The first person to touch Cal’s motorcycle without permission was Tyler. This surprised absolutely nobody.
“Don’t touch that.” Tyler froze with his hand about an inch from the handlebar and slowly pulled it back. Cal stood behind him holding a coffee.
“Sorry.” Tyler apologized.
Cal nodded. Tyler waited a second. “So… can I touch it?”
Cal considered the question. “No.” CJ laughed from across the shop.
Cal had finally brought his bike to Deke’s garage, and that alone felt like progress. Nobody had formally invited him. Jimmy had merely mentioned that they usually worked on the bikes Wednesday nights, and Cal had said, “Maybe I’ll stop by.” Everybody assumed that meant he wouldn’t. Then at seven-fifteen, the old truck rolled into the parking lot.
Jimmy pretended not to notice. He failed badly. “What’s he doing here?”
Deke looked at him and then out front. “You invited him.”
“I did not!” Jimmy exclaimed.
Deke reminded him; “You told him we were here Wednesdays. And now he is unloading his bike.”
“That’s not an invitation.”
“That’s almost the definition of an invitation.”
Jimmy returned to the clutch on his M8. He had spent the last several days thinking about what Cal said: stop looking at mine; start looking at yours. Jimmy hated advice that sounded obvious after somebody else said it. Worse, Cal had been right.
The clutch was slipping. Not much. Just enough under load to muddy everything. Jimmy had been chasing additional horsepower while some of the horsepower he already owned was quietly turning into heat.
CJ confirmed it. Erin confirmed it. Deke confirmed it. Rooster claimed he had known for months.
Jimmy stared at the clutch pack spread across the bench. “There goes another eighteen hundred bucks.”
Deke looked over. “What?”
“That’s what I spent on this thing.” Jimmy said with an upsetting tone.
“On what? Trying to pick up three horsepower?” Deke questioned.
CJ wiped her hands on a rag. “How’d that work out?” Jimmy held up a glazed clutch plate. “Apparently I already had the horsepower.” Rooster nodded knowingly.
Cal walked over to the bench and nodded toward the clutch. “You mind?” Jimmy stepped aside. Cal picked up one of the plates, examined it for a moment and said, “Yep.”
Jimmy crossed his arms. “That’s your expert diagnosis?”
Cal handed it back. “Pretty much.”
“Anything else?”
Cal looked at the stack. “You got lucky.”
Jimmy frowned. “How?”
“You found it here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jimmy questioned with anger.
“It means you didn’t find it two hundred miles from home after burning the rest of it up.” Cal said with experience.
Jimmy looked down at the clutch. “Fair point.” He hated fair points.
While Jimmy and Cal talked, CJ wandered toward Cal’s motorcycle. She had been wanting a closer look since the previous weekend, not because she expected to find one magical part responsible for everything, but because the bike had been bothering her.
Nothing about it looked accidental. It wasn’t loaded with expensive jewelry or random catalog parts. There was no obvious attempt to impress somebody standing ten feet away. The more CJ studied it, the more the motorcycle looked like somebody had made a series of deliberate decisions and then resisted the urge to keep adding things.
Erin came over. “What are you seeing?”
“Not sure yet.” CJ responded.
“That’s helpful.” Said Erin.
CJ nodded toward the motorcycle. “Look at how everything fits.”
Erin studied it. “So?”
“So, nothing’s fighting anything else.”
That got Erin’s attention.
CJ crouched beside the M8 and her eyes went almost immediately to the exhaust. She followed the front head pipe back toward the collector, stopped, and traced it again. Then again.
Erin noticed. “What?”
CJ pointed along the head pipe. “Stepped Exhaust.”
Jimmy wandered over. “What steps?”
CJ pointed carefully. “One, Two, and Three into the collector.”
Now Jimmy leaned closer.
The pipe increased in diameter as it moved toward the collector. CJ had seen stepped exhaust headers before, but the locations caught her attention. These didn’t look like convenient places to join available pieces of tubing together. They looked chosen.
She shifted farther back and studied the collector. “That’s interesting.”
Erin crouched beside her. “What?”
“The collector’s outlet is big.”
Jimmy smiled immediately. “See?”
CJ held up a hand. “Don’t.”
“Bigger.” He repeated.
CJ returned: “I heard you.”
“I’ve been saying bigger is…”
CJ cut him off. “You’ve been saying a lot of things Jimmy.”
She looked closer. The larger collector wasn’t simply hanging off the end of the head pipes. The tubes entered it through a smoother, more gradual merge than she expected. The entire transition looked less abrupt than most exhaust systems.
CJ moved back toward the head pipes. “These aren’t simply production welds.”
Jimmy frowned. “What does that mean?”
“You can tell they’re purposeful in their location. Somebody decided where these changes needed to happen. The stepped exhaust locations aren’t there because that’s where a piece of tubing happened to end.”
Erin studied the system again. “So three steps into a larger collector with a smoother merge.” CJ nodded.
Tyler was now crouching beside them. “What are we looking at?”
“Quiet.”
Tyler lowered his voice. “What are we looking at?”
CJ ignored him.
Rooster remained at the workbench, apparently determined not to show interest in anything attached to a Milwaukee-Eight.
Jimmy, however, had become completely invested. “So the collector’s bigger.”
CJ looked at him. “Yes, Jimmy.”
He smiled.
“That does not mean what you think it means.” She insisted.
His smile disappeared.
CJ followed the front pipe toward the cylinder head. Then she stopped again and leaned closer. “Hold on.”
Jimmy sighed. “Now what?”
CJ pointed near the exhaust port. “That flange is welded.”
Jimmy looked at it, then at CJ. “So?”
“You ever seen one like that?” She asked.
He leaned closer. “No.”
Erin moved around for a better view. “Why weld it?”
CJ didn’t answer.
For the first time, she looked directly at Cal. He had been standing a few feet away listening to the whole thing, occasionally drinking his coffee and making absolutely no effort to help.
CJ pointed toward the exhaust. “Who made this?”
Cal looked at the pipe. “Burns.”
CJ waited. “Burns?”
“Burns Stainless.” He replied.
Nothing. No recognition from CJ. None from Jimmy. Erin looked at Tyler, who shrugged and said he hadn’t heard of them. Then she asked “Should we have?”
Cal smiled slightly. “I didn’t.” That wasn’t the answer anyone expected.
CJ stood. “Then how’d you find them?” Cal set his coffee down. “That’s a longer story.”
Jimmy pointed toward the exhaust. “Okay, forget the name. Why three steps?”
Cal looked at him and asked: “What are you trying to make your motorcycle do?”
“Go faster.” Jimmy quickly replied.
“That isn’t an answer.”
Jimmy laughed. “It’s literally the answer.”
Cal shook his head. “Drag bike? Street bike? Road course? Where do you want the power? What motor? What cam? How heavy is it? How do you ride it?” Jimmy glanced at Erin. She was smiling now.
Cal looked back at him. “You just spent eighteen hundred dollars trying to find three horsepower while your clutch was giving away what you already had.”
Jimmy folded his arms. “That has nothing to do with your exhaust.”
Cal glanced at the three steps, the collector and then back at Jimmy. “Maybe it has everything to do with it.” The shop went quiet for a moment.
Rooster interrupted, "Is that the same Burns Stainless whose merge collectors are used by Corvette Racing and NASCAR Cup?"
Cal replied: “Yep.”
Jimmy looked at the exhaust again. “So why is the collector bigger?”
Cal smiled. “Better question.” Jimmy waited for the answer. Cal picked up his coffee. “Not tonight.”
CJ laughed. Jimmy did not.
Later that evening, after Cal had gone and the others were closing the shop, Jimmy stood beside his motorcycle scrolling through his phone. CJ walked past. “What are you doing?”
“Research.”
“That usually gets expensive.” CJ Replied and Jimmy ignored her.
The last thing CJ saw before leaving was a photograph of an oversized exhaust system on Jimmy’s screen. By midnight, he had ordered it.
He had learned exactly one thing from Cal’s motorcycle. Unfortunately, it was probably the wrong one.
