve been watching OCC and I want to be Paul Jr. I want to build a bike. But they’ve been pencil pushers their whole life. They’ve never used a torque wrench. They’ve never turned a wrench. They don’t know the difference between you know, an open end wrench and a closed end wrench or any of this so they get into school and there’s a lot thrown at you. You know, I think if I were to go to school to be a doctor or something, I would probably fail. Yeah, but there’s also the side of it too, where if you’re starting with a fresh slate, some people depending how you’re wired, you can pick it up or somebody who’s been doing it 15 years on their own garage, taught doing it.

Shane Langdon 5:00
Wrong for 15 years now let’s be retaught. That’s the whole opposite of that spectrum. Yes, but a guy that has been doing it in his garage for 15 years, even little bits at a time is going to do a lot better than a guy who has never touched a wrench before.

As if he’s a cross sweater or Loctite. Guy, well cross the red.

Roy Merritt 5:23
Cross red is forever so it doesn’t get better your green green Loctite or cross red whichever one you want.

Mike VO 5:31
Unless it’s a derby cover, somebody’s got to take off and use red or green, green. So, so I have a call in coming tonight. From guy named Jason widger. I met him about 10 years ago when I went through MMI. He was from the same town same area I was new, a lot of the same people close to the same age. We just never had crossed paths. We knew he used to hang out in the low rider scene and the bike scene and I knew all the low rider clubs and blah blah blah and

Roy Merritt 6:01
You know what, once we got into class and this net started talking to man, man, I can’t believe we’ve never met, you know, we grew up not too far from each other and just never really met. So I’ve stayed in touch with Jason. He went from MMI to HDU, which is kind of the same thing except it’s, it’s, you know, more hardly run than MMI. They actually have a company called MIT I think it is. And it’s what Harley uses to train, you know, their technicians. And they are usually MMI teachers. Okay. And the best of the best, you know, Jason went to like Thailand for like five years and was teaching, you know, in Thailand, Harley Davidson in Thailand.

Unknown Speaker 6:48
Now,

Roy Merritt 6:50
he is now working at Harley Davidson as a tech services guy. Call in when you need help and he’ll help you out Excuse me, um, you know, and I kind of wanted to get a little bit of his input to see, you know, how many people he thinks goes through there that don’t do anything with it, you know, and what, what that side of everything looks like because, you know, I think the three of us soaked up a lot when we were in there, we knew what we wanted out of it. You know, we wanted we wanted what we have now, basically, we wanted to be some of the best technicians that we could be so we took it seriously and the people that do take it seriously do take a lot out of MMI I can remember so many little things that I was taught and MMI that you know, I probably would not have learned anywhere else, you know, I don’t know they lied to me about all the chicks.

Mike VO 7:45
Yeah, they said you work on motorcycles are gonna be a chick magnet. Yeah, I just hang out with you fucking castle.

Roy Merritt 7:52
Or like a dick.

Unknown Speaker 7:56
Mike says

Unknown Speaker 7:57
guys love me. Yeah. Everywhere I go

Roy Merritt 8:01
yeah I thought it was the case love him that’s what it is. Yeah that’s true they do they do they do

Aaron Staudinger 8:08
on the school thing man how much of that is just related to like any course of study period? I mean like you absolutely you go

Roy Merritt 8:14
to college how many people you know are actually using the Women’s Studies degree or whatever they did in school How many people do you know that are doing menial jobs that have liberal arts degrees that I nothing mean? I have an electrical engineering degree.

Aaron Staudinger 8:25
Yeah, I used it for about a year and a half. Yeah, failed. The creative side

Roy Merritt 8:30
and that’s the thing that’s why people like to bash MMI but in the end, it’s just like any other school just because you go to school. Oh, wait, what’s this?

Unknown Speaker 8:45
Let’s see if a light one. Hello. Hey guys,

Roy Merritt 8:48
what’s going on? What’s going on? Man?

Jason Widger 8:50
How you doing? Good man yourself.

Roy Merritt 8:52
I’m doing all right. So this is Jason

Mike VO 8:54
Jason this store 2715

Unknown Speaker 9:03
I don’t have a reference number, the

Jason Widger 9:07
VIN number.

Roy Merritt 9:15
I mean, I forgot to tell you but I hope you have a beer open because we do

Jason Widger 9:19
actually know we were gonna go to the store and get some of but you know, this is more important right now. So I don’t have any here. Yeah, well, we always drink. And we can just leave it at that. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 9:32
While we podcast Yeah, that’s right.

Roy Merritt 9:35
Yeah. So I was telling them a little bit about you on the way in, you know, this is about 10 years ago. I think that we met in school there. Yep. Your instructor and told him you’d spent How long were you in Thailand? Like,

Jason Widger 9:46
I was five years under just under four years? Just under four years? Yeah.

Roy Merritt 9:50
Yep. Yeah. So you’ve been around quite a few people. And what we kind of been talking about is is you know, and it’s not an MMI thing.

Jason Widger 10:00
I think it’s any school is there’s a large percentage of people that go through school. Yep. That don’t work in the industry when it’s also Yeah, right. There’s a lot of guys that I actually had back when I was at MMI that to this day Do not even touch motorcycles. I mean, there’s guys that have gone to other schools after MMI and done something completely different. Yeah.

Roy Merritt 10:21
Yeah, and you know, we kind of said here earlier is you know, I said just because you want to be able to fly a plane and you go take lessons doesn’t mean you will necessarily be able to fly a plane ever. Absolutely. You know, some people need the aptitude and there is a certain type of person that that you have to be to do this job

Jason Widger 10:41
but I direct

Mike VO 10:42
I think there’s also people think you can make money doing it.

Jason Widger 10:48
Just do it because they got the GI Bill and they wanted to be able to work on their own bike later but or just doing it just dance.

Yeah, that’s a lot of things that I run into too easy is because I was thinking earlier today

You know, you got these guys that come to the school fresh out of the military that got the GI Bill and bam, they want to do it. Or you got these guys who are 6070 years old, they just retired and they want to do something with their life. So they come to school. You know, but you also on the flip side of that you get these kids that are 1818 years old, that oh, I want to go to MMI I want to go to law school, I’m gonna go to any school. I’m gonna get away from family and they don’t really care what’s happening. They’re getting an education per se, but they’re just drinking and partying and having a good time. Oh, yeah. Those guys would go those guys usually in midday class used to be Yeah, usually Yeah. I remember I was in night class and morning and night seemed to be okay. But midday midday I was already Fuck off. We had to work during the day to to go to school night. That’s all Yeah. And I did the same thing when I was with the school there because I went to school. Oh, 405 and I worked all day, six days a week and then I went to school Monday through Friday at night. So yeah, been the same as everybody else’s. And you spent How long do you spend as a technician

Roy Merritt 12:00
was a little over five years or five years. Yeah, yep, yep. So you know, you’ve got good experience on kind of both ends of it and you know, you watch people online just bash Mmm. Oh, yeah. And it’s it’s so bad because these guys I went to school and I couldn’t do shit with it. It’s like, Man, you know you’re an idiot.

Jason Widger 12:20
Yeah. Well, the one thing that the one thing that we used to tell the guys is you get out of it, what you put into it. So if you go in there with open mind and you’re willing to learn and everything and take what the instructors tell you, then absolutely, but if you go in there with a mindset, oh, I’m just only here because I have to be or I’m the GI Bill or I just want to do something with my life, blah, blah. They don’t care. They’re not gonna get anything out of it. Like, I’ll be honest, when I went to MMI I knew nothing. I’m gonna I’m gonna make myself sound really bad. I had no idea what a lifter was. I had no idea what cam timing was. I had no idea we were talking about being shafts and all that stuff. I had no clue. Yeah, but once I went through theory, and I understood cuz I’ve heard all the terms. I just didn’t know what anybody was saying. But once I went through theory and understood, I’m like, oh, okay, now it makes sense that kind of put everything together. And that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to work on motorcycles and I have this career so I put every effort I could into it. But you get these other guys that are just they’re only here because mommy Dad, you’re paying for it.

Roy Merritt 13:16
Yeah. Well, you know, and a really good example we have a, an entry level guy here. That’s from Greenland. Okay, yeah, he went through MMI Yeah. And you know, each time I finished the class, you know, I took notes every day I did everything and I put everything in a binder. Yep. And then when I was done, I had a series of binders for every class and I still have some of those binders in my toolbox to go back to touring electronics and the advanced electronics stuff like that. I keep those in my box because sometimes their stuff I get back tuners Thank you very much. Absolutely. Yeah, you do you have a screaming Eagle bite? Yeah.

Mike VO 13:53
Hey, Tyler. We’re all those binders and sheet you paid for from MMI. Yes, sir. So we asked

Roy Merritt 14:00
The new guy, the new guy’s got stuff going on and we’re like, Man, you learn this in school. No, I didn’t learn that we didn’t learn. Okay, where’s your notebook? I don’t know. I lost them. You paid $30,000 for those freaking notebooks. What did you lost? And

Jason Widger 14:16
that’s the funny thing is is when you guys went to school, you guys got all the handouts, everything when I went to school when I went through theory, we had to hand write all of our notes. We didn’t get any handouts until I think it was. Graduation one. No. Yeah, like s two. Yeah. So you know, we had to handwrite all that stuff. So with me if I’m handwriting everything I remember stuff when I get stuff in the handouts are handed out to me. Now I’m done. I can’t remember anything.

Mike VO 14:46
Yeah, I think another another issue that people have is for some reason, they think that they’re gonna go to MMI and come out Paul Tuttle,

Unknown Speaker 14:54
like, yeah, like you said, Yes.

Mike VO 14:55
And I mean, even your diploma says basic motorcycle. technician, right? I mean,

Unknown Speaker 15:01
yeah, they have a chair throwing class and shit like that.

Roy Merritt 15:03
Yeah. Well, they do if you’re in the right classes that you can figure out how to drop the bike off the lift though.

Unknown Speaker 15:11
They used to happens every every

Roy Merritt 15:13
year. Every couple weeks.

Mike VO 15:14
They used to have a class where you did like when we went through, they had a class where you did like honing cylinders. Yeah. outflowing kids.

Roy Merritt 15:22
So when I went through was like, 11 I think it was. We were the last Buell class. We were the last v rod class, we were one of the last boring and honing classes. They had went to what they’re doing now, which is where they call the last two labs data. So one DSO two, so one, DSO two, they had just started that as I was getting out. Yep. Which you have some deep stuff in those books. Oh, yeah. Like you have. Bob drop. I had Bob Yeah, Bob drops him in.

Jason Widger 15:52
Yeah, is that man so smart, really slow down forgotten

Aaron Staudinger 15:56
stuff in there like some really Bob was Bob

Jason Widger 15:58
the one that was always building the weapon. On the side building and selling was the

Roy Merritt 16:04
grab is what seven? We were national champions

Jason Widger 16:08
is an older dude hello good and Screaming Eagles I

Unknown Speaker 16:11
think I think his name was

Jason Widger 16:12
Bob. That was Bob but it was something I need drag race to Sportster.

Yeah, that was Bob draft.

Roy Merritt 16:16
That’s Bob drop if he’s drag racing, yeah, he he won his like fourth or fifth national championship. Well, this isn’t this

Jason Widger 16:23
isn’t Arizona but

Roy Merritt 16:24
yeah. And he he told me he had built his sporty. He had run three full seasons on that motor and said that he would probably get at least one more season out of it and won national championships.

Jason Widger 16:39
And you want to know the funny thing about that engine is everybody screams screaming equals the best lifter screaming or the best lifter? Yeah, he ran soft.

Stop screaming. I can’t say anything like

Mike VO 16:57
Hey, I got an off topic case number Yeah, Jason off topic. How old is Steve?

Jason Widger 17:03
Steve? They do? Yeah. Oh, he’s probably 5060 s. But he looks a lot older than he is.

Yeah, right. You gotta get that North North England draw and you gotta get, you know, smoking cigarettes all the time. I love him.

Mike VO 17:24
When I get Steve. I’m like, Oh, this is probably gonna go Well, guys, I’m like, I don’t even want to talk to you because you don’t even know what I’m talking about.

Jason Widger 17:31
is Alan still there? Alan Ball. Yeah,

yeah, he’s still there. I haven’t talked to him forever.

Unknown Speaker 17:39
Yeah, the English

Jason Widger 17:41
guy. Yeah, cuz he was when when the 1125 came out. He was faxing me all the Bolton stuff because though the manuals weren’t shipped yet. Nice.

Roy Merritt 17:50
Yeah, there’s a few guys in there. Actually. There’s a couple others. Yeah, when I get them. I’m like, Oh, thank God. Every time I get rich, I’m like, Yes,

Mike VO 17:57
I went. I went rounds with Rich one time on a Sportster, like seven years ago, and I was like, I hate this guy the next time he like totally hooked me up. I was like, alright

Jason Widger 18:11
you know it’s funny and anytime I have an issue when I go to Steve, I’ve got a Richard Allen so they’ve been there the longest. I always go with them every time Yeah.

Roy Merritt 18:18
So that for the listeners that don’t know what we’re talking about here. If you don’t know Chris’s so when we as technicians need help we call Harley our and these are the guys we talked as Harley Davidson technicians. Yes. Not Not like this

Mike VO 18:35
mom and pop shops like where

Unknown Speaker 18:36
does it who these guys are calling? Yeah, if

Roy Merritt 18:39
you’re not a dealer, you don’t hit anywhere. I

Jason Widger 18:41
didn’t even know about these guys. I’ve actually had an aftermarket shop call up customer service and they transfer him over to tech service and we’re like, we can’t talk to you bro. You’re not to deal with. Oh, sorry. How did they get that far?

Mike VO 18:53
Cuz like because when you put in your order number if you don’t put in your dealer number, they send you to hog don’t they?

Jason Widger 18:59
No they call it customer service and then a new person a customer service transformer tech service and that’s how we got it

Roy Merritt 19:08
fucking new guys you should

Mike VO 19:10
you should have just told him like some outlandish

Jason Widger 19:15
Yeah, I should have been fucking hilarious

Unknown Speaker 19:19
What’s he gonna do Harley davidsons fully shipped man

Jason Widger 19:23
I talked to this guy and Harley told me to do this that’s what

Mike VO 19:26
he told me put the lifters in upside down

Jason Widger 19:30
with a weight meter rollers boasting

oh man Well,

Mike VO 19:40
it’s gotta be hard for you guys because you know most of the in the Harley sector I imagine it’s this way for all of the OEM graduates they go to work for dealerships for the most part. Yep. And I know there’s a lot of them out there because when I call sometimes you know you guys out Like very rudimentary things and you’re like, Well, did you check the battery? No, right? No, I you know, I didn’t check the battery. No, I’m calling you because I don’t know what to do at all. But

Jason Widger 20:12
let me ask you this. So one of the first things that you should do when doing any kind of engine diagnostics is what?

Roy Merritt 20:22
grabbed the man What do you mean?

Jason Widger 20:24
Yeah, yeah, well, okay,

Mike VO 20:26
well check your battery check the fuses.

Jason Widger 20:29
Okay, well, what if it’s an engine what’s the first thing you said was the first two things you can do to every engine before you start digging into it?

Roy Merritt 20:36
Let’s see Russian leak detector

Jason Widger 20:37
freshly done. How many times have I got a buyer guy call up and say yeah, I got this this isn’t it? Have you done compression link down yet? No worry. took it apart. You know why?

Unknown Speaker 20:50
Yeah, so

Roy Merritt 20:52
yeah, right. Then we go together. Yeah, I call call and talk to you know, the guys out there and I’ll be like, Alright, man, look. I am calling you Because I need help and I am not an idiot. You know, it’s like, I’ve gone through all the basic stuff I’ve done this, I’ve done that I’ve done this. Yep. I am at an impasse and I do not know what to do you know, and and there are no I will say that in the almost 10 years I’ve been doing this. There have been quite a few times that I have been caught with my pants down when I called tech services and they were like, what did you do this and I’m like, Fuck you. Like Damn it. Alright, let me go fix that.

Jason Widger 21:29
worst ones. When you call. They’re like, Oh, we’ve received that. You figured out give us call back? Let us know. And I’m like, damn it.

So I got a good one. But I can’t tell you on this. message. Your ROI.

Back is it happened today? Oh

Mike VO 21:47
yeah. Oh, you can tell us on the air. Just change his name to Tyler.

Unknown Speaker 21:53
The thing is he works here

Jason Widger 21:54
listening. I don’t know who’s listening. So well. Tyler’s not. Yeah, and he’s here. Well, we’re having We have headphones on so he can’t even hear us. Probably about 15 or 20 people outside this room that will listen to this.

Unknown Speaker 22:05
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 22:08
If you listen to this podcast after we hear it, you’re gonna be number four.

Jason Widger 22:14
Let me ask you this. You guys know bulletin 1507 correct the charging on the forcers? Sure. So if you have if you have a motorcycle that has an issue, do you check everything or you just replace everything?

Unknown Speaker 22:30
Well, that depends.

Jason Widger 22:32
shotgun approach.

Somebody somebody replaced the whole complete charging system and wanted us to cover warranty when the bulletin says nothing about replacing anything until you go through the checks.

Unknown Speaker 22:44
Yeah. Well, there’s Why don’t we?

Jason Widger 22:47
Why do you have to have a bulletin to tell you to go through the checks? Well, because the thing is, is in the bulletin, it tells you exactly what you’re looking for. And there’s a certain thing that if you get to a certain spot, you have to do this or this. They do. didn’t even look at the bolt. And they had no idea that Bolton was even around and they replaced the whole whole charging system. And they wanted us to cover under warranty.

Roy Merritt 23:07
Yeah, I yeah, I could see that being a problem. Yeah. A little bit. Just a little bit. There’s probably one thing wrong. Not everything.

Unknown Speaker 23:16
Exactly. So,

Roy Merritt 23:19
but yeah, you know, and I feel for you guys in tech services, because there’s really nothing harder than trying to diagnose a motorcycle over the phone. Yeah,

Jason Widger 23:31
yes. And that’s and that’s the thing too, is that’s why we asked this already been given talk right now, those easy questions, because, you know, it helps us diagnose and plus, the thing is to is when the RTL is brought to you guys, they’re going to look for these same things that we asked you guys to do. So that’s why they want us to go what’s battery voltage? What’s this? What’s this? What’s this? And again, it just kind of helps us get into the mindset of where you guys are at to kind of help you guys diagnose the bikes.

Mike VO 23:56
An RTL stands for regional technician lead technical lead. Yeah, lead. That’s how many of those guys are there in

Jason Widger 24:04
a row 1234567. I think there’s eight right now

Mike VO 24:09
just in the US in the US.

Jason Widger 24:11
And I think every region because when I was over in Thailand, all of Asia has one. I think in like Europe, there’s two or three but yeah, Canada’s there’s one.

Mike VO 24:23
You know, I think the coolest thing about this podcast for the other two guys that listened to their podcast infrastructure that Harley has, is awesome is awesome. No, I mean, absolutely. I’ve only encountered regional tech lead twice. Hmm. You know, where they came out. And one of them was when we first had a Ma, they had oil coming out of a breather just like the twin cams and I said, I told the other tech, well, why don’t you call them and ask him what the acceptable amount of, of oil in the crankcase is because we have like nine ounces. And it was six for the twin cams. See how much that they’ll allow? And we call it and they’re like you have how much oil? We’re like nine ounces. Don’t touch it. Right? We’re like, Huh, we’re sending somebody out. And the tech was back in. He’s like, they’re sending a tech lead. And I was like, Why? I don’t know. They told me. That was like your early days. Oh, and they ended up sending that he came and took it apart and asked us questions about what we did. And this and that, and that was, what’s his name? Dave.

Roy Merritt 25:30
Dave? Yeah,

Jason Widger 25:31
they’ve landed.

Roy Merritt 25:32
And then he was like, awesome. I worked for Dave before he worked for

Mike VO 25:37
Harley, and he leaves and then they sent as an engine.

Jason Widger 25:40
So the reason don’t touch on the engine back. So a little background on that is they don’t want the Indians molested. They don’t want they, they know you guys will do your job. Right? But they would rather have someone come out there and take the bike apart because they’re gonna nitpick the EverLiving crap out of that engine, trying to find a little tear in an O ring. Oh, yes. Good. That’s everything. So that’s why they want the Sometimes they’ll say take the engine out or send you an engine, put it back in the box or send it over the engine plant and they will take it apart. Dave

Roy Merritt 26:05
super good.

Mike VO 26:06
Oh, yeah, they did. I mean, cuz it was we put a stage four on it. And I built the engine

Unknown Speaker 26:13
and messed up. And

Mike VO 26:17
that’s probably true. But I mean, he like sat me down. And he was like, so did you put the O ring on the on the oil pump? Or did you put the O ring in the case? And I was like, what’s the right answer?

Roy Merritt 26:30
depends on who you talk to on that. Yeah,

Jason Widger 26:32
you know, right. And the cool thing about the RTL is that they are regional even though that some guys will go over to other other areas. Most of those guys are regional like, like Roy, you’re in Florida for a while. So Chuck Kennedy, he’s mainly southeast. You got Monty that’s up north and like the Delaware area, stuff like that. I think Warren’s always out in California area. But I mean, they will go to other regions if they’re needed, but most of the time they’re in one certain area and that’s all they deal with those dealers, so they haven’t been before. stuff. Like that,

Roy Merritt 27:00
Chuck Chuck so Chuck some very knowledgeable guys. Well, he erases and he’s a really cool guy

Jason Widger 27:05
or came out quite a bit. California.

Roy Merritt 27:09
Yeah. You know, when when I started they had what they called sores, which was service operations area representative. Same thing different title. Except they were in the dealership all the time. Like Yep, I want to say at least once a month Chuck was in my dealership or

Jason Widger 27:25
not a new bike, ride it up and down the coast. Yes.

Roy Merritt 27:27
So so they would come in and and sit down because when I first started as a service manager, I had one month as with a sore, and they would come in and be like, okay, where do your numbers look in what can we improve on? And then they got rid of the sores and I was

Unknown Speaker 27:44
I was like, I don’t know.

Jason Widger 27:47
And actually one of the sores went to work at MMI or a little bit before I left. Yeah, yeah, I forgot her name.

Roy Merritt 27:58
Oh, a female.

Jason Widger 27:59
Yeah. was a female, older, older older lady. I don’t want to say like 6070s but she was like, like later 40s

Roy Merritt 28:07
I feel like I know who you’re talking about short haired lady. Yes. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I can’t think of her name though.

Jason Widger 28:15
Now, Marianne, is that it yet, Marianne.

Roy Merritt 28:18
But you know, that kind of back to the MMI thing you know? It is actually a very impressive school. It is when you you know you’ve been watching OCC and all this shit and you want it you go take a tour of this school. And you know you walk by all these rooms just filled with motors and bikes and all of this stuff getting taken apart and then you go by early model with panels and all of the cool things that I will never fucking work on. Right You bought those old bikes

Jason Widger 28:54
as the cool Crescent wrenches that I never saw that.

Roy Merritt 28:56
Oh yes adjustable wrenches. They work with

Mike VO 29:01
On the cover of the latest episode, whatever What the

Roy Merritt 29:03
fuck Vinnie. Vinnie was the only guy there worth a shit. Danny Rocco I hate no no not Danny Danny day we I actually liked Danny he was a dick I liked about assholes I get along all right but no Vinnie at OCC he was doing well you know

Jason Widger 29:19
i don’t know all the rest of those guys were thinking

Mike VO 29:20
I saw three episodes that they wired the ignition wrong and he said the ignition was bad. Yeah, I’m sure I’m sure

Jason Widger 29:28
I mean come on it’s OCC What do you expect

Roy Merritt 29:31
from outside in the snow? I mean, Hey, man, that dude can weld up some fucking spider webs you

Mike VO 29:37
guys all those guys can can weld their asses off and bend metal around?

Roy Merritt 29:41
Yeah, you know, the custom stuff they did was really cool. You know, it was the mechanical part of it that and the write the writing part of it.

Aaron Staudinger 29:51
So are those things really get down the canyon?

Mike VO 29:55
Well, but I think I think what people don’t understand is like when they go to MMI You’re you’re learning to work in the trenches, you know, you’re learning Yeah, you’re you’re learning how to change tires. Tyler Yep. And do oil changes because that’s what you’re gonna do. Yeah tyloo I mean you’re gonna you’re gonna do services and tires and oil changes and you’re going to do a lot of them and yeah, you’re gonna have some diagnosis here and there and and over time, you’ll get good at it but you know that they can’t really teach you the blank slate approach because that’s just too vast you don’t ever know right? You know when somebody says I have a check engine light come on, you don’t have any clue what that is.

Jason Widger 30:33
Well, I got out the end of oh six and I was like, yeah, I’m a tech now I’m, you know, I’m a Harley tech and I get on the shop and they’re like, hey, changes oil in this old softail and I’m like, Where’s the drain plug?

oil in school? There’s no ask us there’s no oil. So I’m gonna go out and

Roy Merritt 30:52
do all we did.

Jason Widger 30:54
We didn’t know we didn’t do oil. Oh, boy, when you went through the day, but when we went through it, yeah. Oh, If I was six I didn’t do it

Roy Merritt 31:01
I had like s one s two somewhere around there because we shared we shared a room in there I think tech tech tech one tech one tech two is that what it was?

Jason Widger 31:09
Yeah,

Roy Merritt 31:10
yep. And that was changing oils and forks yeah

Jason Widger 31:12
shit yeah so I mean we did forks but yeah just like fluid drops and stuff they talked about it but soft tails you know the frame in the back there and I’m just like, let me look at the manual you know start forget

where’s where’s the transmission drain plug in

Roy Merritt 31:27
so you know I when I talk to people about this I tell them the best way I can put it is that you’re paying a lot of money to learn how to read a service manual yes correctly see technically Yes. Yeah, you know and because when you leave you will not remember everything.

Jason Widger 31:42
No, no way are you know,

Aaron Staudinger 31:45
how much time you spend on teaching somebody bad habits.

Roy Merritt 31:48
Oh, God in the shop a lot. Yeah, and MMI You know, I’m sure I don’t know what do you think I mean, it there’s there’s a curriculum and you teach people to do it. Either you do it or you don’t Write

Aaron Staudinger 32:01
down like where I came from in the entertainment industry, you get people that came in with film degrees, all that kind of stuff like that. And I’d much rather hire somebody that spent five years or four years whatever production assisting and learn the way the workflow of how things actually go, rather than somebody who thought they were teaching how to make TV from books that were made from technology 10 years ago. Yeah, they’re no longer really apply. Right? Like how much of that is involved at this point? Well, it’s

Jason Widger 32:28
like I’ll give you a good example when I was doing as to which free non mo my guys is electrical. I got guys will come in and say oh, was electrical engineer in the Navy. This is how we did the Navy. So this isn’t the Navy. This is a Harley Davidson. This is the way supposed to go. Like putting like putting valve keepers in Oh, this is the way we do we can do this way. That’s not the proper way. It’s not the Harley Davidson way. We have to do it this way. But that’s just stupid. I get that. But this is the way we teach to do it. This is the way you have to do it.

Roy Merritt 32:53
Yeah. If you don’t understand the right way to do it. You can’t figure out your own way.

Unknown Speaker 32:56
Exactly.

Roy Merritt 32:58
You know And, you know, like Mike said, you know, when you get out into diagnosis and things like that you really cannot teach diagnosis. No, you can’t teach how a system works and what could go wrong with it. But man, even, you know, I had a pretty strong electrical background when I went into MMI I always kind of said that the two things that I really learned at MMI was one was the CV carburetor. I had never heard of that before. Right, you know, that was an absolutely all new idea to me and transmissions

Mike VO 33:28
Don’t worry, they don’t worry about it now.

Roy Merritt 33:30
Yeah, now it’s outdated. But, you know, I went through three years automotive training. So most of everything else involved in a motorcycle I knew about, but I never really learned transmissions and that that CV carburetor was a whole new idea to me. You know, I knew how pistons and valves and all that shit work before I went in. So I had a leg up. Yeah, basic. And you know, you would hear that Oh, that’s not fair. You’ve got an automotive training like what do you mean? It’s not fair. I’m fucking paying to be here. Right? Exactly. No, there is no fair. You know,

Jason Widger 34:02
we’re all paying the same amount of money to go to the same school.

Roy Merritt 34:04
Yeah, exactly. And and I knew from my experience in automotive that I could turn a wrench, and that I could probably do it successfully. Oh, yeah, there you go. You crack it open. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge ball. But, you know, there were so many people I went to school with that I knew, you know, when we sat in class, it was like, dude, you’re never you’re never you’re never

Jason Widger 34:31
well, Arizona was like, 5% were burnouts. I like drugs. Because the nice thing is huge. There’s a mess big

Roy Merritt 34:39
everywhere.

Mike VO 34:40
Well, yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

Jason Widger 34:41
But yeah, so you’d see people when they do the random, random drug tests and they’d come in and then applies on the drug test and then they would come back and go, today’s your last day and then right. When I was doing the midday class, a lot of those guys were coming in hung over and partying and stuff before I moved to the nightclub. So, I mean, you got your five or 10% booze outs. And then did you

Unknown Speaker 35:03
ever get drug tested?

Unknown Speaker 35:05
Yeah, you did.

Roy Merritt 35:06
Yeah. I don’t remember if I ever got drug test that’s a swab. I mean,

Unknown Speaker 35:12
so I saw people get drugs. You were on the list.

Mike VO 35:16
You already on the list even back then. Always.

Roy Merritt 35:21
Always, I think everybody that lived in dorms got drug tested? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I live down the road and the house like I you know, I was from there like you, you know, so, I, I didn’t I didn’t have to get into any of that. But I don’t remember taking a drug test.

Unknown Speaker 35:37
Obviously, I never did this.

Roy Merritt 35:39
It was a mouth swab. Was it I kinda remember doing I might have done what the kids are calling it. But you know, there’s there’s a lot of information thrown at you and when there is

Jason Widger 35:53
his his thing is is is some classes. They’re set up where there’s a lot of information In a short period of time and some of you don’t get it you don’t get it and there’s no way to catch up

Roy Merritt 36:03
yeah right well suppose screamin Eagle two which would it was then I don’t know. I hear that that it’s a little different now they don’t go into all of the stuff in dyno tuning and screaming Eagle two like we did

Mike VO 36:16
I think they only had one screaming Eagle now Oh

Jason Widger 36:18
yeah, what I went through there was a one and two we were working on evos and we were doing timing and and we were doing the the lag between the the breather gear and all stuff like that. So we had one and two so we had six weeks of it. But yeah, I don’t need a date they changed it when I pretty much left in online to go to HDU they were doing different things and screaming go to it. I don’t remember what they were doing but they were changing in a completely

Roy Merritt 36:42
Yeah, we had wolves screaming Eagle one was the dyno and screaming Eagle two was Bob drap I think when I was in there, and you know, drops class was flow bench and formulas for everything. So we got into making we built a pretty nasty 128 fat boy here, it’s 150 horsepower torque. And we could not find an exhaust that could handle what we had built.

Mike VO 37:12
I told you our store was 2712, right?

Unknown Speaker 37:18
1624 Yeah,

Roy Merritt 37:21
so we actually built our own exhaust in shop. And it works flow. You know, it works great. It performs great. So Mike and Aaron had sat down and worked out all of these numbers and stuff. And I said, Okay, you want to see how close you are? And they’re like, What do you mean? I said, Well, I’m gonna go grab my book, and I grabbed my screaming Eagle book from drap. And we sat down and with the intake valve size and all that stuff, you get primary length and you know your exhaust length. And we were within like, a half an inch of everything that we measured, and I was like, dude, you guys are right on track. You know what I mean? It was like, right on track and when it finally got Put together and put on the bike it was you know exactly what we wanted out of it and it sounds nice. Oh Mike nice. This is the loudest Milwaukee questions

Aaron Staudinger 38:11
all about to get the very first set of fat boy BST wheels put on it. Yeah. Amen. If Africa Yeah, if they ever shipped the damn thing Yeah, we sent

Roy Merritt 38:19
we sent this guy’s fat boy wheels to BST so that they could mock up a set of carbon fiber wheels for us.

Unknown Speaker 38:26
Oh, nice. You know how much that rear wheel weighs? I’m sure yeah,

Aaron Staudinger 38:30
yeah, so yeah, in the game. We’re gonna get out of that.

Jason Widger 38:32
Oh my God, that’s gonna be insane.

Mike VO 38:34
Yeah, how do we get rid of those guys that are early? What the ones that put 300 pounds.

Unknown Speaker 38:40
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 38:43
I’m telling ya.

Mike VO 38:43
And they’re like, this is this is the shit.

Roy Merritt 38:46
I don’t know, man. they they they push that limit to jail. Who knows what else is gonna happen? So we put

Jason Widger 38:52
loopholes in it to lighten it up.

Yeah, it’ll help with when?

Mike VO 38:58
Yeah, you know, they They had the solid wheel what in like the 90s. And then they were like, oh man, these things get blown over the place. So then they made the shotgun wheels. So that there was some airflow. I don’t think any of those people work for Harley anymore. Yeah, and then they’re

Unknown Speaker 39:13
solid. Yeah, solid rear would be cool. I think

Roy Merritt 39:20
like, like we I see a lot of stuff go back to like, well, they already figured this out. Why aren’t we just doing what we did then? And it’s got to be because those guys are gone. Well, so there’s a really good example of this. If you go into the museum, and you’re walking through there, and fuckin fuckin and you’re walking through there and you get to where they were selling scooters and stuff in like the 50s and 60s, I think it was. They have this big thing. You listen to it. And it’s like, yeah, the small bikes accounted for over 30% of our sales during that time, right? Mm hmm. And I’m sitting here thinking, don’t you I have the answer to what we need to do right? Right, like right maybe we need to go back to making small bikes that are cheap you know no you don’t stop making what you’re making but we you know and they tried to do that with the street yeah they did

Mike VO 40:16
but they but they but they like fucked it up

Unknown Speaker 40:19
No wait

Mike VO 40:20
no they went they went like three quarters of the way in and then they’re like we’re tired it’s

Jason Widger 40:25
it’s good enough

Roy Merritt 40:26
yeah when they put it out they said they were gonna do all kinds of performance at shit they never did

Mike VO 40:31
do anything.

Roy Merritt 40:32
Yeah, it has a lot of potential nothing It does for nothing out there for it well but but there’s I mean if you want to spend 35 grand you can have Vance and Hines bill build you a really cool tracker bike on one right

Mike VO 40:42
but if you’re going to if you’re going to make a new engine or liquid cooled engine Why take 30 year old technology and call it something new Why don’t you know like Indian fucking smoke doesn’t that

Jason Widger 40:56
and and all they did was you wait wait, wait, wait, wait Wait, you mean Polaris Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 41:02
Yeah. somebody that’s funny because

Roy Merritt 41:05
the episode that’s coming out on the first of our last episode, that’s one of the things that Mike’s got into we were talking about defunct motorcycles. And Mike said, I don’t give a fuck what you say. Indian is a fucking default motorcycle. Because all that shit is paid by players.

Unknown Speaker 41:23
Victory different pinstripes? Yeah,

Jason Widger 41:25
I trolled them so bad on their Instagram and their Facebook. And they both have a new bike. I’m like, nice jetski, bro.

Unknown Speaker 41:35
That’s awesome.

Mike VO 41:36
But but there’s there’s certain things that they’ve done that they’ve hit the market when we should have hit the market. And like when that’s

Roy Merritt 41:43
the only thing you’ve done, right? Is that 1200?

Mike VO 41:45
Yeah, but it was our opportunity.

Roy Merritt 41:48
Yes. So it’s really just that new platform the Bronx to 1275. The What is he 99 nine

Jason Widger 41:55
set 935

Roy Merritt 41:56
nine. So that’s a 975 and the 1250 Do whatever it is. If they do that platform properly

Jason Widger 42:04
that will sell. Yeah, they will. Absolutely. And if you if you remember that concept that they have like a white looking 48 like that concept one, if that is makes permission I’m buying it. I

Roy Merritt 42:14
don’t care that I really want the sport the adventure tour.

Unknown Speaker 42:19
America.

Jason Widger 42:21
I like the Street Fighter looking boy

Mike VO 42:23
I love that every picture of the pan America he’s jumping something. Yeah.

Jason Widger 42:28
They actually had one at Geno Avenue we went and looked at it all of us are drooling over like oh my god, can we get one on our fleet? Please? I want to take one off in the dirt. Come on. Please. Please, please please please. So

Roy Merritt 42:37
what do you know about

Jason Widger 42:40
you I stop right there. Stop right there. You know I can’t talk about anything.

Unknown Speaker 42:45
You McGregor

Aaron Staudinger 42:46
have a cocktail and relax.

Roy Merritt 42:49
McGregor and Charlie? Yeah, a

Unknown Speaker 42:54
long way around way.

Roy Merritt 42:55
Yeah. Have you seen me those long way round or long way?

Jason Widger 42:58
I’ve never watched any it. No there. Super cool they just did

Roy Merritt 43:01
Long Way up but I’m sure you probably know this. But they rode from the tip of South America to like Alaska or something on live okay. Really the live wires were done up like the

Jason Widger 43:14
Erica.

Roy Merritt 43:16
They were lifted. Yeah, they had dead the pan America suspension. They were lifted and had bags on them. Nice and through. Yeah, Mike’s got pictures because they went through Scottsdale where mike mike used to work and they stopped there for service. And the guys there were texting. He texted Mike like oh my God, look at this. And they made it you know, so they went from the tip of South America to Alaska on lighters done I like it. And I’m like, Dude, why don’t we have a model of the Livewire like that too. That’d be fucking

Unknown Speaker 43:43
Well it might be right or a version of it.

Roy Merritt 43:47
So if you haven’t listened to any of our podcasts, I don’t know but we’re pretty big proponents on the Livewire. Nice. That is kind of a big deal. Yeah, they’re they’re pretty amazing bikes once you get to ride one Exactly. Especially when you get to take one apart, put it back together and then ride one. It just it is an absolutely amazing motor. So

Unknown Speaker 44:07
looking at it

Jason Widger 44:08
Yeah, it’s pretty cool then we’ll go ride one and then we had some local cops come in and do some service and they’re looking at Livewire and they’re like, ah, and loaded up with their belts on all we’re like, dude, take it around the block that came back and like, holy shit, man, this

Unknown Speaker 44:21
is awesome.

Jason Widger 44:22
Yeah, we did. We were the first ones, of course to take the bikes apart and take them for test rides and stuff like that. And we started doing a new class. And we were talking about them and stuff. And everybody keep asking me what what do you think? What do you think? Do you have 30 grand? They’re like, No, I’m like, don’t ride one. Yeah, you know?

Aaron Staudinger 44:38
Absolutely. It’s a parking lot. And I wanted one. So

Roy Merritt 44:41
there’s been some really good like, articles, where guys have compared the Live Wire to the new SRF zero and things like that. Mm hmm. And pretty much everyone says that that live wire is better than one guy right? Do you ride the Livewire? So I think I think right now the only bike out there that maybe is a close competition for the Livewire is the dayman motorcycle and I don’t know Jason if you’ve heard much about the dayman motorcycle Never heard of it. Okay so they’re Canadian company they just bought mission motorcycles and they are producing an electric bike that is 200 there What is it 200 miles to to charge 200 horsepower and 200 miles an hour and it’s got gears i think i don’t think it’s a you know one gear like the Livewire but it it scans the road in front of you. It’s supposed to be the smartest motorcycle on the planet and if you get a chance to look them up, Damon they’re beautiful bikes with amazing stats, the first release that they did, I think was $40,000 The first mile they released but you’re also talking about faster everything than the Live Wire you know more button candidate. You are not getting you know we talked about this we actually did an episode about the The Live Wire. What you’re not getting is the dealer support. Yeah, right exactly. You know that when you factor in infrastructure into the price of the bike, the Livewire is priced exactly where it should be feels like a Harley.

Aaron Staudinger 46:27
I was super frickin surprised. Like every time you get on a Harley, it feels like a Harley. Even that speeder bike.

Just there is such a difference between a metric bike and a Harley. It just feels different.

Jason Widger 46:43
I agree. Well, we think that those are the lighter wire is

the one thing about the Livewire that I don’t like it you can change it is the region. Yeah, when I left when I left PDC I had on rain mode. And by the time I left the parking lot I had on race motorsport mode and when When I went to stop, I didn’t even have to touch the brake pedal, the region was so much, yes. If you could customize it on the fly, then I would love to that region off and go from there. But man, that bike is so insanely powerful man, I love that thing. So

Roy Merritt 47:12
I ride in 83. And I ride it at 100 miles an hour, all the time. So I’m used to when you let off the gas, it just wanted to be like, they didn’t pull you down. So that region felt very familiar when I when I wrote it, you know, we have a couple here and we like to rip him around every once in a while. But, you know, this is, you know, back to the MMI thing. You know, the reason that a lot of us the people that are still working in the industry. Well, there’s 600 dealers in the United States, you got to figure each one’s got at least one or two technicians. You know, there’s a lot of guys out there but the reason that I got into this and the reason that I have a passion for this is writing and things like the Live Wire, ignite that Passion. Absolutely. Because, you know, I have people come in all the time. Well, that’s not going to replace my Street Glide. Nope. It’s not

Unknown Speaker 48:07
the whole different animal.

Roy Merritt 48:08
Yeah, it is. It is something completely different than anything you’ve ever written before. It is a whole new ballgame. It is a different experience. It is something that you cannot describe until you get on it and write it. And that’s why I went to MMI. That’s why I got into this business was, you know, I have that passion for writing. And I have that passion for new and cool things. And let’s face it, man, there are not many better companies out there than Harley Davidson when it comes to motorcycles. Oh, no. Yeah. You know, we wrote I’m sure we all rode sport bikes for a while. Yeah, if I was going on sport bike, am I getting on r1 or saw Zuki? Suzuki’s or you wrote a Suzuki, didn’t you Jason?

Jason Widger 48:50
Yeah, I had six or 750 years ago. See? That’s

Unknown Speaker 48:52
what I used to bro. I just

Unknown Speaker 48:56
gotta do your badass. Yeah,

Mike VO 48:58
sorry. I’m a bandit. So Harley Davidson and Suzuki yeah

Aaron Staudinger 49:07
question man as it applies to like the passion they’re always talking about like a lot of the passion comes from the end of performance and in your vast knowledge of what’s going on with the Livewire, what do you see in the future? Especially for us guys here at store number 2202 that are

Unknown Speaker 49:26
what could What do you see in the future

Aaron Staudinger 49:28
for maybe reprogramming or doing something with an ability to really make that thing reach? Its full?

Roy Merritt 49:33
That’s all gonna be aftermarket.

Jason Widger 49:35
Alright, so So you want me to give you the Harley answer. Are you

okay, so Harley so the Harley Motor Company answer is that’s not an approved fitment sir, and if you do need to the bike, you’re gonna void your warranty. Exact however,

Aaron Staudinger 49:49
they’re telling us store number 22 that say if the warranty

Unknown Speaker 49:56
we can get

Jason Widger 49:58
so if we think about Like the the Tesla and the BMW electric and stuff like that they’re doing things with those cars that are insane. absolutely insane what they’re doing in the program of those cars. Now is there a way around on the Harley? Probably because I have no idea about it, but there’s probably somebody out there that do some crazy things with those bikes already. I mean, have you seen the laidlaw’s video where they’re got a knobby tire? I’m sorry, pal tire on there went to the sand. No, no. Glamis down south. Yes. So if you think it’s on laidlaw’s YouTube or something like that, but yeah, they put a paddle tire on and they’re going to the sand. There’s also a drag racer somewhere out there that’s wheelie in one and about like 10 o’clock just cooking it down the road. So there are people doing things, these bikes that are insane, but I don’t even know what they’re doing. I don’t know what they’re going to start with on them what kind of performance is coming out or nothing? If you look at I mean, there are videos all over the place of guys with these Tesla’s that are just making absolutely ridiculous power. They figured out ways to kind of crack into that and make that thing actually reach you know what it could be? Do

Unknown Speaker 51:00
I’m very curious to see what can be

Roy Merritt 51:02
when I was in Milwaukee that doing the Live Wire class and that was six months ago or so it’s been a little while. Um, I had joked with the guys that they’re even heard now. I said, Man, I can’t wait till some fucking nerd with the computer gets ahold of this thing. And they laugh You know, they’re there. They’re in the same boat. You know that I’m not allowed to say this. But yeah.

Mike VO 51:24
Yeah, but I don’t know the world we live in today. The nerds with computers are afraid of motorcycles because they’re dangerous. Well, no, no, we need them. Yeah, we need them. It’s over here in the corner.

Aaron Staudinger 51:33
I program my bike and watch me go fast.

Mike VO 51:37
I think girlfriend I think it Harley brace what God I think of Harley Davidson just embraced what got us where we are now, racing, which is what we’re doing in store 1872 we’re saying fuck you fuck your rules. I mean, we’re killing it. Yeah, well, both. ships are falling, their numbers are falling, their sales are falling everything and they’re just toeing the line and they’re their own bar dealers and they’re just like

Roy Merritt 52:04
sucking as well those people can’t do what we’re doing because no because you know yeah we say we say fuck you, but we don’t say fuck you because we’re not pulling we’re not pulling anything over on the Motor Company. We’re building our own motors and we’re warranting them ourselves right? That is different than saying right you

Jason Widger 52:22
know and there’s been a couple of dealerships are doing the exact same thing.

Mike VO 52:26
Exactly saying fuck you it’s saying fuck you to the mainstream because we don’t want the people that are like well I really think about getting a Harley Davidson but they’re so loud you know we want the guys are like can I really on this? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 52:43
Yeah,

Mike VO 52:43
then I’m in the right place

Jason Widger 52:45
on the bike so we build can wheelie because all they do is break through tirely spin the tire. Yeah,

Mike VO 52:51
but you know, but but our attitude. And Harley Davidson as a motor company has lost the attitude that they talk about having Yeah, you No they didn’t like we have this huge attitude but we want to cater to this new group of people that isn’t into motorcycles. Well why don’t you just cater to the fucking millions that already are? And and and we have we aren’t Suzuki, we aren’t Yamaha. We aren’t Polaris because we’re fucking Harley Davidson.

Jason Widger 53:16
So let’s talk I’ll give you I’ll answer that with one word. It’s six letters and starts with the D.

Mike VO 53:23
racket dollar dollar. I like

Unknown Speaker 53:26
it’s all about the

Jason Widger 53:29
dragons better I

Roy Merritt 53:33
know, you know, and, and I agree. I agree. Because what sells Harley davidsons

Mike VO 53:39
is the bad boy attitude.

Roy Merritt 53:40
Well, yeah, is that look into the fact that you know, really no to look the same. I know what I mean, like everybody. And I talked to a lot of guys guys that come from the metric side into, you know, our world. And I’m like, Yeah, man, how many times did you roll up to the Kawasaki dealership to find out what was new and cool for your bike? Yeah, huh?

Jason Widger 53:59
Amazing. Extending the parking lot that are green and black.

Roy Merritt 54:02
Yeah, yeah. And then right in the same breath, all right, whoa. When did that dealership for anything other than an oil change or tire service? Yeah, sure. Well never exact changes, but that is what we’re different. So that’s Harley now. But they’re trying. They tried with the softail standard with the, with the touring bike standard.

Mike VO 54:24
So they call it the standard. No, it’s the latest. Like, why didn’t like Jamie Jamie, our owner was so right. Why didn’t they call it the alley glide? Why don’t they come out with a name? Why don’t they come out with a name? That actually means something? We’re going to come up with this brand new bike. It’s a softail standard.

Roy Merritt 54:42
It’s the lowest but how many people want to buy a Ferrari Ferrari base model?

Unknown Speaker 54:47
Yeah.

Jason Widger 54:50
I have the flh t standard. So I don’t want to hear shit from you. Yeah, no, no, it’s yours.

Roy Merritt 54:57
Yeah. He wants us Standard.

Jason Widger 55:00
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing is too is they went back to the roots, you know, they had the old standard Twin Cam, you know, touring bike with, you know, I don’t remember bill birch or not remember, like he had a standard he put a tour bag on the head came up with a softail standard many, many many moons ago. So that’s where they kind of brought it back, you know, the nostalgic kind of feel. But yeah, I kind of get it you know, name it something else.

Mike VO 55:18
Yeah, yeah, maybe, you know, like they came out with the softail low or the softail s? Yes. Which was basically like the Dyna s, but it’s a little darker brown wheels, which was good, because the baby poop was a terrible color. Yeah, I know that that was a throwback to you know,

Jason Widger 55:36
but writers don’t know the throwbacks? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 55:39
they don’t take any of those names. And the ones that

Mike VO 55:41
do can’t afford the motorcycles anyway. Yeah, sure. Cuz they still have those old bikes. You know, like, all those guys are like evil’s best motorcycle Harley ever came out with that’s because they can’t afford anything new. Because if you ride if you write an EVO, and then you write a Twin Cam, especially after like, 2002 there’s an When you’re gonna go back and go, man, this fucking evil is killing it. Not gonna happen exactly. And then it built Yeah. And then if you write a 103, even if it’s versus your 88, and then you write a 110 versus your 103 and then you ride a 117 versus the 110 and then you ride the base, the very first and then you ride now like the specials, or any of the one for teens, and then the one there’s no way you’re gonna go back and go, this is so much better than what’s going on now. No way. I mean, no, no, no reasonable sane person is all

Roy Merritt 56:31
the diner bros to talk shit about the new softail will get their asses waxed.

Mike VO 56:35
Oh yeah, they’ll get killed

Roy Merritt 56:36
every category. So you know, we build we build a lot of motors here and do a lot of stuff and I did a was a gear drive for 65 and a newer Milwaukee heritage. softail 114. Okay, Holy fucking shit. Yeah, that is an amazing bike. That new heritage handles and ride it almost Better than any other sucks because it’s not the look I like

Unknown Speaker 57:05
it looks like a heritage

Unknown Speaker 57:07
when you write a

Jason Widger 57:09
fucking thing with like the tires up first second third and was I swear to god that was one of the fastest bikes I’ve ever written and oh it will we actually have one in our fleet. Our demo fleet that we can ride has stage three in it with street cannons on it. And you can’t keep someone off that bike. They want to take it for three months at a time. Yeah, we’ll give them a week. And I mean, I haven’t written it but everyone’s loving the power of these bikes. I’m just like, Alright, cool, man. Write it. Hey, Jason. I run your

Mike VO 57:33
stage three guests. Rc three, four Pink’s, Oh, hell yeah.

Jason Widger 57:39
Today, yeah, today, let me go in the rain.

Roy Merritt 57:44
Yeah. So you know we’re doing you know we’re doing 128 It’s a basic build is 140 plus tour, hundred 20 plus horsepower, you know, just a 128 week cams where we’re at So many people that are 22 Yeah, he, you know, we get so many people come in I want to 131 and we’re like, how do you feel about warranty? Yeah, and they’re like what? What do you mean? Okay, if you are totally focused on warranty then yes, we will build you a 131 but we’re all harley parts that’s the only way we’re building a 131 all harley parts mufflers intake everything. If you don’t want to go all harley parts and you are not worried about warranty, we will build you a nasty fucking motor. But we have to have that talk with every customer. Right? You know, right. Absolutely.

Mike VO 58:35
That’s some point. I might have to talk to you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Like in legit like, hey, this mug

Jason Widger 58:44
I got I got piston scuff. What can I do? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 58:47
these jets are goddamn bullshit.

Jason Widger 58:51
Well, there’s a there’s a dealer out there. I’m not gonna mention his name. He’s actually a really good friend of mine. I have worked for him when I was done in Orlando. And they’re building one 31 and 128 or whatever and they’re putting power visions on them, and they’re getting 150s 160s out of these engines like it’s not like it’s nobody’s business but I’m I asked him I said, Hey, how are you doing this? You know, power visions, flagging your venue warranty and everything. They’re like, we’re carrying take care of warranty here as long as they do other services. I’m like, yeah, sweet.

Roy Merritt 59:20
There you go. One of their lead techs is from our shop. Yeah, I know.

Unknown Speaker 59:25
Yeah. And he’s one of the leads

Unknown Speaker 59:28
that was seminal.

Unknown Speaker 59:29
Well, while he worked at Cisco, they work. Yes. The

Mike VO 59:34
you talk about Hey, Chris.

Jason Widger 59:36
Hey, Chris. Wow.

Roy Merritt 59:39
I know exactly. Yeah. I was trying not to be specific about things but um, you know, they’re there. You know, there was a guy he’s down there. He’s actually a seminar. Now. That’s what I thought you’re talking about.

Mike VO 59:52
You got to try to teach me how awesome 53 was. Yeah,

Roy Merritt 59:55
yeah, it’s the you know, but in the end

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
These Milwaukee eight motors are amazing.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:03
They are

Roy Merritt 1:00:04
absolutely still have not found the full potential. Oh, no, no, no. Easy builds that 150 you know? Absolutely. And, you know, we we, we have a very large customer base. And we’ve had the ability to experiment a lot. So you know that we’ve done just about every cam just about every set up. And now we’re trying new stuff. And, you know, we’ve been getting into doing our own thing, our own cams, our own exhaust our own stuff. You know, that’s in the works right now. But, you know, in the end, the performance bagger is back, you know, there was a time when the performance bagger was a big deal and then it kind of petered off for a little while.

Aaron Staudinger 1:00:44
I love it, whatever, whenever it gets rid of big wheel.

Jason Widger 1:00:47
Thank you. Thank you, you

Aaron Staudinger 1:00:51
know, I don’t

Roy Merritt 1:00:53
big wheel baggers or for sitting in the garage. God I hate those things. And in the shop because they always need to be fucking worked on

Aaron Staudinger 1:01:00
Yeah, huh? Hey man my fork extensions have disconnected from the top of my forks for the third time. Yeah, I do how many of those of you did this stupid fork extension?

Mike VO 1:01:09
American suspension? Yeah.

Roy Merritt 1:01:10
Oh my god garbage.

Jason Widger 1:01:13
So there actually is fork extensions. Oh

Roy Merritt 1:01:15
yes. So they put four inch four inch screw in caps on these boards and then they rake them out so that there’s even more pressure on that extension. Oh my god they break every time and we do a lot of we put we just put longer tubes in it so so yeah, the seam is halfway.

Mike VO 1:01:31
And guess what? john paul found out that Baghdad sells longer teams built ready to go to Baghdad. Baghdad Baghdad, so they sell long Jolla they sell for inch over tubes already assembled.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:46
Yeah.

Aaron Staudinger 1:01:47
None of that fucking matters. Aided

Unknown Speaker 1:01:50
Yeah, big wheel bagger so God

Mike VO 1:01:53
Yeah, they do. I hate him. Thank god like,

Jason Widger 1:01:55
that’s like a dog to the motorcycle world guys.

Roy Merritt 1:01:58
Actually, dogs are kind of cool. Big Blue packers are not

Mike VO 1:02:03
dogs or not you look at dogs and you’re like wow the wheels and tires cost more than that the whole car

Roy Merritt 1:02:09
Yeah, yes. Well

Aaron Staudinger 1:02:13
yeah man so I’m refreshing to see that guys you know come and ask for stuff and they don’t care what it looks like they don’t care really what it sounds like they they they say tell me what’s going to give me the most power so it’s taken us the last two years

Roy Merritt 1:02:27
to get us to a point where we are telling people what they want right yeah you know we get so many people to come in I want this I want that and everybody pretty much cheers train now to say no, that’s not what you nice if that’s what you want, then you can go somewhere else. We only do what we think is going to be best you know the guys come in and like I want this Vance and Hines x pipe and blah blah blah. We’re like cool, good Boswell’s

Aaron Staudinger 1:02:55
build, you know, it’s gonna line up against somebody at some point because they’re gonna find out I came from here, and if it doesn’t perform, it’s only as good as the last one we built. Exactly. Oh, if it gets its ass spanked. You look like shit. Yeah. And I’m not gonna let it out of here and neither will Mike.

Roy Merritt 1:03:11
He started my buddy had one more horsepower. Yeah. Oh God, we get into that all the time. So that’s another that’s another ideology, if you will that we’ve fought against which is horsepower, luck horsepower you don’t give exactly horsepower is a made up fucking number. It’s a calculation it means nothing. What you want is torque and we preach this every day. So a lot of our builds, if you look at our dyno graphs and stuff are, you know, 110 hundred 20 foot pounds at fucking 2000 RPMs you know, and it’s awesome. And then it just lifts and carries all the way out from there. And when people ride that they’re like, Oh my god, and we’re like, yeah, I’ve been trying to tell you, you don’t get the peak number you don’t there’s not enough RPM range on a Harley to really get into horsepower. Right, you’re running out the RPM so quick horsepower doesn’t really matter.

Jason Widger 1:04:00
You’re redlining when you’re hitting peak anyway. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:02
yeah. It’s right when you shift.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:05
Yeah, exactly.

Roy Merritt 1:04:06
Well, so I know we’ve been on the phone for a while and and I’ll let you go. But you know, I will give you a plug. I know you and your wife. There was a joy. Is that right?

Jason Widger 1:04:16
Yeah, she sitting right here next to me. Yeah. So you

Roy Merritt 1:04:18
guys just started a YouTube channel, correct?

Jason Widger 1:04:21
Yeah. So it’s called the j&j story. What it is, is she started it just to kind of, you know, let the world see what we’re kind of going through with getting her whole green card and stuff like that. So we’re just doing you know, her Green Card process. You know, me she’s got me cooking Thai food. Now, since I moved to Milwaukee a little over a year and a half ago, I didn’t go out anywhere because I wanted to wait for her. It’s well, I moved here. I moved back stateside. Yeah, December of 18. So I moved up here January 3 of last year, but I didn’t do anything because I wanted her to see things for the first time. So now we’re doing all these videos of her seeing the Lake Michigan. We’re going to go Down to everything that we can imagine. So we’re just just like the whole process of us seeing everything and doing everything together and letting her see America for the first time because it’s funny cuz she got here in October of last year. And she got here right when it was starting to fall, and now everything’s turning green. So every time we go out somewhere, she’s like, oh, page look, Yellow Page. Look at Elizabeth green, because she hasn’t seen it yet. Yeah, because he’s all been snowing and everything. So it’s just something that we’re doing, you know, for her family and friends back home to see you know what she’s going through. And then if people that are interested in doing the visa process and stuff like that, they can see what the kind of steps are and what we have to go through and kind of get everything going that way. My

Roy Merritt 1:05:38
wife gets kind of a cool, my wife’s an immigrant, she went through that to her 15 years to get her genius. That was when when we met and finally got married, they like around the time that we actually got married was around the time she got approved for citizenship. So it didn’t matter. It was like you know, she had already started it. She started it like as a young kid. teenager, you know, and it took like 15 years and quite a bit of money to get in there and it you know, right. It is not easy. And it’s a it’s an amazing process. And I was kind of curious to see what kind of if there was any kind of culture shock or you know, really how she felt coming from Thailand, Milwaukee?

Jason Widger 1:06:18
Well, she Well, I mean, for me going from Florida to Thailand was it was a huge shock for me, because I was thinking everything was kind of like just a bunch of temples and open area and stuff like that. And it was nothing to do like that. Oh, yeah. She’s used to everything being like super close. And you know, you’d have to go out of the city to see these kind of trees and stuff like that. Well, okay. I think that back there’s a lot of trees that they caught, but when we were driving from Chicago, who I picked her up back over here, you know, she was like everything so open, the traffic is so nice and, and she did it. She did a video. It’s all in Thai a couple of days ago, talking about the eight things or 10 things that kind of shocked her when she got here and one of the things that she said was, is that she’s it’s it’s funny Everybody here so nice. Like when you guys call tech services we say hey man, what’s going on? How are you? Over there? If you say that that people in Thai they think you’re weird, like why are you talking to me like this? Why are you asking me if I’m okay? Yeah. If we walk down the street somewhere and we see someone walking toward us like on the sidewalk, we say, Hey, how are you know the only answer back in Thailand? They don’t say anything to anybody. Don’t even say hi.

Roy Merritt 1:07:26
like New York? Yeah.

Jason Widger 1:07:27
Yeah. So she’s, she’s, she’s getting new. So everything is here, you know, um, she is kind of, you know, still getting used to the differences between Thai and American and you know, the metric system versus what we use and stuff like that. So it’s, it’s kind of it’s kind of it was hard for her at first, but now she’s getting better with it. And we had a discussion about this the other day to wear with me I’m so used to doing things the American way. And I took for granted that she had no idea what a pound was. She knew what a kilo was, but not a pound. Yeah. So you know, just the simple things that we We take for granted and you know, for some people, it’s a whole new experience form.

Roy Merritt 1:08:03
Yeah, absolutely. It was super interesting. And I’d seen it pop up and I actually told my wife about it because, you know, it’s it. Those kinds of perspectives are what people are looking for, you know, so

Mike VO 1:08:14
I have a question. Absolutely. When you took her to the safe house, did you tell her the password? We haven’t gone to the safe house. Okay, so there’s not another password. So when you do will you film it and not password so you can go through and then watch.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:29
Follow that up with fuck the safe house. Awesome.

Roy Merritt 1:08:34
Dad, so if you’ve never been there for 10 fucking years, all I’ve heard about is when you go to Milwaukee, you have to go to the safe house, you have to go to safe house, you have to go to the Safe, safe houses. So I finally got to go to Milwaukee. And I went to the fucking safe house. And I sat at the fucking bar for 20 goddamn minutes and not a fucking person looked at me. And I finally got up and walked out and I went to the guy in the front room and I Like your fucking service here sucks. I’ve been dying to come here for 10 fucking years. And I get here and I sat there for 25 goddamn right now. Oh yeah. And I couldn’t even get a beer and the guy was like, Well, are you Sorry, bro? And no, no resolution, no nothing and the guy was like, Well, sorry. And I left and that was the end of that was like, Oh wow, you just fucking ruin the safe house for

Mike VO 1:09:25
me. So the whole time you’re sitting there were you too pissed off to realize that the seats go up and down?

Roy Merritt 1:09:31
They weren’t they weren’t even

Unknown Speaker 1:09:32
realize that the bar moves up and down.

Roy Merritt 1:09:35
This guy’s far too angry to let it Yeah, I mean I did nobody I knew there and talk to him for a little while and I finally I was like, dude, dude, how do we get served around here? And he’s like, man, the bartenders right there. And I was like, Yeah, I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes and he’s like, Yeah, dude, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m like me neither. We talked for another 10 minutes and I finally looked at him and I said, Charlie, man, I need a beer. I’m leaving. He’s like, Yeah, I don’t blame you. And I got up and left. Oh, so

Jason Widger 1:10:00
Next time next time the next time you come to Milwaukee want to go and I’ll have you have a better time okay? And you’re

Mike VO 1:10:05
like yeah, and you’ll go to the bathroom and end up outside like what the

Roy Merritt 1:10:09
fuck? I mean I walked all around Milwaukee it was it was great. I walked all around walk he’s cool fucking town man there’s just cool shit yeah I hit some fucking weird ass Irish pubs and all kinds of

Mike VO 1:10:22
you go to the they have that what’s what’s a stupid Chicago at the Blackhawks bar they have like a dedicated like a bar that’s all Blackhawks and we I was there one time and it was a hockey game we walked into they’re like, are you Blackhawks fan? And we’re like, I don’t know. And

Roy Merritt 1:10:39
if you come in here,

Mike VO 1:10:41
I want to drink and they’re like, if you don’t like the Blackhawks get out, I’m like, I love the blackout. Nice.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:50
Yeah, it’s fun. Yeah, love it.

Jason Widger 1:10:53
Yeah, love basketball. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:10:54
basketball rock.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:59
Jordan A three pointer. Yeah.

Mike VO 1:11:03
Usually the bouncers like let me see your ID like you like the Blackhawks. Yeah. I don’t know. I should. I should. I don’t know. I’m legal. I’m legal. I

Aaron Staudinger 1:11:13
just want a goddamn drink. I like I like that.

Roy Merritt 1:11:17
I mean the walkies to drink it down for sure they like to create Is

Jason Widger 1:11:20
it is it a lot? It’s a lot of breweries and stuff here too. It’s kind of crazy how much stuff is here? We’re drinking Miller right now.

Roy Merritt 1:11:27
You know, I grew up in Florida and I never left. never went anywhere did leave. I mean, but for a long time, I didn’t. Okay. And one of my first I didn’t leave till I left

Jason Widger 1:11:36
one of my third on own.

Roy Merritt 1:11:38
I had gone to New York and I had experienced New York which was a culture shock, you know, just totally weird to me. And I went to Vancouver, also God and awesome town to Vancouver’s fucking New York. It’s crazy. It’s crazy is fucked, and I had no idea I’m thinking, you know, you don’t know any better. So I’m down in Florida. I’m picking up Canada. There. You up there, and I get to Vancouver and that is a big fucking city skyscrapers everywhere fucking, you name it, it’s there. And I was like we rolled in, you know, coming in and you kind of come over the mountain and look down on Vancouver and I was like, holy shit, I did not expect this, you know, and you get in there and it’s just a different world. Totally different. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:22
Where the dogs lives in the minors. Yeah,

Roy Merritt 1:12:24
yeah, it was expected. And it’s the same way you’re Thailand. Other places you go like that. You kind of have these ideas in your head as to what’s there and then you get there and you’re like, Oh, wait, this is like a normal fucking city. You know?

Aaron Staudinger 1:12:38
Like Santa Ana, California north.

Jason Widger 1:12:41
Yeah. I was expecting so much different stuff when I got there. And my first meal when I got to Thailand was Burger King. Yeah.

Mike VO 1:12:49
What What do they call the Whopper, the Whopper.

Jason Widger 1:12:53
They had the metric system, but they don’t do all kinds of crazy stuff like in France. It was an ROI.

Roy Merritt 1:13:02
I love it wears huge nose buff so

Jason Widger 1:13:04
what’s what’s funny is I actually went to Paris with my mom and my sister like four years ago and we walked into a McDonald’s on the chandeliers a and we walked in just to see it say L’Oreal which you took a picture of and walked out

Roy Merritt 1:13:17
that’s all I’m like. Really is a Royale with cheese motherfucker. Look

Jason Widger 1:13:22
at that. It’s awesome. It is so funny.

Roy Merritt 1:13:26
Well, man, I appreciate you calling in today and I know not a problem on the phone for a while. And what was the name of your YouTube channel with your with your girl, Jay, Jay Jay and Jay story, the j&j story.

Jason Widger 1:13:39
Yeah. And like I said, we’ve got like six videos up right now. We’re trying to do at least one a week, maybe two a week. I got some stuff in my head, which I want to do once you know once this whole China virus is over. We’re gonna go explore the city some more and put some more videos. Hey, man,

Roy Merritt 1:13:54
yes, yeah. I don’t know about you, but I had that fucking Corona virus in November. So

Unknown Speaker 1:13:58
why do you Why do you change virus because it’s from China. Yes.

Jason Widger 1:14:02
Exactly. Like the swine flu. The Spanish flu is from Spain.

Roy Merritt 1:14:06
Oh, yeah. No I had that shit November I think everybody else so does a

Jason Widger 1:14:10
bunch of guys that work too there were there were guys are four or five days out sick and so it’s already ran through but

Roy Merritt 1:14:14
yeah, we were way too late on this one but that’s a whole different discussion.

Jason Widger 1:14:18
Exactly. That’s now that next week, right? Yeah.

Mike VO 1:14:22
But your cycles in the age of COVID. Here you go.

Roy Merritt 1:14:27
Hey, you know what, though, in the end us here especially we have missed a beat. We had this big dragon crank and I’ve been working my ass off all of a sudden I got a bunch of extra money from the government is good. I’m not playing. Well. I mean, we haven’t missed a beat. Yeah.

Jason Widger 1:14:44
Yeah, I don’t work it from I’m working from home the whole time. I mean, they sent us home. I think I had to work on a Tuesday. They sent me home with a laptop Wednesday had some connection problems, but I’ve been working either on the living room floor in the bedroom on my desk is all the whole time so we have a beard. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Roy Merritt 1:14:59
That’s what I’ve been. Like warranty, they’re like, well, I don’t know, I’m working from home right now. And I’m like, well, we’ll see. I talked to Jason and he’s like, I’m working home for now. Or I think you posted something. I don’t remember what it was. But shortly thereafter, I had called and talked to his warranty or one of those people and I was like, Oh, are you working from home too? And she was like, What are you? Yeah, and I was like, Okay, cool. You know, I try to keep it professional.

Jason Widger 1:15:26
But it is kind of cool the system that we do have it work for us back and forth of warranty and stuff like that. Yeah, that’s kind of weird. I say let me transfer you to this person and then also transfer them to their home wherever the hell they are like, Hi, that’s weird. Yeah.

Mike VO 1:15:39
Yeah, cuz it is weird. Cuz like you call the number and you’re still pretty sure when we call in we’re still calling the switchboard of Milwaukee. Yeah. Mm hmm. And, yeah, from there, it’s like, you know, I talked to Steve the other day, and he’s like, I don’t know why you’re talking to me. And I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know why. I didn’t. Why didn’t know I could even get the tech services through warranty. Yeah,

Roy Merritt 1:16:01
yeah, they can go you wherever. Yeah,

Mike VO 1:16:02
yeah. And he’s like, No, you just call me I gotcha. He’s like, you just need to make a pure D claim. And I’m like,

Roy Merritt 1:16:08
Alright, that sounds great, man. I don’t know what that is. Oh, I know, Jason. Jason’s gonna have a direct number to him because every time I call him calling him like, hey, man know what sucks is now I do or not you do you got a phone number. So Oh, yeah, well, I wouldn’t do that for work anyway.

Mike VO 1:16:23
I think I you know, I think that it’s awesome to have an asset. Like you guys. And I it’s got to be way more frustrating for you than it is for me. Yeah. Because Yeah, you have to deal with people that when you’re like, Did you check the fuse? And they’re like,

Unknown Speaker 1:16:43
I think I did.

Mike VO 1:16:45
And they’re like, Okay, well run check it. Yeah, yeah, go check to see and then they come back and are like, fuses blown. Like Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:55
Can I get quite a time?

Roy Merritt 1:16:59
No, you can I get quality time.

Mike VO 1:17:01
Yeah, you know, we don’t we don’t have to deal with that. You know, I mean, the hardest part for us is like, you like jumping through the hoops like, I know they’re gonna want this they’re gonna want this right and, you know, normally I wouldn’t write it down like yeah, the compression and leak down. I don’t write it down unless I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna call tech services. I’m gonna write the damn numbers down. Right?

Jason Widger 1:17:21
Yeah. Oh, transfer what’s your transmission? Uh, the number

Unknown Speaker 1:17:26
yeah seven There you go.

Jason Widger 1:17:30
So what’s in the primary 35 getaway off route for

Unknown Speaker 1:17:37
port poured out all over?

Jason Widger 1:17:39
Yeah, there you go.

Mike VO 1:17:41
God so yeah, we thank you guys and yeah, man. You know, toasty man. He sounds as old as he looks.

Jason Widger 1:17:52
Like I like I tell everybody you know, that’s what we’re there for guys. You know, if you guys got issues with it, you know, please feel free to call us I tell everybody, you know when I get off the phone with them. If you Having more issues call us back, let us know we’ll try to help as much as possible. So you know, I’m glad I’m glad that we you know, when when you guys call us back and tell us that what we gave you for information actually fixed the problem that makes us feel good makes me know we’re doing our jobs right so just keep doing what you guys are doing and like I said, if you guys got any issues, dude, call us please. That’s what we’re there for sound very happy. I love my job

Unknown Speaker 1:18:21
to this guy. Have you seen this movie?

Jason Widger 1:18:28
Let’s put it this way. I’m living in Milwaukee, which is a city I told myself I’d never live in because it’s too damn cold. But I got my dream job. I’ve got a dream woman I’ve got a roof over my head and a motorcycle in the garage I could now do is kill COVID-19 Yes. All right. Let’s do this. Come on. I can’t imagine

Aaron Staudinger 1:18:45
how it’s impacted your shit. Like you’re trying to go out and tell a story about how you know you’re trying to visit a man and see America. The whole damn thing has been on lockdown since like December, January. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Widger 1:18:57
That sucks, man. I’m sorry. We went over we went too late mission You’re gonna go look at some things and they actually had all the scientists said temporarily no parking. We’re like, what the fuck?

Mike VO 1:19:05
Yeah. Well, you know, there was a in Florida speaking of you dumb asses from Florida,

Unknown Speaker 1:19:11
which was kind of

Mike VO 1:19:13
one of the mayors of a beach town. I was listening to this on Reuters. I think it was one of the one of the coastal cities, you know, and I guess they all have like sovereignty over their sections of beaches. Mm hmm. So one of them opened it back up to swimming and surfing, but no sunbathing or walking. Was he a tent? And I was like, well, howdy. So do they launch a helicopter into the beach?

Unknown Speaker 1:19:34
They have a cannon and they like launch.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:39
Because you can’t walk on the beach. How are

Unknown Speaker 1:19:41
you going to swim?

Jason Widger 1:19:42
You have to work East Coast or west coast. I don’t know. I don’t

Roy Merritt 1:19:49
know surfing the East Coast because there’s surfing on the west coast.

Mike VO 1:19:55
Swim and so I mean,

Roy Merritt 1:19:57
to be honest. You live in Florida. There’s not a lot of surfing. Either the wave side Florida I mean a beach us up in Florida yet until you get down to like Miami keys stuff like that they get all right but even then the waves they saw you sit there and I tried to serve for a year but

Mike VO 1:20:14
I loved the Florida a lot of work you were opening back up. We don’t care Mondays go up. We don’t care. We’re doing it a herd immunity.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:22
Yeah, exactly. Okay, well

Roy Merritt 1:20:26
thank you man. Yeah, man. I appreciate you calling in man and maybe we’ll get you back on for another good one.

Jason Widger 1:20:31
Absolutely, guys. Thanks for having me on man. Have a good one. Jc I guess that’s it.

Roy Merritt 1:20:37
Well, that went that went pretty good.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:39
Still on.

Roy Merritt 1:20:40
Yeah. That went pretty good. Yeah, put the bottle down. He had a good perspective. And you know when it when it’s all said and done. You got a perspective that we don’t get. Yeah, kind of got to talk about tech services a little bit and we I don’t think we had to push him into saying anything to or didn’t want to but But yeah, you know, in the end is MMI worth it? Depends.

Aaron Staudinger 1:21:04
Sounds like it is that guy’s happy as hell.

Roy Merritt 1:21:06
Yeah, I mean well i think he’s a really no he’s a really good example Okay. Um like he said he didn’t know shit before he went spent five or six years in the business you know went back started teaching when to teach for hardly now he works for Harley. um you know you and I and Mike you and I can can kind of say the same things in that we have pushed our careers into management positions and you know more than just being a technician you know when it’s all said and done and and and that’s because we have that drive. You know, that drive that puts us to that next level but but

Unknown Speaker 1:21:43
I started at $12 an hour.

Roy Merritt 1:21:45
I started hitting $9 an hour $9 an hour’s what I made as a technician. Yeah, $9 an hour. anybody listening to this that wants to become a mechanic that thinks they’re going to make a lot of money. Go ahead and try something else.

Mike VO 1:22:00
Yeah, this is the medium books job. Um,

Roy Merritt 1:22:02
I’ve been in this 10 years and I still do not make as much money as I did in the construction business. You know, I made a fuck ton of money and obstruction. I don’t do this for the money. I do this one because I love the shop that I work at and the people I work with and you know, it’s it’s a different atmosphere. I get to come into work and say fuck you and things like that. You know,

Mike VO 1:22:28
and we’re stuck. You know, we’re old enough now that we can’t really do anything else.

Roy Merritt 1:22:31
Oh, yeah, I’m too old. Yeah.

Aaron Staudinger 1:22:37
Well, you want to get into business and you want to carve yourself out a career. If you want it bad enough, you can carve yourself out a career. Yeah. Well, I had to love it. You have to want to do it. You have to absorb it, live it and breathe it.

Roy Merritt 1:22:49
Well, and that’s the flip side to the Zim. Am I worth it? Because you can get the same results without going in.

Aaron Staudinger 1:22:58
That’s what I brought up earlier. I’d rather keep take somebody that has a

Unknown Speaker 1:23:01
shot, it’s very hard. So I’d rather have somebody that comes through Mike’s bootcamp with no bad exposure. So here’s the problem with that.

Mike VO 1:23:07
It’s not gonna happen.

Roy Merritt 1:23:08
roadie is like an anomaly roadie is a guy we have working here in the shop and he’s never been to MMI he has shadowed under Mike for a couple years. But when you give roadie something new roadie doesn’t necessarily understand how all the systems work. So roadies are really good parts changer and a do this do that birdie great. But when a bike rolls in that has a problem, roadie kind of struggles with diagnosis,

Unknown Speaker 1:23:45
you need that backbone

Roy Merritt 1:23:45
and that is the difference between somebody that has been taught, you know from a place like MMI and somebody else that has just learned from experience because you have to understand how it all works to diagnose and we were kind of talking about that earlier. You know, I got a bike in, and people were like, man, I don’t understand what’s going on every time I turn on the bike. This is a 2010 2012 every time I turn on the bike, the right blinker turns on.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:19
I can turn it off.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:23
But I can’t turn it back on

Unknown Speaker 1:24:26
your right turn signal switch broken. Like what?

Roy Merritt 1:24:30
Well, if you understand how everything works, the only way that turn signal is going to come on when you turn the switch on is if you are getting voltage to the TSM, the BCM whatever it is on that bike

Unknown Speaker 1:24:47
from that switch. Now, does that mean the switch is bad? No.

Roy Merritt 1:24:54
You could have a short voltage on that wire and there are ways to test that but you You have to understand that I went into advanced electrical, which is the hardest class for technician to take. It’s a master class. There are many, many, many people who have done this and failed.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:15
One of the only classes I’ve ever heard of people failing.

Roy Merritt 1:25:19
They have Milwaukee eight motors, they have all this stuff. And then they have 213 and prior bikes sitting in this class. Can you tune in? You got to diagnose stereo stereo problems. Exactly. Right. He’s exactly right. Yeah. So you go in. And I vaguely remember this. So you have a full dresser, front and rear switches, you know, the passengers got switches and stuff, right? Well, when the passenger hits volume up, volume down goes down. When the passenger hits volume down, Volume Down goes down. What’s the problem?

Aaron Staudinger 1:25:57
He’s looking at me like I have the answer. I have no

Roy Merritt 1:26:00
idea. So I didn’t take the funny thing is, if you were to open up a service manual and read through the initial diagnostics and the initial diagnostics for stereo, there is actually an excerpt in there that says, if a switch is However, it’s put if you hit a switch and it’s giving you a different function, and that same, you know, switch is giving you that function, then those wires are shorted together. Okay. So, I, you know, these classes are all about, you know, they say, Well, I don’t need you to lay out every step for me. I need you to find the problem and then explain it to me. And if you can explain it to me, to where I think you understand the problem, then you pass. So I go through, I test it says, Well, these two are shorted together, so I disconnect the connector. I own the two together. Sure enough, they’re shorted together. plug it back in. Right My hand. I’m done two and a half minutes.

Aaron Staudinger 1:27:03
So there’s a definite value and a half analogy.

Roy Merritt 1:27:06
Yeah. So the teacher comes over with a strange look in his eyes. And it’s like, you just started on this bike. How did you find this so fast? I opened up the book. And I’m like, well right here in initial diagnostics, it says this, and that these two wires are shorted together. So I pulled the connector on them. Sure enough, they’re shorted together. We need to fix that and he’s like, you’re exactly right. boom, done. Next test. I watched people spend an hour diagnosing that problem with breakout boxes and things taken apart and I would walk by them and be like start over because you’re really not supposed to help the other people. And I’d be walking by like start over start over and they’re like, but I’m like, start to flip over. Your you are down the rabbit hole man, you have gone too far. That’s where people go wrong is they’re not paying attention to the little things, you know, 99.9% of the time it is something fucking stupid. A fuse a wire connection. something dumb when it comes to electrical. You know, what did what did you install? The problem started happening Exactly. When did this start happening? Well, it started about a month ago. Okay, what did you do to the bike?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:24
I put mirrors on. Oh, whoo and put new grips on.

Roy Merritt 1:28:27
All right, thank you. I knew the problem. Now. I know where to focus.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:32
I know why your brake lights always on. But

Roy Merritt 1:28:34
it’s not like I’m super smart, electrical. It’s that I read. And I read when there’s and most of the time when the guys in the shop, come ask me for help. Well, I don’t I don’t know what to do. It’s got this trouble code. Okay. Let’s open up the book. Go to the beginning of that chapter. What does it say the causes of that are? Why is it tripping that code? How does it trip that code? Well, we had One that one of the guys in the shop had sent out and the guy wrote it like twice came back and the light came back on. You know, whatever. I can’t remember exactly where those oxygen sensor or something. I said, Well, let’s open up the book and you read right in the book and it says it takes three ignition cycles before that code will trip. Well, the technician fixes it, turns it on, Search it up and rides it no light. rides it over to the porter Bay, Porter, fires it up, washes it up, rides it around, you know what I mean? Then, then the customer gets on it, fires it up rides at home, the fucking light comes on. And he’s pissed, you know? And I told her, you know, I told him, I said, Man, you need to get three ignition cycles. So you need to go out and ride this thing for about a mile, mile and a half. Stop. Shut it down, turn it back on, ride it. Do the same thing but every mile and a half, two miles. See if it comes back. Oh, it came back. Exactly. You know the manual You know, you pay so much money to learn how to learn how to save a manual right there we started. It’s the starting initial diagnostics. It’s to go here, it’s to go there. It’s how to get information, how to find out that information. That’s what you’re learning. You are not getting all the information, you are learning how to find that information,

Mike VO 1:30:20
because you don’t know what’s wrong. No.

Roy Merritt 1:30:22
And they can’t know what’s wrong. If they could set you up for every possible scenario. They would. But they can’t. There’s so many variables, you know, a broken wire or a broken connection or anything. So

Mike VO 1:30:37
the failures are almost always electrical now. Yeah.

Roy Merritt 1:30:41
Pretty much. And when they are, the computer usually puts you in a pretty good direction. You know, when it’s all said and done.

Mike VO 1:30:49
So when I was a kid, it was mostly mechanical, but yeah, manufacturing and the way they do things now,

Roy Merritt 1:30:55
even then your switches are mechanical. So everything was really easy to test you know, so meter and some other shit. You know you could test everything but

Mike VO 1:31:03
yeah off off No.

Roy Merritt 1:31:06
Yet now that you have modules there is no testing is do I have power and ground? Yeah Do I have connection Canvas? Yeah, everything works but this Yep. Okay replace it.

Mike VO 1:31:15
Yeah, go play some module. Yeah. So check the check the check the load. Does the load work? Yeah, okay. The modules bad. Yeah. Yep.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:27
But ultimately worthwhile

Roy Merritt 1:31:30
if you’re the right person, yeah. It’s worthwhile. We have voted. Yes, yeah. I spent a lot of money and I pay a lot of money.

Mike VO 1:31:38
If you want to smell like gas and oil. You want to get strong, especially today. And you want to if y’all have never lived in a shop that smells like old varnished gas.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:48
About a few days you want to change Come join us change the oil.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:55
Power when I make the medium books, this is your job. My Hell yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:01
Well

Roy Merritt 1:32:04
check us out Talkin braap.com new posts new things coming all the time.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:09
And you can make 10s of thousands of dollars a year in this job

Unknown Speaker 1:32:17
10s of

Unknown Speaker 1:32:18
10s of thousands of dollars. Absolutely. And really a bagger on the cheap. You can make low five figures within five years of entering this career.

Shane Langdon 1:32:31
All right, I think that’s enough for tonight.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:39
Outro

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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