If It Ain't Broke

What a conundrum. On Saturday, I decided to change the oil on my Cannondale Cannibal. I dropped the oil just fine, but when I put in a new filter and started to tighten the bolt on the oil filter cover, the bolt broke off inside the motor. Rather than throw a conniption, I simply put all the tools on the garage floor and walked away from it for 24 hours. On Sunday, I managed to find an easy-out at The Home Depot that would fit a bolt that small (6MM). I drilled out the center of the remaining piece of the bolt with some very tiny titanium drill bits, and then managed to get the easy-out to thread in and the bolt to turn after about 45 minutes. I think that if I hadn't taken a step back, I might have screwed this up by attacking it with the wrong tools, and I would have been in a world of hurt having to pull the engine from the bike.

Believe it or not, I also found a replacement bolt at The Home Depot and managed to get the oil filter cover back on. And the bike is ready for the first snowstorm of the year (again). The problem is that almost every time I need to do basic maintenance on the Cannondale, there's a problem, and that leads to wanting to ignore basic things like oil changes, chain tightening, spark plugs and lubrication. Might be time to sell (but only if I can get a new KTM).