I fixed my Royal Enfield until I broke it

Somehow I failed to see the throttle cable hanging loose. But what I did next was a bigger problem.

 Kids learn early to take care of their favorite toys. Parents teach us well. 

"If you break that, you won't get another," is the message a child receives when a parent wags a warning finger at misbehavior. 

Intentionally or not, they're teaching the value of things, and our responsibility for them. 

So I feel badly that I've let down my 1999 Royal Enfield Bullet. It's out of commission, thanks to me. 

Always present in my mind is the knowledge that this is the way many motorcycles end up: partially disassembled for some long ago forgotten problem, a repair that was never completed, or was botched in the attempt. 

They're pushed to the side of the garage and left to rust and rot.

After my Bullet revved uncontrollably while I waited for a stop light to change, I pushed it home. 

Anxious to find the problem, I twisted the grip and found it operated.

I removed and opened the carburetor, but it showed no sign of any problem.

I examined the points and the timing and found no problem. Even the spark plug looked OK.

Stumped, I wrote the Unofficial Royal Enfield Community Forum, where members instantly pinpointed my problem: the twist grip itself.

Checking it, finally, I found the outer cable loose there, actually outside its housing.

While sitting stopped at the traffic light I had sensed that the idle was slightly fast, and had pulled on the throttle cable, probably dislodging the outer cable from its socket and, with the motorcycle in neutral at the stop light, the rpm had soared.

If I had only been more patient out on the road, I might have noticed the loose cable, tucked it back into its socket, and not had to push the motorcycle two miles!

Now that I knew the problem, I was impatient to effect a repair. I acted impulsively.

Instead of simply returning the cable to its socket, I figured the twist grip itself would have to come off for examination.

This was stupid: the inner cable wasn't disconnected from the twist grip; the outer cable was just dislodged from its socket on the exterior of the throttle assembly.

If only I had analyzed the problem more carefully.

To free the twist grip, I unscrewed the kill switch module and left it hanging by its delicate wires.

Then I twisted the rear brake light switch out of the brake lever pedestal, in the process breaking the delicate soldered connections to the switch.

Then I removed the rearview mirror.

Then I slackened off the front brake adjustment to free the brake cable from the lever pedestal.

Every one of these disabling steps was unnecessary and ineffectual: the throttle twist grip still wasn't free!

See, I was making two errors here: First, there had been no reason at all to remove the twist grip. Second, even if there had been, there was no need to disable the whole right handlebar control assembly to do it. 

Still more impatient now, I twisted and tugged and, finally! The twist grip suddenly came off in my hand.

What now? I don't even know what it was I did that freed it!

I now needed to put the outer cable end back into its socket (which I could have done all along) and reattach the needlessly removed twist grip. But I didn't know how to reattach the grip, since I didn't know how I'd gotten it off.

Struggling, pushing, lubricating, twisting; nothing worked. It wouldn't go back on. I was foiled.

Look around at the damage I had done:

On the workbench (or on the floor around the motorcycle) were my disassembled carburetor and the motorcycle's battery. The fuel line was off. Hanging from the handlebars were the wires and cables I'd unnecessarily broken or disconnected, erasing their proper adjustments.

I realized now that I wasn't certain how the carburetor went together. I didn't know how to adjust the front brake, or how I would fix the broken brake light wiring. (I'm the fool who had soldered the wires to the switch, not realizing that unscrewing the switch for maintenance would snap my soldering.)

I thought of all those ads I'd read over the years, for motorcycles that were in great shape, except partly disassembled by foolish owners who couldn't put them back together. Left to decay.

So is this where it could end? I ruefully imagined writing my own ad:

"For sale. My 1999 Royal Enfield Bullet. High mileage but good condition. Just needs new throttle twist grip and attach carburetor and cables. Easy fix."

That won't happen to my bike, at least not yet.

I'm not giving up.