It's Never the Carburetor

There's a line in the script where Lenny picks up the phone and a customer tells him his '73 R75 won't start. "Everybody thinks it's the carburetor," Lenny says. "It's never the carburetor. That's your points."

I rode BMWs for most of my adult life — never rebuilt one, despite telling myself every winter that this was the year. But I broke down on enough back roads to know what a misdiagnosis looks like. The carburetor is the thing people can name, so it's the thing people blame. The actual problem is quieter, less obvious, and has been getting worse while everyone was looking at the wrong part.

That's the whole movie, actually. Lenny thinks the problem is his brother. Marvin thinks the problem is money. Danny thinks the problem is distance. They're all cleaning the carburetor. The actual problem — the corroded ground wire, to stay in the metaphor — is that none of them ever said the thing that needed saying after the cottage got sold.

The bikes are honest about what's broken. The people aren't. That's why Lenny prefers the bikes.