Motorcycling lessons learned: #6 Know your bike

March 3, 5:46 PMMotorcycle ExaminerKen Bingenheimer

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Motorcycle Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Left is Prime, right is Reserve. Run is in the middle.

How lazy are you? Come on, admit it. Most of us are really good about putting off doing things we know darn well we should do, we just don't feel like it. But with a motorcycle more than most things, you've got to take care of it if you want it to take care of you.

For bikers, indolence often takes the form of failure to check the pressure in our tires. What the heck, they're still round. They're not flat. What's the problem?

Of course, if you ride you really ought to know what the problem is. Under-inflated tires can shed tread about as quickly as a snake can shed its skin. And then you're either riding on dangerous tires or you're spending way too much money on tires.

   There's nothing better than a tech manual

Full disclosure: I have been a bad bike owner. I have neglected my tires.

Take my Kawasaki, for example. It consistently measured low on air but that wasn't enough to persuade me to check it regularly. Then one Saturday morning I was meeting up with some buddies to go ride and one of them looked at my front tire and said, "Dude, your tire is low."

Low is hardly the word for it. Nearly flat would be a better description. I took care of it and we rolled but ever since then I've been a lot better about it. As it is, that tire lasted about half as long as it should have. I finally solved the problem of the ever-leaking front tire. Turns out the valve wasn't screwed into the valve stem sufficiently and was constantly leaking. Now my tire holds air just fine, but I still check it regularly anyway.

The point is, you really need to know your motorcycle, and you need to take proper care of it. If you don't want to find yourself stranded by the road in the middle of nowhere you've got to treat your bike well.

Here's another learning experience I had. I was all set to take off on our summer OFMC trip on the Kawi for the first time. I had bought the Kawi the previous year after the trip so this would be its first long run. It had trouble starting, which it had never had before, and being a pretty new bike it shouldn't have. I got it started and it ran like a dog. I went four or five miles and then turned and headed to the dealership.

They had no idea what the problem was and they sure weren't going to fix it on the spot, but that was OK, I had my Honda at home. I unloaded my gear, called a cab to take me home, loaded the Honda and took off.

The dealership never could figure out why the problem developed. They saw easily what the problem was but not what had caused it. So then, sometime later, I'm off again with the OFMC boys and once again the Kawi is running badly. We got to Loveland and I headed for the dealership there. Same problem as before. But why?

When we finally figured it out I really felt stupid. The petcock on my fuel line has three settings: Run, Reserve, and Prime. Apparently, on both occasions, when I thought I was shifting from Reserve back to Run, I was in fact shifting to Prime. I just didn't pay attention to what I was doing. That meant there was a constant flow of gas seeping past the rings down into the crank case. That's why in both cases they found my crank case full of gas. And the machine doesn't run very well in that condition.

So come on. You love your bike, don't you? Well, then take the time to pay attention to her needs and try to understand her. She'll pay you back in kind either way. 

Motorcycling lessons learned

#1 - Have riding buddies
#2 - Signal your intentions
#3 - Ride your own ride
#4 - Don't hesitate to ride alone
#5 - Carry proper gear
#6 - Know your bike
#7 - Get training
#8 - Assume you're invisible
#9 - Take your time
#10 - Explore
#11 - Be opportunistic
#12 - Know how to pick up your motorcycle