How you doing everybody? I hope you had a good week. Once again I want to thank you for stopping by my channel and checking out my videos. On today's video I'm going to go over the basics of motorcycle maintenance.
Now I'm not going to explain all the tools and the technicalities and do any any kind of walkthrough or how-tos on this one. I'm just going to explain the basics of everything. So stick around, roll the intro, and we'll be right back.
So what is basic motorcycle maintenance? Well, basic motorcycle maintenance is something that you should be doing probably every week or two, depending on which part of the bike you're talking about, just to maintain your motorcycle and make sure it's in good proper working condition. Not only is that very important for the condition of the bike, but it's also very important to your safety.
Do a visual inspection of your tires just to make sure that there's no cracks in them, there's no cuts in them, there's no screws sticking out, no nails sticking out, or any other holes or anything else like that that's going to cause your tire to go flat. And that's something you want to do before each and every ride. Also, make sure that the depth of the tread on your tires is good.
You can do that by taking a penny, turning it upside down so that Abraham Lincoln's head is facing down, and stick it in between the tread of the tires. And if you can see the top of his head that means it's time to start thinking about replacing the tires on your motorcycle. Now if you do a lot of commuting on your motorcycle you're going to notice that the center of your tire is going to wear down a lot quicker than the side portions of your tire.
That's pretty normal especially if you do a lot of commuting on your motorcycle on city streets and you don't do a lot of time cornering at higher speeds. So when you check your tread depth on your tire make sure you do it on the center portion of the tire not the side. Check your bike's tire pressure at least once a week, especially when the weather starts turning colder.
I just checked the tire pressure on this bike not one week ago, and yet I came out here this morning to do it again, and I had lost 4 pounds of pressure in these little tires because of the temperature drop outside. So just be sure and make sure that your tire pressure is always good, especially with a lot of temperature fluctuation. So what's the proper tire pressure for your motorcycle?
Well, I can't tell you that. All bikes are different. You'll either find that information in your owner's manual or somewhere near the back of the bike. A lot of bikes have them a little sticker on the swing arm itself or on the chain guard.
This little bike right here has a sticker right there on the chain guard that states what the drive chain slack has to be and it also states what the tire pressure needs to be. For this little bike it's 29 psi front and back. Now speaking of motorcycle chains, let's talk about maintaining that. Do a visual inspection of your chain just to make sure that there's nothing wrong with it. You're also going to want to check and make sure that it's lubed properly and adjusted properly.
Now once again a lot of bikes are different from one to another so you're going to have to refer to either your owner's manual or that little sticker on your your swing arm or your chain cover or something like that to give you the proper specs as to how much tension it needs to be in the chain. This little motorcycle calls for one and three-eighths inch worth of free play on the chain itself. So here's where you want to check that free play. Right there halfway between the rear sprocket and the front sprocket. Now a lot of motorcycles are different depending on which ones you have.
On this bike right here this uses this type of chain adjusters on it and then in order to adjust the chain you're going to use these bolts at the back of the swing arm right there. Either turn them in or turn them out depending on which way you want to adjust the chain. Just make sure that there is weight on the back tire of the motorcycle itself when you adjust the chain tension. Now if you're not good at eyeballing things you can use a tape measure on the bottom there just to check it and make sure that it's correct.
Also you want to keep your chain nice, clean, and lubed. If you do a lot of city riding there's not much chance of you getting a lot of mud and dirt and debris and everything else up in your chain. I myself don't ride through a lot of mud puddles, nor do I ever take my bikes off-road.
So for me maintaining my chains is a pretty simple job. So in order to clean your chain you can find online all over the place there's what's called a motorcycle chain brush tool and you can use one of those things to just kind of brush all the dirt and the debris and everything else out of the chain. There are several different cleaning products that you can use to clean your chain. I've heard of a lot of guys using like WD-40, some kerosene and a bunch of other stuff.
Personally, I don't want to use any sort of cleaner on my chain because well number one, I've never really gotten one that dirty to need. that stuff like that but there's so many differing opinions online about what chain cleaners are good and what chain cleaners are bad i just don't know which who's advice to take so i basically just use the brush itself to knock any dirt and debris off of the chain before i lube it up now speaking of chain lube there are a lot of different products on the market also that you can use to uh to lube your motorcycle chain that's all personal preference you're going to have to do some research on your own and figure out what what the best type of chain lube that you're going to want to use on your bike There are positives and negatives to almost every single type of chain lube out there. All right, next let's talk about oil maintenance.
You should be doing regularly scheduled oil changes on your bike as per the manual that came with your bike, or you can look it up online and see when they're required to be done. I myself like to follow the guidelines as stated in the manual that comes with every bike that I've ever bought. One bike that I bought didn't come with one because of the 2006 Honda Shadow. So I just had to look up online real quick and see what the regular oil change intervals were.
And I just went by that. Now some bikes come with an oil level sight plug as you're seeing right here on this motorcycle. This is my Kawasaki Vulcan.
It has a sight plug on the side of it right there. And some bikes come with dipsticks as seen on this little Z125. Now when checking your oil level. If you're using a sight plug, such as on this motorcycle, or if you have a bike with a dipstick, you want to do it with the motorcycle standing upright, not leaning over on its side stand. If you check it while it's leaning over on its side stand, you're going to get a false reading, it's going to read too low, which might lead to you adding too much oil to the engine.
So you can go ahead and stand your motorcycle up to get a proper reading on your oil level. Now you can either do this yourself by putting something underneath the kickstand, to make the motorcycle sit level but just be careful when you do that because the motorcycle could fall over if you have it standing up too too far or you can get somebody to help you out with it and come out in your garage or wherever your motorcycle's at and just sit on the bike and just hold it upright while you check the level. Now for those of you with motorcycles that have dipsticks the procedure for checking your oil level is pretty much the same thing.
Stand the bike up straight pull the dipstick out wipe it off stick it back in there hold it there for a second pull it back out and check the oil level on the dipstick. Now when you check the engine oil level, you want to do it with the engine cold. Because if you do it after you just got back from a ride or the engine's been running for a little while, and if you check it right after you've been riding the motorcycle, you're also going to get a false reading on the engine oil level. Because some of that fluid's going to be up there in the engine in the oil passages and just mixed around inside with the engine itself. Also on another note, I would recommend changing your oil in your motorcycle once a year.
It doesn't matter if you've gotten to that engine oil changing interval. Like say your manual doesn't call for it to have it to be done until 4,000 miles, but you only put 2,000 miles or even 3,000 miles on your bike during the season, go ahead and change it once a year. Motorcycle oil isn't all that expensive, so just go ahead and do it. Now here's a little trick that I use in order to properly check my motorcycle oil levels. Since I don't always have somebody that can come out in the garage and sit on my bike for me so I can check it, what I've done is brought this little piece of 2x4 home from work.
And what I do is I take this and I stick it underneath the kickstand and that will basically hold the bike up level While I check the oil so if you're anywhere near a construction site somewhere You can even just stop by and ask these guys Hey, man, you got a little scrap piece of 2x4 or something like that 99.9% of the time they're just gonna point you to the scrap pile and you can just walk right over there and grab a little Piece. Alright next let's talk about battery maintenance Batteries in motorcycles are relatively maintenance free, especially if you ride them on a regular basis. I will say this though, if you plan on leaving your bike sitting for more than a couple weeks, go ahead and invest in a battery tender.
These things are really cheap and they're very handy to have. Other than that, there's really not much to be said about maintaining the battery in your motorcycle. Next, let's talk about your brakes.
Before every ride you should be checking to make sure that your rotors aren't cracked and it looks like everything is in proper working condition. If you have a bike with rear brake drums on it, there's really not much you can do other than putting your foot on the brake pedal and testing and make sure it's still got good pressure in it. Another thing you need to do is take a look at your brake master cylinder for your front brake.
It has a little sight plug window on it right there. Just make sure it still has plenty of fluid in that little sight plug right there. If you notice the color of your brake fluid getting really dark, then it's time to flush your brakes. Next up, let's talk about your engine air filter.
On some bikes, these things can be a real pain in the butt to get to. So basically, consult your owner's manual to see how often those things need to be cleaned or replaced. Sometimes you might have to take your bike down to a dealership and have a certified mechanic get to these things, because sometimes they could be buried underneath the gas tank of your... of your motorcycle making it almost impossible for the average dude to get to it. Next up you want to make sure your headlights, your turn signals, and your tail lights are all working.
That's pretty self-explanatory. You can do that before each and every ride very easily. Well there you have it, my basic overview of motorcycle maintenance. I hope you enjoyed this week's video.
If you did go ahead and leave it a big fat thumbs up if you learned anything. If you didn't leave it a thumbs down, that's cool by me. Remember if you're not already subscribed go ahead and hit that subscribe button, tap that little bell notification thing because it really helps my channel out. Until next time everybody ride safe and have a good day.