The Hero's Journey is a series of events common to countless works of literature, ranging from Moby Dick to Star Wars. Joseph Campbell defined it as, "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won." What does this have to do with a Kawasaki KX250 engine rebuild? In this video, absolutely everything.

It starts much like any other stop-motion engine rebuild video. The worn-out engine takes itself apart. Once ejected, the fried piston marks an airdrop zone on the workbench and a brand new Wiseco piston parachutes in. The shiny new part takes one look at the crusty old block and head, wants nothing to do with them, and goes back into its box. After a brief fight, the old piston points at the pictures on the wall of Kawasaki dirt bikes looking awesome, doing stunts, and taking jumps at the front of the pack. The old piston imparts its wisdom, "It's worth it," just before plunging to its demise in the scrap bucket.

The new piston, inspired by these pictures, decides to give the rebuild a try. Having never worked on an engine before, it tries to remove the flywheel by brute force but is unsuccessful. That's when the Clymer manual appears and opens to the page describing flywheel removal. It calls in the assistance of the proper tool, and the old parts begin to go away. Throughout the rest of the video, the piston oversees and directs the entire rebuild process, then inserts itself into the shiny new engine just before the head goes back on to meet its destiny.

I enjoy rebuild videos, and this is one of the best I've seen. The Hero's Journey is basically the same story told over and over again, but like Star Wars, this video brings a unique new perspective to the same old subject matter. It took Mechanimations 500 hours and around 10,000 unique photos to make. I'd say the end result was totally worth it.

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