Redmond gives us the run-down on his ideal maintenance guide.
Each month when I groove into the newsagent to grab the new issue of ADB I promise myself that this will be the edition I will read the maintenance tips and attempt to preform one of them.
I am terrible at bike maintenance I tend to let things break or fall off, a more of a wholistic approach if you will (what ever that means?) I would like ADB to have a anti-maintenance article instead.
The things that magazines and tech guys do not talk about or publish are things like ‘what you can get away with’, ‘What does not need to be done’ and my favourite ‘ignore it’, unless the flames are burning your goggles it is not really a problem.
Things like riding one gear higher on a big four-stroke because the airfilter has not been cleaned for three rides. Or oil change by odds and evens (year). Or how to ride dry mud off your bike (seek rail line with sleeper or cattle grid)
Bike maintenance is best done by ear. It’s like the television, the picture is better on the radio.
Chain sag is probably the most over serviced part of a modern dirtbike. Adjusting by mm and rider on rider off sounds like wiring up the switchboard at NASA. Chain adjustment has only one rule. If chain is noisier than engine adjust it. The same rule applies to tappets. If tappets louder than exhaust, adjust.
I am crushed, gutted, angry and on edge during the year that I preform the oil change. I have to go into the dealer for oil AND filter then I dig out the mud to find where sump plug goes. It’s days like this, spending minutes under the bike that I wonder why I do it and feel like all this drama is not really worth it.
20 god-damn minutes of mind-numbing and sprit-crushing oily mess and I feel like ringing the 1800 beyondblue depression hotline and lamenting my woes.
I suffer great personal trauma at service time. I really would like to be better at looking after my bike. Washing a bike is a totally mystery to me and I hope that the tips in ABD mag just happen to be that very subject when I finally bravely charge into that section of the mag. I fully intend to wash my bike late this year (before xmas) or early next year or the year after that.
None of your maintenance tips deal with the success of avoiding maintenance. How about using a snap-on 38 piece excuse kit?
- Wrong tool
- Too busy
- Not broken, do not fix
- Not my Dads tractor
- Bike shops fault
- Next time.
- Lunch time
- And many other hard wearing durable and shiny excuses.
Now, I am a Queenslander so I do not wash my ute, my dog or my dirtbike. I do not like washing stuff. It seems a bit counter productive. I could wash my bike and put it on my washed ute with my freshly washed dog and drive down to Sydney, the inner city and rent us a one-bedroom studio loft appartment and park the clean ute and clean KTM and clean Hound in the apartment and watch Glee…..
Next Sunday morn when you get up to sort out your ride try this below.
Slice 2 medium mushroom and lightly sauté in butter. Poach couple of eggs in water with a dash of vinigar. Sauté a hand full of baby spinach. Toast a slice of sourdough. Put eggs on toast. Mushy in front and spinach on top. Eat your breakfast with a cup of tea. Then go riding. No blue goo fingers from airfilter service. No tyre pressure Olympic event to get pressure correct. No oil change no bar adjustment. No chain lube. Just eggs on toast…