Motorcycle Maintenance Days A great thing to do with your motorcycle buddies is to have a maintenance day. If you've got a diverse enough group of people, equipment and mechanical skills, many tedious maintenance tasks can be taken care of while having a good time and some good food. My riding club had its first real maintenance day this last weekend. We had 12 people show up in all, with just about everyone contributing in one form or another. The tasks we tackled were relatively simple: oil changes, chain cleaning / lubrication, replacing headlight bulbs, fairing repair and one attempt at HID bulb installation (a wiring nightmare).

We set up stations with designated areas and people assigned to the various tasks, since certain people had experience doing different things. I was deemed "fairing boy" since I've gone through the unpleasant task of removing and reinstalling my R6 fairings several times. Surprisingly we got a lot done; I honestly thought there would be more goofing off and less actual work getting done. One bike in particular, a 2005 R6, had 7000 miles on it and probably never had any maintenance done at all (the owner had just bought it). The oil that came out of it was the dirtiest I had ever seen. In any case between the oil change and chain cleaning, the owner said the bike ran noticeably smoother afterwards.

Here's a list of things we had, should've had, and hopefully will have for our next maintenance day:

• A place to have the maintenance day (lots of flat space is good)
• Lots of cardboard or other material to keep fluids off the pavement
• Plenty of tools (metric and conventional)
• Rear stand(s) for sport bikes, provided the bikes have swing arm spools installed
• Oil and filters
• Strap wrench and other oil filter removal tools
• Oil pan and used oil storage container (dispose properly)
• Touch-up paint
• Lots of rags you don't mind getting greasy
• Chain cleaning brush (if you want it sparkling clean)
• Chain cleaner or WD-40
• Chain lubricant (get the real stuff, don't just use WD-40)
• Tire pressure gauge
• Air pump
• Coolant
• Distilled water (to mix with coolant)
• Used coolant storage container (dispose properly)
• Factory manuals
• Plenty of food and drink

  ¶ 11:47 PM