Motorcycle Service Manual
By Tony B
Your
motorcycle comes with an owners manual. It covers very
basic things you can do to keep your bike up, with the most
important being the maintenance schedule. You should familiarize
yourself with the owners manual and carry it with you to service
small items that may happen when you are on the road.
But if you want to go beyond the basics, you need to buy the motorcycle service manual for your bike. The service manual is what your dealer uses when fixing your bike and it covers everything from changing the oil to taking apart the engine.
Although you
will not need everything in it, it will pay for itself the
first time you change your oil (easy) or do your first brake
job (very easy). With it, you can change your spark plugs,
change your coolant, adjust engine idle speed, wire your
GPS unit, lube your chassis and more. Just about all of the
items in the maintenance schedule you can do yourself if you
have the service manual. Also, the service manual will tell you
what special tools to use, if any.
Gone are the days
of paying a mechanic $250.00 for a brake job or $150.00 to
drain and replace the coolant. One of the biggest savings is
learning to take off the wheel. Instead of paying your
dealer $500.00 to install new tires every year, you can buy
tires over the internet, take the wheels off yourself and
only pay for installation and balancing.....around here,
that's about $25.00/tire.
If you are serious about doing your own maintenance, stop by your local dealer and buy a copy of the service manual. It can save you thousands of dollars over the life of your bike.
Gas Mileage & Fuel Reserve
By 2Wheeltips
Knowing how far you can ride on the fuel
reserve is something every biker should know. It lets you focus
on enjoying a long day of riding without worrying about running
out of gas in some out of the way place. Until you know, the fuel
reserve will be a source of concern. Here is a simple way
to calculate how many miles you can go on the
reserve:
When does the reserve kick in?
• Fill up the tank and set
the tripmeter to 0.
• Make note of how many
miles you rode when the fuel reserve indicator came on or you
needed to flip the fuel reserve switch.
I can usually ride 160 miles before needing to flip to the
reserve. So let's use 160 miles for this
example.
How big is your tank and
reserve?
Look in your motorcycle owners manual and get the fuel tank
capacity and the fuel reserve amount. Here are the amounts for my
bike:
• 4.76
fuel tank capacity
• 1.16 fuel reserve
amount
Remember the fuel
reserve is NOT separate from the fuel tank
capacity. So for my bike the total fuel tank size is 4.76
gallons......NOT (4.76 + 1.16)..... or 5.92
gallons. So you need to calculate the size of the main tank by
subtracting the fuel reserve amount from the fuel tank
capacity.
• 4.76 -
1.16 = 3.6 gallons.
So here the main fuel tank is 3.6 gallons.
This is how many gallons I used to ride 160
miles.
Divide the number of miles you rode by the size of your main tank.
• 160 miles / 3.6 gallons = 44.45 mpg
Some touring bikes will calculate mpg for you. If so, just use the amount on the display.
Multiply your mpg by the size of your reserve
• 44.45 mpg x 1.16 gallons = 51.56 miles
On my bike I can ride an additional 51 miles on the fuel reserve. This number will vary based on how your ride, but I can safely ride 41 more miles before I need to get gas.
