How to maintain your motorcycle

Again, get the missus kids, get you get your mates, get all your mates, just load them up on the back and what you want to do is squat the rear until... Welcome back. Based on the last video it seems a lot of you could do with a bit of a confidence boost to even get some tools out and work on your bike. Setting it up is one thing, but just having the confidence to put a tool to your bike. Straight into one of the more misunderstood and possibly the most important two bolts on the front end of your bike, and that's the pinch bolts on the fork leg. And where a lot of people can get these wrong, it's not so much tightening, under tightening, over tightening, it's actually ensuring that the the inner fork leg is in its most relaxed central position. Right, look at how much this can float. Look, look at the difference in position that that fork leg could end up at. You should check this. If you've just had a new tire put on your bike from the local bike shop, you owe it to yourself to check this. Because they've had little Johnny Apprentice, Friday Arvo, he's in a rush. He's just thinking about, you know, what pickup line he's going to pull on the ticket, the drive-thru at Maccas. He's not, he doesn't care about the action of your fork. So a quick way to sort this out is just get, undo the bolts first, get a little flathead screwdriver, just gently tap it in, very gently, and you can see how free that fork is now. And the best way to centralize it, to ensure that that center axis, because what you don't, what you don't want happening is the bushes binding in the fork. You want that to telescope perfectly true, and not go in at an angle, or try to go in at an angle. You're just wearing stuff out. Tap your little flathead in there, grab the front brake, and just compress your front end. Compress it a few times. So what that's actually doing is, as the, as the inner fork is telescoping, it's separating the distance of the two bushes. And the further those two bushes are apart, the more central the foot of your fork leg will end up. Right, so as it relaxes back, it's on a true perfect plane. Pull your screwdriver out, pinch bolts, a very important one with pinch bolts. Don't just do one all the way up, and then go across, and do the other one all the way up. Because what you'll find is, you know, watch this. I do that one up really tight. This one, it, look, this one is now loose. I had that tight. So what you want to do is, start even, just eye up the gap in the actual clamp, and just do quarter of a turn, quarter of a turn, quarter, not even a quarter of a turn, eighth of a turn, eighth of a turn, and just by hand with a t-bar, boom, boom, or a little spanner. We don't all have torque wrenches on hand. Just the length of a 10mm spanner, by hand, is plenty of torque. But the main thing is to get them even. Because you think you've done up both, and in over tightening one, you'll just loosen the other. Right, that's it. Your front end's good to go. Just keep an eye on where the axle sits after you've done that little centering process. Because then you'll always know. You'll pick it. You'll pick it on your mate's bike. It's like, oh, your axle's poking through. That fork must be terrible. It is actually. Okay, next in line, triple clamp bolts. And the most important thing you can do with these suckers, is loosen them after a fall. The best thing you can do is, after a crash, and your wheel's not straight, is back these off. Okay, if you just crack these. Okay, just crack them. Just leave a little bit of tension on the very top one, and that'll stop your whole front end going through the fork. Nine times out of ten, when you crack those, the wheel will center itself pretty close. The rest, you just grip it with your knees and turn. Look at how much movement that is. Can you see all that movement, and the wheel's not even moving? But the fork legs are doing this, and they can do it, because they're allowed to turn in the clamp. All right, so that's the best way to center your front end, is to track. And you know, you can do this on the side of the track. You can check it most of the time by looking down. You can see the fork legs, see your axle. The best way is when you're riding here over the front. I'm happy with that. When you're in the bush, just nip things up. You'll get this feel, like there's not much leverage there. Okay, so I'm not over tightening anything. You don't want to over tighten anything, but that will let me finish the day's ride, and then get your torque wrench out in the shed at home. Now, I just, this is really important, because a lot of people get this so wrong, and in trying to achieve enough pressure to hold the bars in position, if you're not aware of the actual profile of the bar clamp itself, you can put huge stress on the bolts and the clamp, and not even get the desired clamping effect. Now, let me just explain what I'm talking about. The majority of pretty much every good bar clamp available, now you need to look at this. It's pretty obvious, really obvious with the T7, but some of these clamps are a lot less obvious. Look at the thickness of, let's just call it the platform, this end, and let's call this end the clamping side. There's a big difference. So, that platform end, I always put it to the top. There's a little dot. I just put the dot to the top. Always put that one in first. In doing it this way, it doesn't need huge pressure. Okay, so you can literally just nip it, just a nip. It's like that. Done. Now, the clamping. This is where the power comes into it, because you have the spring tension of that clamp perfectly going around the bar now, and it can close this gap, and it doesn't have to be much. Now, you've got it. About four of those little, here, the aluminium bind. I do about four of those, and again, look, look at my leverage. It's not much, so I'm not going to overdo it or snap anything. Done. Same thing again with the brake. Exactly the same concept. Okay, I would be inclined, check all this, because some people are heavy-handed at, you know, dealerships, bike assembly. Just back it all off, so you can, you know, you want to be able to move that. Do up the top one, which is your platform, let's call it. So, lock that off with a little nip, and then the actual clamp, I'm just going to go one, two. That's it, because ultimately, you want to be able to move it. See that? I can actually move it. That's an ideal tension, because it's never going to move while you're riding, but if you bin it, you've got a lot less chance of snapping your lever, and the main thing, you've got a lot less chance of breaking your master cylinder. That's big bucks. This is a really important one, and something that I reckon a lot of people wouldn't be aware of, and that is de-stressing a system. What I'm talking about de-stressing is actually, there's an order in to alleviate the stress, and the loading, and prevent cracking. The difference between that bike, and that bike, this one cracked its exhaust in a thousand k's, this one hasn't cracked after ten thousand k's, and I guarantee, the main reason is because of the way it was done up. Let me explain something. The most important part of your exhaust is sealing at the headers, so the headers are priority. The two header flanges in there, there's four bolts. Before anything else is done up, or touched, you want to do those up, and let those header pipes relax against the cylinder perfectly. What you can do to ensure that the whole system has been, you know, relaxed, and not been bound under tension. So what you want to do when you're mounting the muffler, is get it on, line up the bolt, get that bolt started, once you get that lined up, start it. Just run it, get the whole system warmed, that's loose, that's loose, but in. As you've run it, you've got it hot, it's relaxed in its position, it's rattled, it's revved, it's exactly where it wants to be, then you lock off the clamp. You want to, you want to bind that as one, and once that is bound and relaxed in its position, finish off by doing up the muffler bolt. So that's your priority. Headers, clamp, muffler bolt. If this has just been thrown together, like quick bolted up, makes it, oh quick, oh you forgot to do up the headers, do them up, something's going to crack. You're either going to crack the header at the top there, or you're going to crack a mount here, or it's going to crack around the hottest point there. So longevity of your components can be determined by how, in which order, they've been bolted up. Now what you have to understand with chain tension, is this. The only reason we need it, is because the swing arm pivot is independent of the counter shaft sprocket. Okay, and so as the rear wheel travels through its arc, it's changing the tension of the chain relative to these two axes. Let's just draw an imaginary line. Okay, we've got the counter shaft sprocket, the swing arm pivot, and the rear axle. When they are all on the same axis, that is the longest distance between the two points. Okay, between the counter shaft and the rear axle, and that is where your tension is at its most tightest. And the reason you need slack in the chain, is to ensure that as the rear axle, as the sprocket passes through that center line, there's enough slack there, so the chain doesn't just go snap. If you've over tightened your chain, while the sprocket's in the relaxed position, that's fine, you can ride off. But as soon as you hit a jump, and land, or compress the shock, you are going to put unbelievable loads on the chain, counter shaft sprocket, gearbox bearings, everything. It's destructive. So, if you don't know what your chain tension's meant to be, if you don't trust old mate down the road, or you've just had so much misinformation to suit your bike, this is the one method that will clear everything. We just get a ratchet strap, find a little clean path that you're not going to damage anything. What I'm achieving with this ratchet strap, is simply squatting the rear. So, again, get the missus kids, get you, get your mates, get all your mates, just load them up on the back, and what you want to do, is squat the rear, until that is all on the same axis. The rear axle, the swing arm pivot, and the front sprocket, are all on the same line, the dead straight axis. So, just compress the rear, that there, is the exact axis, right? So, it's at that point, you, I can now go ahead and adjust my chain to whatever tension I like, and now that I've got it at that point, I can see that my chain needs adjusting, it's super loose. I can, I can literally tighten that more to almost a bar tight, knowing that it'll never go any tighter. It's always good, at that most extreme axis, for off-road riding, to have at least, you know, 10 to 15 mm of play in the chain, just for mud. If you don't have enough free play there, even at that point, if this chain gets covered in mud, and you're pushing through, you know, real conditions, sand even, sand is just getting in there when you're riding in sand, you'll massively, it, the chain will just stretch until it gets, until all the tension's gone. So, you might as well have it adjusted to the right tension. So, that's, I can, I can adjust that a bit more, but there you go. Going up, it gets looser, going back, it gets looser, but as it, as it passes through that perfectly center axis, that's when your chain's at its tightest point, and that's what you need to adjust slack for. It's really hard, if you can't afford, for every move you make, to take your bike to a dealership, and you're at the mercy of whatever they charge, to do whatever they do. And a lot of the stuff, you can really just do by yourself, and learn to do it, and learn to, to look for the things that are wearing out, coming loose. Preventative maintenance, you know, like, grab a beer, grab a glass of red, just get a few tools, and just tinker with some stuff. Adjust some things. It's not that intimidating. They're built very logically, very cleverly, um, and you know, once you get a feel, just, just start with, take your seat off, and have a look. You can't, you're not going to damage the bike by taking the seat on and off. Just take it off, adjust your bars, look at my previous videos, um, tinker, you know, and you'll, the more, it just all comes back to that familiarity with your machine. Uh, and if you're, you know, if you're an off-road rider, an adventure bike rider, you should know this. There is a bare minimum that you need to know, because even if you're not camping, or whatever, you are going between two points, where you're going to be remote. And if you've got a little bit of know-how and confidence to work on your bike, you'll go even more remote, you know. One thing feeds the other. Um, you've bought the bike, make it yours. Uh, sure, if you've got the money and you can't be bothered, take it to the dealership, but just know that they're not always that good, you know. Like, they're rushing, they're under pressure, they got, they gotta make money. So, the easy jobs, they're just churning them out. They're not caring about your bike, your pride and joy, like you can. Do you know where the subscribe button is? Uh, there should be a join button too, if you've got a few bucks extra a month, you want to support the channel and help me start to do, get closer to doing this full-time. But, um, for now, yeah, I'm doing what I can to keep the uploads happening once a week. Cheers.