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  Wear good latex gloves. This isn’t just to keep your hands pretty. We know for a fact that oil is a carcinogen, and you don’t want it to touch your skin.

  Run the engine for a short time to warm up the oil. This makes changing oil a potentially painful experience, but you’ll need the oil to be warm to flow freely out of the engine. Note that this will make your exhaust pipes extremely hot, so be careful not to touch them when you’re working on your bike.

  Locate the drain plug. The drain plug will be somewhere on the sump at the bottom of your motorcycle engine, or else on the bottom edge of one side. Once you’ve located it, place your catch pan under the plug. (If you have a dry sump with an external oil tank, like the one on a Harley Sportster, you’ll have to drain the oil tank instead of the sump.)

  Remove the plug. This is usually a large, hex-head bolt. Let the oil drain completely into the catch pan. Be careful when you remove the plug because the hot oil will pour out over your fingers. You’ll need to pull the plug away from the hole quickly once you’ve unscrewed it or you could burn your fingers. Be especially careful not to drop the plug into the catch pan or you’ll have to fish it out of a pan of hot, dirty oil.

  Clean and replace the drain plug once the oil has finished draining from the engine. Most drain plugs have magnetic tips that collect metal shavings from inside the engine. Clean all of this material off before replacing the plug. Some drain plugs have metal washers to enhance the plug’s seal. If your bike is so equipped, make certain you don’t lose this washer when removing the plug. Also make certain the area around the hole is clean and doesn’t have any dirt or debris that could get inside your engine or prevent the drain plug from forming a seal against the oil pan.

  Place the catch pan under the oil filter and remove it. You’ll want to change the filter every time you change oil, so consider that a normal part of changing oil. Older bikes use canister-type filters, which are elements that go inside a canister that’s permanently attached to the engine, but most modern motorcycles use automotive-type spin-on filters.

  Again, watch out for hot oil spraying down on your hand. The old filter will be filled with engine oil—dump this in the catch pan and properly dispose of the filter.

  Attach the new filter. Smear clean engine oil from the bottles you’re using to refill the engine sump onto the rubber seal attached to the top of the new filter, then screw it back on the engine. Only use your hands to tighten the filter—don’t use the filter wrench or you’ll get the filter so tight you may never be able to remove it again.

  Refill the oil. As mentioned earlier, different bikes use different methods for measuring the oil level. Make sure that you fill the oil tank to the top of the level using the measuring method specified for your bike. Once you’ve got it to the full mark, restart the engine to pump oil into the filter.

  Be careful when you are doing this. When you first start the engine, your oil system won’t be pressurized for the first couple seconds, so if you rev the engine, you could do permanent damage. Let the engine idle for a minute or two, then shut it down and recheck the oil. The oil level will have gone down by the amount that has been pumped into the filter. Refill the oil to the full mark.

  After you’ve changed your oil, keep an eye on the oil level and check for leaks around the drain plug and the filter the next few times you ride the bike, just in case something has gone wrong.

  MAINTAINING YOUR CHAIN

  I THINK I’VE MADE my feelings about chain drives clear throughout the book, but if your budget only allows you to buy a midpriced motorcycle, most likely you’ll have to settle for a chain-driven bike. That means you’ll have to deal with the hassle of maintaining a chain. And you’ll have to do this yourself because if you take it in to a shop to have the chain tightened, well, your bike will be in the shop all the time.

  Replacing chains and sprockets, on the other hand, is a huge job, one that you probably will want to leave to a trained mechanic unless you’re fairly skilled. The chores you’ll handle yourself will be cleaning, lubricating, and tightening the tension of your chain.

  Chains are expensive so you’ll want to make them last as long as possible. This means you’ll want to keep them clean and well lubricated. Most modern chains have internal lubrication permanently sealed in place with rubber O-rings. This makes the chains last longer, but it also means that you have to be careful what kind of products you use on them, since some chemicals will degrade the O-rings. This means you should not use WD-40. WD-40 is an excellent product for its intended use, but it is a penetrating lubricant used to loosen up things like tight bolts. WD-40 will penetrate the O-rings, destroying their seals. To clean the grime off your chain, only use an O-ring compatible cleaner and a soft brush.

  Lubricate the chain with one of the many excellent chain lubricants on the market. I’ve heard good things about both Bel-Ray and PJ1 brands. Lubricating the chain is best done while the motorcycle is up on the center stand or up on a good support stand like a Pit Bull. When you apply the lubricant, aim the spray from the can at the inside of the chain, just ahead of the rear sprocket, while rotating the wheel forward to evenly coat the chain. This will not only lubricate the chain but also the rear sprocket, which is exposed and needs better lubricant coverage than does the front sprocket, which is covered and somewhat protected from dirt and debris. When you’ve lubricated the entire chain, clean the excess lubricant off the wheel and tire.

  Ideally you’ll want to check your chain’s tension while someone is sitting aboard your bike, holding it up but putting his or her weight on the suspension so that the springs are compressed. It would be best if the person weighed as close as possible to your weight. This will put your suspension at the angle at which it will be when you’re riding and will give you the most accurate reading of your chain’s tension. I say this because the distance between the front and rear sprockets changes as the angle between the swingarm and the engine changes. This change in distance is extremely slight, but it can be enough to affect the tension of the chain. Checking the tension with the swingarm at the proper angle can help prevent you from overtightening your chain; overtightening is the main killer of chains.

  To check the tension, grasp the chain on the underside of the swingarm about halfway between the front and rear sprockets and move the chain up and down. If the chain moves up and down more than about an inch and a half or two inches, it needs to be tightened. Check in several different spots on the chain by rolling the bike ahead and rechecking the tension. If the amount of chain movement varies from place to place, the chain may have a tight spot. If the tight spot is bad enough, you’ll have to replace the chain. A tight spot is simply a spot where the chain is stiff and doesn’t bend on its roller pins. Note that a “tight spot” is different than having a chain that is too tight.

  The chain-tightening procedure varies from bike to bike, but most chain-driven motorcycles will use some form of the following method to adjust chain tension. Place the bike on its center stand or on the portable stand you’ve purchased and recheck the chain’s tension. It will have changed from when you checked it while the suspension was weighted because the distance between the front and rear sprocket will have changed. It will feel looser than it did while the other person was sitting on the bike. If it moved an inch and a half while the suspension was weighted, it might move three inches when the suspension is unweighted.

  Take this into account when adjusting the chain so you don’t overtighten it. If you gained an inch and a half of chain travel by putting the bike on the stand and then tighten the chain down to an appropriate three-quarters of an inch of travel, your chain will be stretched as tight as a funeral drum when you get back on your bike. This will stretch your chain and drastically decrease its life span. Overtightening to this degree may even cause your chain to break and shoot off the back of your sprocket like a missile.

  To prevent this catastrophe, add the amount of chain travel you gained when you put the bike up on the stand
to the three-quarters of an inch you need for proper operation. If you gained an inch and a half of travel when you put the bike up on the stand, don’t tighten your chain beyond two to two and a quarter inches of travel. This should put you right in the half inch to three-quarters of an inch of travel that you need when you get back on the bike.

  Next, loosen the axle nuts. You will have to remove a security pin on most bikes when loosening the axle nuts. Once the axle nuts are removed, you can adjust the chain. You do this by adjusting bolts on the end of the swingarm on either side of the wheel. Usually there will be two hex-head nuts on each bolt—an inner nut to move the axle and an outer nut to lock the inner nut in place when the job is done. Loosen up the outer nut and then carefully adjust the inner nut, moving the nut on one side of the wheel a small amount, then moving the other nut an equal amount. If you don’t move the bolts on each side the exact same amount, your back tire will get out of alignment with your front tire. When you’ve got the tension set to the proper amount, tighten down the outside nuts to lock the inner nuts in place. Retighten the axle bolts and insert a new security pin.

  TOURING

  FROM THE FIRST TIME I got on a motorcycle, I had the urge to take off and keep on riding. I still do. I like riding everywhere—to the store, to the gym, wherever—but there’s nothing I enjoy as much as hitting the open road for a long trip. I hope you’ll share my enthusiasm for long-distance riding.

  You can travel on any bike you own, if it is reliable. Some bikes make better touring rides than others, but ultimately the best bike for a tour is the one sitting in your garage, because that’s what you’ve got available. You might as well make the most of it. If you’ve followed my advice, you’ve bought a bike that is comfortable. If that’s the case, the only real functional issues you’ll have to deal with are luggage capacity and fuel range.

  Having a bike with too small a gas tank can be a real hindrance to successful touring. Most bikes available today have at least sufficient fuel capacity to prevent you from being stranded between gas stops, but that wasn’t always the case. For many years Harley-Davidson Sportsters had notoriously small gas tanks. This was such a serious problem that you didn’t want to head out of town by yourself on a Sportster for fear of running out of gas and being stranded. Today’s Sportsters still have small tanks that make them poorly suited for long-distance travel, but at least they’re large enough for you to make it to the next gas station without running out of fuel most of the time. (There have been other bikes with such small fuel tanks that they have been all but impossible to use for touring, including Kawasaki’s Eliminator of the mid-1980s and Honda’s Superhawk of the late 1990s, but most of the bikes on the market today have fuel capacity that is at least adequate.)

  You can’t do much about your bike’s fuel capacity without radical modification, but you can alter your bike’s luggage capacity without too much trouble. Lots of luggage options are available that will work on almost any motorcycle. The trick is to equip your bike with luggage that stays securely fastened and doesn’t rub against your tires or belt or chain.

  If you’ve bought a bike equipped with saddlebags, you’re already three-quarters of the way to having all the luggage capacity you’ll need. If you have a touring bike, you might even have a top box or trunk on the back. If you like the hard luggage found on a touring bike, you may be able to buy optional hard luggage specifically for your bike, either from the manufacturer or from an aftermarket company like Givi or Corbin. This is the best way to go, but it’s also an expensive route and will probably require you to put your motorcycle in a shop for a day or two while the luggage is installed.

  If you don’t have the money, time, or patience to go this route, you can mount soft luggage. There are three basic pieces of soft luggage:

  Saddlebags. These are bags that you put over the rear portion of your seat and ride outboard of the rear wheel, one on each side of the bike. These are usually your primary piece of luggage.

  Tankbags. These are bags that mount on top of your tank. They can hold a lot of items and provide the easiest access for a rider in the saddle. They make great places to store items you frequently need while riding, like cameras, sunscreen, bottled water, and fluid and soft rags for cleaning your face shield. Plus they’re handy for storing articles of clothing you might remove as the temperature warms up during the day, like sweatshirts and heavy gloves.

  Tailpacks. These mount on the passenger portion of your seat and can greatly increase your luggage capacity, making them invaluable for long trips. The best of these will have built-in bungee cords so you can securely attach them to your bike.

  Soft removable saddlebags can be made of leather, vinyl, or heavy nylon. Tankbags and tailpacks are almost always made of heavy nylon, though some have hard plastic shells. Soft luggage has its drawbacks. It’s not lockable, like hard luggage, and you have to be careful to mount the pieces securely so they don’t move around and rub your tires or fall off. Removable soft luggage also isn’t rainproof, meaning that you’ll have to pack your stuff in heavy garbage bags before you put it in the luggage, but it has the advantages of being inexpensive and easily removed when you are done traveling.

  PACKING FOR A TRIP

  ALMOST EVERY PERSON WHO takes his or her first motorcycle trip makes the same mistake: packing too much gear. You’ll overload your luggage with stuff that you won’t even unpack until you get back home. Everyone with any touring experience will warn you not to do this, but you’ll do it anyway because you’ll be worried that you’ll need this or that item but won’t have it.

  Really, you only need a few items for a safe, comfortable trip. Bring the small tool kit I told you about earlier in this chapter, of course. Bring a first-aid kit, too. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but should include the following basic items:

  A selection of bandages, including gauze bandages

  Adhesive tape

  Some sort of antibiotic

  If you have room to add a few more items, you should try to fit them in. Your first-aid kit isn’t the place to save weight.

  Apply the less-is-more philosophy in spades when it comes to your clothes. Bring a couple of pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, a couple of turtleneck sweaters (turtleneck sweaters are great in cold weather because they make a nice seal between your jacket and your helmet). Bring enough underwear and socks to last you the duration of your trip (underwear and socks don’t take up much space). That about covers it. As long as you have clean underwear and socks, you can get by in most situations.

  Traveling on a motorcycle is one of the most rewarding activities in which you can ever engage. It is also one of the most grueling. Spending a long day in the saddle takes the piss right out of you. You’re going to have to prepare your body as much as you prepare your gear and your bike.

  I recommend starting an exercise regime before going on a motorcycle trip. This will help build up your stamina and endurance. And get in the habit of eating a healthy diet. This will be hard to keep up when you’re out on the road, eating in restaurants every day, but if you make smart choices, you can keep your energy level high. The most important thing is to drink enough water. If you just drink soda or coffee, the caffeine in those drinks depletes your body’s water supply. Get in the habit of drinking a bottle of water each time you stop for gas.

  PLANNING A TRIP

  WHEN YOU PLAN YOUR first trip, you’ll probably spend weeks, or even months poring over maps, plotting your route. Chances are that you will have fun, but the odds are just as good that you’ll bite off more than you can chew. Most people underestimate how much time their trips will take, which leads them to rush to make up time. If you fall into this trap, you’ll miss seeing a lot of the things you wanted to see in the first place. Plus you’ll be anxious and won’t be able to relax and enjoy the trip itself.

  The trick for avoiding this pitfall is to be realistic when planning your trip in the first place. If your route will take you across South Dakota or some
other state where the interstate speed limit is 75 miles per hour, don’t expect to cover seventy-five miles for every hour you’re out on your bike, even if you’re riding at 80 miles per hour or faster. You need to factor in things like gas stops, rest stops, and getting stuck behind the occasional semi. At best, you’ll probably average 60 miles per hour.

  As you become more experienced, your average speed will increase, but not by much. If you’re riding two-up or riding with a group of bikes, you’ll probably average even slower. When you’re with a group of bikers, rest stops take longer because more people are using the available bathrooms, gas stops take longer because more tanks need to be filled, and riding itself takes longer because not everyone travels at the same speed. Ultimately you’ll only travel as fast as the slowest rider in the group.

  Thus if you plan to spend eight hours traveling by yourself on a freeway (which is a long time to be droning down a long, straight interstate highway), don’t expect to cover more than four hundred miles that day. And you won’t be able to make up time by speeding because those few minutes you might gain by riding faster will be more than lost by the half hour or more that you’ll sit alongside the road while the state trooper calls in your license information and writes your expensive speeding ticket.

  If you’re riding on two-lane highways, you can knock your average speed down to 50 miles per hour because the speed limits will be lower and you’ll spend more time being cock blocked by traffic. If you get into the mountains where the roads turn twisty and the scenic beauty beckons you to stop and take photos, figure that at best you’ll cover thirty to forty miles every hour, and less if you’re with a group of other bikers. You could push yourself and not stop to enjoy the scenery, but that defeats the purpose of being there on a motorcycle in the first place. It’s better to take your time and enjoy your trip than to turn it into the Bataan Death March.