a few weeks ago i bought this this is a 2016 honda africa twin with 25 000 miles on it now don't worry i'm gonna have videos on why i bought it how i intend to use it and sort of giving you a review of the bike so since i got this bike home in my garage i've been going through it from top to bottom making sure that it's up to my standards doing some maintenance and just getting it ready for how i want to use it and making sure it's safe to ride so in the process of doing that i realized well of course why don't i make a video about everything you should do once you purchased a used bike whether you purchased it from a dealership or a private party obviously used motorcycles are a great way to save money i know it's nerve-racking buying a used bike you don't know quite how it was used and i am going to have a video on how to purchase a used bike how to negotiate what to look for how to deal with the title and all those sorts of things but that's going to be a separate video coming soon so please subscribe for that everyone my name is ian and you're watching big rock media i'm an independent content creator focusing on motorcycles and other outdoor sports i do all my own scripting filming editing publication and promotion for all my videos youtube is my full-time job and if you'd like to support the creation of more content like this there's a few easy things you can do you can subscribe and hit the bell for notifications you can give a thumbs up to all the videos you can always leave comments and please give me feedback also about what kind of videos you'd like to see next you can also support me on patreon because patreon supporters enjoy access to exclusive video content that no one else gets thank you for watching and now back to your video i've been riding since i was like 12 years old and in that time i've bought and sold around 30 different motorcycles so i have a lot of experience buying and selling used bikes cleaning up old bikes restoring them it's something i enjoy doing so what i want to do today is take you through all the things you need to do right away once you buy a used motorcycle to make sure that it's safe to ride so whether you bought your used bike from a dealership or a private party i'm sure that they told you that oh it's been meticulously maintained it was owned by an aerospace engineer who changed oil every sunday and never took it off road well of course i'm sure that's all true right but the reality is that you don't really know exactly how the bike was treated or how the maintenance was from the previous owner so these are easy things you can do just to make sure that the bike is up to snuff and ready for your next adventure so let's just jump in and get started so the first thing that you want to check and i'm not really going to go in order of importance i'm just going to run through this list so the first thing are the tires so there's a few things on the tires i want you to look for how old are the tires so hopefully you asked the previous owner this if not that's okay you can actually read the date code from the side i'm not going to get into that right now but you can look that up on the internet so you can read the date code but i also want you to do a visual inspection so you're looking for tread make sure the tires still have adequate tread that they're not down to the wear bars but also very importantly check for things like cracks and check that the rubber is not too hard you can buy a rubber durometer or hardness meter but i think that's probably overkill basically just feel the rubber make sure it feels like a normal motorcycle tire would if the tires are very old what happens is they sometimes can rot and crack but also the rubber gets hard over time even if the bike has not been ridden at all if the tires are like five plus years old you're going to need to go ahead and replace those tires even if they have full tread because the tires are going to be too hard and hard rubber cannot grip the road which is unsafe so the next thing is check the braking system this is what's going to slow down your motorcycle it's obviously very very important so there's a few things on the brakes i want you to check first look at the brake rotors make sure you don't see huge like gouges in them make sure that if you test rode the bike or when you first ride the bike when you get it home make sure that you don't feel like a vibrating or pulsing when you brake that could indicate a warped rotor which often times is caused by age and heat and indicating those rotors might need to be replaced you can also measure the thickness of the rotor if you really really want and they have special instruments for that but we probably don't need to get into that now the other thing you want to look at is your brake pad so the pad material is what actually contacts the rotor and allows your bike to stop brakes simply turn forward momentum into heat energy by using friction you need to make sure that there's enough friction material left on the brake pads so you can take a flashlight you can look at your front or rear brake pads make sure that you see a good amount of friction material still in there if it looks like they're almost down to the metal backing then you need to order some brake pads thankfully they're cheap and fairly easy to replace one more thing on the braking system and this gets into the fluids on the bike but brakes use hydraulic fluid and hydraulic fluid is hygroscopic or it means it absorbs water from the atmosphere and as that brake fluid absorbs water it loses its ability to provide the hydraulic pressure it's also less resistant to changes in temperature and getting hot so you want to look at your brake fluid on both your front and rear brakes you can look in a little reservoir windows you might need to pop the cover off to take a look but make sure the brake fluid is fairly clear if you see a dark colored fluid in the brake reservoirs then that's a clear indication you need to get that brake fluid flushed and bled out as soon as you can also one note on that if your motorcycle has a hydraulic clutch so if it has a hydraulic reservoir over here make sure to check that hydraulic fluid as well usually that's going to be a brake fluid but sometimes it isn't so make sure but the same thing that i talked about the brake fluid goes for the hydraulic clutch fluid as well next thing that you need to check on your motorcycle is your drive train now there's really three main types of drive trains that we could be talking about let's cover chain drive first so on a chain drive bike there's a few things you want to look at you want to look at the sprockets and make sure you don't see teeth that are bent over and crooked or teeth that are really really sharp and thin that means they're worn out so check those sprockets try to ascertain how old they are maybe you asked the previous owner maybe not take a look at those they're fairly cheap and fairly easy to replace if you have to the replacement of chain and sprockets really needs to go together so in other words don't change the sprockets and then keep the old chain and don't put a new chain on without putting on new sprockets usually that's the rule of thumb i go by sometimes sprockets will last the life cycle of two or three chains but sometimes they don't so i usually recommend just changing out the whole drivetrain at once just to make sure everything is meshing is a nice new system now on the chain so there's a few things on the chain i want you to look for make sure the chain tension is set correctly so either on the swing arm there's a sticker that says how much tension it has to have or in the owner's manual which we're going to get to later but you need to read that it'll tell you how much tension you need to have on a chain so check that make sure that it has appropriate amount of tension adventure bikes and dual sport bikes tend to run a lot of chain tension because they have a long suspension travel and they need that chain to be able to move with the wheel street bikes sport bikes they typically have a lot less chain tension by design other thing you want to look for on the chain is that make sure look at the chain really closely with the flashlight put your glasses on whatever you need to do make sure there's not missing o-rings because if o-rings are missing that means that the lubrication has come out from inside those pins and it's not able to lubricate the other thing you need to check on the chain is that spin the chain uh make sure that be careful though don't get your finger in the chain in a sprocket that's a very bad day but make sure that there's no tight spots on the chain sometimes when chains gets old they wear they have developed tight spots and so it creates a very uneven wear on the sprockets in the chain and it's a very very bad thing and sometimes it gets so bad you can feel the whole motorcycle pulsating don't ask me how i know but make sure to check the tension at various spots along the travel of the chain to make sure there's no tight spots in it so that's very important if you have a belt final drive make sure that belt has the appropriate tension and make sure that the belt is not cracked and just kind of try to figure out how old it is and if you're in doubt just go ahead and replace that belt so what if you have a shaft final drive well shaft final drive usually there's a couple things going on there it's going to have a final drive fluid it's going to be a gear oil and you can swap that out pretty easily on most motorcycles the other thing is some motorcycles have splines where they engage the final drive into the rear wheel hub or engage into the transmission on some bikes you need to check and lubricate or grease those other bikes you don't so that's bike specific just something to look into for your specific bike so what about oil so engine oil is a very important thing to do so my rule of thumb is i don't care what the previous owner said or what the dealership said i just go ahead and change the oil that way i can make sure i'm putting in the oil that i want to use look up the spec for your bike see what weight oil it takes i highly recommend using a fully synthetic oil just my opinion and again make sure that it's the right specification and weight for your motorcycle go ahead and change that out also change the oil filter while you're at it because it's just a few bucks you can do all this in 10 20 minutes in your garage and with basic tools so something i definitely recommend doing because honestly the truth is you just don't know when that oil was changed even if the owner thinks they changed it recently okay so next up on my list is the fasteners so what i mean is that you need to go around the motorcycle and look at all the exposed fasteners that you can reach especially things that affect your control points your brake calipers the bolts holding on your handlebars the bolts holding on your wheels your axles right um things holding on your luggage racks your foot peg bolts your shifter bolt brake lever bolt all those things that could potentially come loose over the course of you know the life cycle of a used motorcycle you don't want things falling off on your ride it can be very very dangerous so go ahead and do a general fastener check over the whole motorcycle look for loose things and torque them down next up you need to readjust the controls to fit you to fit your riding gear your boots and your hands and your arm position so what do i mean well let's start up at the handlebars so on the handlebars first thing you want to do make sure that the clutch and brake levers are at the appropriate angle for you so if you're riding an adventure bike you can strike a balance between your standing in your sitting position to make sure that they're not putting your wrist at an awkward angle you can easily adjust your levers by loosening the bolt that holds the lever on the lever perch and moving that up and down re-tightening it so that's important also a lot of motorcycles have an adjustable reach that you can dial in on one or both levers and make sure that's comfortable for you people with large hands and long fingers tend to like more reach if you have smaller hands or maybe you're a woman rider you're going to want to have bring that lever in so you're not trying to you know extend out to try to reach that lever so that's important the other thing on the handlebars make sure that the a lot of times the previous owner will have either rotated the bars forward or back or done something stupid so make sure they're kind of in a nice neutral position that makes sense for you some people for a little bit lean back some people who stand a lot like to turn them forward a little bit on this bike i actually did go ahead and rotate them up forward so that when i'm standing i don't feel quite as awkward or quite as far back next up on the controls make sure that your shift lever is in the right position so when you take a test right on the bike okay and make sure that whatever boots you like to wear that you can comfortably up shift and downshift what i find is a lot of times when i buy a bike or ride someone else's bike is that i have to move the shift leather slightly up because i can't get my large motocross or adventure boot underneath that shift lever to get a proper up shift so sometimes i have to adjust things just a little bit there you can adjust these they're either going to have a um a style where you take the lever off and reposition it on the shaft and screw it back on or they're going to have an arrangement like this bike where you loosen two nuts and then rotate a rod it's going to lower or raise the shift lever and then you can tighten it down and you're good to go the other thing is the rear brake lever make sure that you can reach the rear brake lever with your foot in in a natural way that's comfortable for you both when you're sitting and when you're standing up if you're riding an off-road bike next up on my list is reset the suspension settings so if your bike has adjustable suspension which a lot of motorcycles do so whatever adjustments you have preload rebound damping compression damping go ahead and set those all to the factory standard specs so look in your owner's manual and if you don't have that just put them all to the middle setting so set your preload in the middle and set all of your valving settings your rebound and compression damping in the middle spec or to the standard spec that your owner manual specifies the reason for this is that the previous owner may have screwed up the suspension and you may be experiencing too soft override or too harsh of a ride when you ride the bike so make sure that you start at a baseline by having all that suspension leveled out then go ride the bike and make adjustments from there and yes i will have videos on how to adjust your suspension in later on next up on my list is lighting make sure that your turn signals your brake light your tail light or running light and your low beam and high beam headlight are all working properly this goes without saying it's a safety issue just something you want to check typically bulbs are cheap and easy to replace the exception to that is modern day motorcycles with led headlights hopefully those led headlights are lasting forever or practically forever if not then they can get pretty expensive to replace finally the last thing that i want to tell you to do is go ahead and find the owner's manual to your motorcycle if you don't have an owner's manual make sure you order one you can get it at your dealership or buy it online keep it under your seat with your insurance and registration paperwork but go ahead and read that motorcycle manual cover to cover because it talks about maintenance it talks about adjustments it talks about how to work your electronics how to set your dashboard all the things like that the first thing i do when i get a bike even if i'm testing a press bike that i get nowadays i actually read through the manual because i want to understand how the motorcycle works so that's something that i really recommend doing so those are the main most important things that i highly recommend you go through once you get a used bike home i know it may seem like overkill but in my opinion it really is not you need to baseline the motorcycle try to bring it back as close to factory specifications as you can now there's a few other things that i didn't mention in my main list that i want to bring up now one is after market mods so if your bike has a lot of aftermarket mods you want to go ahead and evaluate those and determine whether they're meeting your needs or making the bike worse for you you can take after market things off and replace them with stock parts if you have them but just check to make sure that whatever aftermarket is on the bike is is fastened appropriately and works for your needs and if not maybe consider removing it a few maintenance items which are not urgent but you might want to know when they were last done and maybe put on your schedule or budget to get them done valve inspections which vary widely from different motorcycles some motorcycles have hydraulic valves that never need to be checked some need to be checked all the time i'm looking at you ktm dirt bikes so anyway budget for that or know what that is and that's something you need to plan for either to do yourself or have the dealership do things like the air filter so the air filter if you ride a dual sport bike and adventure bike you probably want to change those out or clean those right when you get the bike if it's a street bike you can probably assume that it's not too dirty but try to figure out when it was last changed and if not if you don't know when it was last changed go ahead and change that out air filters are 10 20 bucks and typically pretty easy to change and of course other things to remember once you take home your nice new used motorcycle make sure you call or go online to update your insurance to add the motorcycle get an id card for that make sure that e-car id card's in your phone or under the seat with your registration also make sure you do the change of ownership get the title and the registration sorted out so you don't have any issues down the line a couple other things that i've just realized i didn't mention that may seem obvious but adjust your mirrors you can adjust your mirrors the this actual um pivot will move forward and back if you loosen the nut under here or and also adjust the angle to make sure you can see behind you and also of course i mentioned tires but check your air pressure make sure that you look at the air pressure listed on your swing arm or your motorcycle frame or go to your motorcycle owner's manual and make sure that they're set correctly that's very very important and i forgot to mention that earlier so let me know what you all think did i miss anything what do you like to do when you get a used bike let me know down below in the comments what you think i really appreciate your guys feedback on this so i hope this video was useful if it was please hit the thumbs up please subscribe and hit the bell please leave a comment and of course please consider supporting me on patreon if you want to support future motorcycle content like this thanks again for watching ride safe we'll see you on the trail okay give it the beans [Music] see the