As a mechanic for 12 years and 5 of those being for factory KTM and Yamaha, I thought I’d take you guys through a week in the life of a mechanic during the supercross series. I used to get a fair amount of people that would tell me I was so lucky to have my job and that they dream of being a mechanic. For all of those people out there, allow me take you guys through what your average factory wrench goes through in a week of sx/mx.
As a mechanic for 12 years and 5 of those being for factory KTM and Yamaha, I thought I’d take you guys through a week in the life of a mechanic during the supercross series. I used to get a fair amount of people that would tell me I was so lucky to have my job and that they dream of being a mechanic. For all of those people out there, allow me take you guys through what your average factory wrench goes through in a week of sx/mx.
Thursday-Fly across the country (we’ll pick an east coast race) and have to put your watch three hours early. The time thing is important here in a little bit. Elbow a little lady out of the way to get your bag off the carousel that’s filled with parts that you are bringing to the race for stock in the semi. It only weighs 70 lbs, no big deal. Take the monorail from airport to rental car place, wait in line for your car, then walk to your car which is always furthest away from the counter that’s humanly possible. Your arms are killing you from the bag of shocks and forks that you’re no doubt carrying. Get to your hotel and have a bit of dinner there. After chowing down, go outside, unload semi and strip your bike down to the frame. Make sure you soak all your bolts and decide what you need to do tomorrow. Remember what I said about your watch? Well the time change makes it hard to fall to sleep and you eventually drift off around 2-3 AM.
Friday-Only to awaken just a few hours later to go and start building your motorcycle! With your body all wacked out with the time change, you stumble out to the truck and start assembling what you hope will be the winning bike that next night. (unless your guy has a last name of Stewart or Reed, you have no chance in hell that’s going to happen) As you build your bike, this might be the most at peace that you’re at all week, not at the shop where people are bugging you and yelling at you for some dumb thing you did, not at the track where it’s always hectic, just you and your bike and all the free and new parts you need! As you throw things away that would make your local riding buddies sick, you make a note of what you need to do in the coming weeks to stay on schedule with everything. The day wraps up around the 10 hour mark with the wiring of the grips. At least that always ended up being the last thing I did on the bike.
Saturday-The day of the race, it’s a very, very busy 16 hr day with lots of changes to the bike when your rider, seeing himself well off the pace, declares his bike “unrideable” and you have to be the monkey to his ringmaster. The day flies by and usually ends up being a 16 hour day. Your rider, shocker-does not win and you and he vow that next week, you’ll finally win one of these things.
Sunday-Your day off! If you count 4 hours of sleep after the race, early morning flight and another 3 hour time change as a day off. When you do get home, you’re so beat from the night before that you just lie on the couch like a zombie from 28 Days Later.
Monday-Go to the workshop and prepare your outdoor mx machine for testing on Tuesday with your rider. When you finish with that 3-4 hours of prep and getting all the parts together that you need for the next day’s testing, you now have to rebuild your brakes from the weekend, grease the linkage and again, just keep up on your SX schedule. This is not so bad, only 9 hours or so.
Tuesday-Get up at the crack of dawn and get down to the race shop so that you can drive the test truck to some track that’s out in the middle of the desert. This track is so far out in the middle of nowhere that if your truck broke down, it wouldn’t be long before the coyotes and mountain lions got you and somebody someday would find your skeleton with a fanny pack on. Your van is already loaded with everything you need and when you finish the drive you immediately unload everything because the rider is due at the track at 10’oclock. So you wait and then wait some more, because one thing I’ve learned is that the riders will pretty much show up when they want. In all my years of being a mechanic and testing, David Vuillimen is the only guy that always showed up at the planned time. So as you sit on the bumper and think about all the extra sleep you could’ve had, the rider rolls up in some sort of vehicle that’s worth more than you make in a year. They don’t drive to the track though, the wife, girlfriend, gear guy, man-friend-somebody drives while they get precious sleep.
They ride a little bit and you guys go through the day trying out all sorts of things that looked good on the dyno and on paper but in the end, its all “unrideable” and the rider goes back to the settings that he has always liked. Y’see, moto-x isn’t like car racing, the rider can take inferior equipment and win on it, and the rider has so much say in the results that I wonder why the teams spend as much as they do. Oh wait, I do know, if the teams didn’t give the appearance that they were trying hard (even if the parts they’re trying suck ass) then the rider won’t think the team is down on them and have a bad attitude. It’s a vicious circle folks.
So after a day of accomplishing very little outside of the fact that you’re dirty, smelly and hungry (The rider ate his lunch while you worked on his bike, you never got a chance) you head back to the shop to see that your motor that you shipped back from the Supercross arrived and now you have to go through it and ship it back tomorrow. You grab a can of Monster because you know it’s going to be a looong night. This day usually ends up being 15 hours.
Wednesday- Another beautiful day of outdoor testing that begins at the butt crack of dawn, doesn’t matter that you were at the shop rebuilding your motor until 11pm, the rider needs to get going on settings that will, inevitably, suck poo. So in the hot sun you go and you have your stop watches ready to figure out whether or not your settings actually work. This is really the only way to tell if your rider is enjoying your settings. The problem being is the track changes so fast and often that when you do make a change in the morning; the track is totally different by the afternoon.
All in all, I hope one thing is clear here, you really have to love this sport to do it and all the mechanics should get their heads checked.
