Rex Rotor

What did he see?

On a winter afternoon on the Saltbridge pier, Rex Rotor could see his reflection in the inside of the arcade glass. The bicycle shop upstairs had a light on. He'd been given the task of sorting loose spokes for a couple of hours so that his mother could wrap a birthday present at home. When the owner came over to let him stop, Rex asked what went into a wheel built for a bicycle that carried two riders. The owner made him finish sorting the spokes. She also showed him exactly how she would change the build.

Rex took a job in that same shop as soon as he was old enough to decide his own hours, then discovered how few of them really belonged to him. Most of his customers want a wheel before the next fine Saturday, and the wind sweeps off the pier so hard on a bad day he can tell the weather by which bell somebody rings as they come in. In his thirties he took on an apprentice, Imani, who likes finding a cheap way to prove a problem before she reaches for a stand.

When did it wobble?

The disc Rex took apart was small enough to make a short arc on a wooden bench before hitting the wall. It belonged to a spare test wheel for the Mazda 1989 Savanna RX-7 FC3S. Rex had noticed a wobble, wondered aloud whether the hub face was at fault and pulled the assembly to pieces before Imani got back with coffee. By the time she returned, he had decided one of the separators felt thinner than the others. She asked him how often the wobble made itself known. He couldn't say. He had been watching so hard for any change that he hadn't stopped once the wheel went round.

Imani offered to help him put it back. Rex asked her first to guess which piece was causing the wobble. She drew a mark and had him turn the wheel once it was together. The high spot came past in the same place. Once they knew where to look, they found a fleck caught where they'd been resting the assembly. Rex had been so attentive to the parts that he hadn't wiped the support.

What did the Mazda do?

The movement Rex is working on comes where the second bend of his test section runs smoothly into a third. He can feel the steering go light for an instant and tends to fiddle with it because one hand is already correcting for a sensation that passed. He uses a line drawn perpendicular to the track to show himself where he will leave his hands still. Chip Shiftwell saw him put a full rotation mark on his bench card and wanted to know which one of Rex's changes they had made before the first straight run. Rex had to count on his fingers. Chip gave him a blank card for the next try.

Rex had the card in a pocket when he went to look at Jesse Pink-Man's bracket. He asked Jesse if he could get the test lead in its real position before either of them did anything to the part. It fit, which left Rex free to offer up two theories about why a different bracket would have fit worse.

What goes in the window?

Rex wants a front window display at the shop that visitors can turn by hand. Imani would like him to demonstrate it without giving people the answer before they find the wobble. They have discussed how early is too early to point. On the bench between them is a piece of chalk they have both reached for at once.