When You Ride, You Must Also Fix
A while ago it dawned on me that I have 100% faith in my car, even though it was made by General Motors. In almost 100,000 miles and 12 years of driving, it's only left me stranded once and I managed to jury-rig a solution to get myself home without any problems. My bike has never left me stranded, but probably that's because I don't take it out very often and that's definitely because I don't have 100% faith in its reliability.
If I had money, then I'd have a BMW-trained motorcycle mechanic on speed dial, but because I am "very cheap" and "very handy", I do all sorts of maintenance myself. I've done a bunch of bike-related maintenance in the 6 years that I've had it, but never got around to documenting it like I do for my car. It may prove to be wishful thinking, but hopefully a list will keep me on type of whatever maintenance "the old girl" needs.
Oh, one good thing about being up to date on maintenance: I discovered that the charging cord for my battery tender had a screw inside that had come loose. The result was that the charger was, in fact, not charging because of a poor contact. Such a pain. Now that I've reconnected that screw, the flat battery and hard starting problems I had before have gone.
| Date | Miles | Maintenance Done |
| 7/25/2010 | 18,222 | Engine oil and filter change |
| 10/28/2009 | 16,876 | Fork oil changed Spark plug changed |
| 10/12/2009 | 16,873 | Antifreeze topped off Battery refilled with DI water Chain tension adjusted Engine oil and filter changed Chain guard degreased and loctited into place Air filter replaced |
Other projects I've done, but don't recall when:
Sunday, May 15, 2011 12:57:54 PM