Will This Orange County Chopper Ever Run Right?

You know you're in a for a bad time when the words "ever see that thing in Alaska where they yeet cars and trucks off a cliff and people are down below cheering? I wonder if we could do that with this," comes out of your mouth during a project.

That is, by the way, a direct quote from Craig, aka The Bearded Mechanic, in his latest installment of The Geico Orange County Chopper Chronicles. OK, that's not really what it's called, but it almost feels like it should have its own series name on TBM's channel. The headaches alone, both from electrical gremlins and its eye-wateringly rich running state, have earned it that much.

Seemingly everything on this bike leads to another diagnosis rabbit hole that needs to be fully explored in order to fix it. After all, it's a custom bike, with a combination of both off-the-shelf and custom, one-off parts. So unlike a production machine, it's not as easy as tracking down the OEM shop manual and using that particular bible to help diagnose any issues. 

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After hitting a few dead ends, luckily Craig is able to talk to the guy who actually built the one-off custom wiring harness for this bike. Even better than that, he was kind enough to send over the wiring diagram for this exact bike, so Craig at least has a hope of tracing out what is located where (or what should be located where, at least), and then going from there. 

That's obviously not always possible with a one-off machine like this, since who knows if a) you'll be able to track down the builder, and b) if they'll be willing or able to share it with you, for whatever reason. The stars seem to have aligned on this one, though, which is great news for maybe getting it sorted before Craig loses his mind.

Does he get everything accomplished that he wanted to by the end of this video? No, but he does get somewhere, and that somewhere is not the top of a cliff in Alaska where he intends to launch the thing with a trebuchet, so that's at least good news? Ish?

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