Once you've got your bike home, which you've decided to buy, you've got your bike home,
get to know your bike. And a good way is to buy a manual and read it through because
the things I'm going to say to you now will help straight away. First thing I would do, give it an
oil change. Then you know you changed your oil, and put down your mileage if you want to so you've got
a record of it. So you've changed your engine oil, your gearbox oil. If it's clean just top up the gearbox
oil, it's not quite so bad. But with the engine oil change, when you warm that engine up and drain the oil,
you'll know what that oil is like. As I said to you before, you make sure when you're buying it's got
a good return, but when you warm the engine up and you drain it you'll see if it's metallic,
and if it's bad then you have cause to look into the engine maybe. Or maybe it's
not quite what you thought it was, the bike. Primary chain case oil, change that as well.
Fork oil, it's not a bad idea. I run these on slightly thicker oil, like 20W50 oil, not your modern
fork oil. But you do that sort of thing first. Another good thing is cable routing. You might find
that the clutch cable is very stiff. It may not be the clutch itself, it might be just the routing of
the cable. Not a bad idea once you've got your bike, whip your seat and tank off. Have a look underneath
because you didn't see that when you were buying it. It's only a couple of fixings. Just look at
your wiring, and if there was a wire that was slightly shorting out you caught it before it has
done any damage, or connector, because you don't want to be out in the road and the electrical
connection falls apart and you lose your lights. Because these things run as you know they've
just mag/ dyno. Another good thing really is the rear chain. Not bad idea obviously when you're
checking the adjustment, see how far back the back wheel is and the adjusters, and if it's right back
take the link out, the joining link out, drop the chain down a little bit and just feel if there's
a lot of side play and push it in and out. You can get hold of the chain and move it that way,
inwards and outwards, and if there's sideways movement, don't mess about, get a new chain. Count the links, don't
just pull the chain off, and get your new chain ordered and clip on your new chain to the old one.
So when you feed it on you've pulled the old chain off and the new one goes straight over the back.
Otherwise, everyone knows this, it gets caught up in the back of the primary chain case, you
can't get it onto the engine sprockets, feed the new chain onto the old one. Yeah also,
check your battery. In this case they're six volt batteries. Take the battery out the tray.
Just make sure when it's on the bench, just check your levels. Bring the level up
with distilled water. Make sure the connections are good and tight.
Also, I would say when you first get your new bike, take it for short rides. Don't go too far on it.
Because you don't want be too far away from home if something's not quite right. So just bear in mind,
you know you might have a magneto that when it gets hot starts misfiring. Another good idea,
always put a few tools in the tool bag or in the toolbox and have them on you. But what I haven't
mentioned, I will just mention this, when you have the tank off and the seat off just go around the bike
and just check all nuts and bolts. Just make sure they're tight because it would be, it's
such a shame if you missed one bolt that you would have potentially done when you had the tank off,
just check them all. Don't over tighten them, but if they're tight fine, but if they're loose
just tighten them all up. The sort of things that do sometimes work a little bit loose can be the
top head steady bolt onto the frame. But it's things like mud guard stays and mud guards and
your levers, you know, make sure they're tight and not moving round. When you looked at the bike you
look to the condition of the tyres you didn't get chance to check your tyre pressures. Just
check those. They are quite important to run those correct. Also, you're going to see quite quickly
whether you've got a slow puncher because they're all tube tyres these. So check your front tyre and
your rear tyre. I normally run them about, the rear is normally about 28 to 30, and the front ones
sort of between like 26 and 28. Take a reading of your tyre pressure and then in five days time take it again.
Because tubes sometimes go down, we might have a slow puncher, so it's a good idea to find
that one out. With this sort of style of bike, or any bike really, it's not a bad idea to spend a
little bit of time getting your levers all nice to fit you properly. Front brake, just make sure that
you can get your fingers on it before it starts biting really. Make sure you've got a little bit of
free play in your throttle cable. The clutch itself, clutch lever, make sure it's fully out, that there
is a bit movement in the cable. Because any cable that's taut potentially the clutch could slip.
Make sure your back break when you depress it, when you release it, the back wheel is not binding.
Like if the brake was over adjusted, if we're just touching the linings like that,
that would heat up really quickly and you wouldn't want to do that because
it'd mess up the linings, they get really hot and lose your efficiency if you break. Also it
would be very much dragging on the engine as well. Yeah, these bikes they're not a bike to really
thrash about all the time because things will work low so they will break. But just bearing
in mind that it's not a bad idea just to go over it quite often with a spanner. If you're out on a
ride and you're doing a couple hundred miles, when you come back maybe a couple of days later, you get
a bit of time just run over your bike, check it. Also check your gearbox oil again because
they do drop oil from the main seal in the gearbox, you know, and it won't drip when it's not running
but when it's running it can come out of there. So just always keep a check on your levels. Also
your primary chain and your main chain, just make sure that's readily looked at and maintained. And
a grease spray on the back chain as well. Don't let that get dry, that chain. I think if, you
know, if you buy this sort of bike you buy with the mind of looking after it. And the most
people would just say the riding is one part of it, but the maintenance that's sometimes
more enjoyable to a lot of people. The fact that they've found a bike that they really wanted and
they can fettle with it. Because it's not like a Japanese bike, you don't just stick it in the
garage and forget about it, just bring it out at the weekend. You have to nurture these a little bit.
It's a different ball game. It's not for everyone, but us that like
these, it's got the soul, it's got the character, and that's why you buy these bikes.