VerticalScope’s VP of Sales, Jason Brilant, has lived a variation of this scenario first-hand. While riding on a rural highway in the Allegheny National Forest, he encountered gravel on the road and low-sided his 2012 Ducati Monster 1100 EVO at about 50-60 mph and slid into a grassy ditch. Jason and his bike were banged up but not badly broken, and he was able to ride his cosmetically injured Duc the 220 miles back to his Toronto home. Functionally, the only impairment was a broken gear-shift lever that eventually and painfully wore its way through his boot during the ride home.

Walk around at any motorcycle gathering and count the bikes with limp, sagging chains. Often, the worst examples also are bone dry with rust and/or crud built up on them. Since you’re a MO reader and regularly clean/lube your chain, you’re ahead of the game. However, you still need to make sure that the chain’s slack is within specifications. If you lube your chain regularly, you will probably not need to adjust it every time you return from a ride, but as a chain nears the end of its usable life, you will need to adjust the slack more and more frequently.

With the exception of the most enthusiastic mechanics, cleaning a motorcycle’s chain ranks right up there next to scooping out a litter box for most riders. It’s a messy-but-necessary task that, while it doesn’t stink of cat pee, scores really low on the chore/payoff ratio. Most chain lubes give dirt and dust a great place to latch on to the chain. These abrasive particles can wear out the O-rings prematurely, shortening the chain’s life. So, along with regular lubrication, your chain needs to be cleaned periodically. This is also a good time to take care of the mung that builds up on sprockets, too.

All mechanics, even casual ones, should have a torque wrench – or two. Why? Because if you don’t torque a fastener down tight enough, you risk having it vibrate loose. Go too far when tightening something, and you’ll strip the threads or break the fastener. Torque wrenches come in a couple varieties. The least expensive (and least useful) is a wrench that has two bars. The first is the hand grip and the second is the pointer. As you tighten a bolt you bend the bar with the handle, moving a gauge under the pointer. Don’t waste your money on this type. Not only is it not terribly accurate, but also it requires that you be able to look at the wrench while using it. The tight spaces of motorcycles don’t always allow this to happen.

One thing that many riders fail to consider when changing brands or models of tires – even those marked as the same size – is that the new tire will often alter the outer diameter of the complete wheel assembly. So, if you’ve meticulously set up your bike’s ride height to tune its handling or if you’ve just been happy with the turning characteristics of your motorcycle with the old tires, you might want to account for the change in tire diameter so that you can maintain the same chassis attitude.

Experienced riders have a ritual every time they get on a new bike. They adjust the mirrors and levers before they even start the bike’s engine. Having a bike set up to fit your preferences can make a big difference in how easy it is to operate. One area that is often overlooked is the gear shift lever. Having the shifter in the proper position makes it possible to change gears with the minimum foot movement possible. Also, in some instances, without the proper adjustment shifting is almost impossible. We’ve seen cruisers with the shifter so far out of adjustment for the forward controls that it felt like we needed an additional ankle joint. Similarly, on a sportbike, if the shifter is too high or low, the ease of shifting is drastically reduced. What’s the proper position? The one that suits your riding position and the size of your feet.

Modern motorcycles are incredibly reliable, but they still require you to check a few things in order to keep them running at full potential. The engine oil is one of those items you should never neglect. After all, you don’t want to run your high-revving, manufactured-to-aerospace-tolerances, and extremely-expensive-to-replace engine without the proper lubricant, do you? Additionally, an engine’s oil can reveal a good bit of information about the condition of its internals to even a novice mechanic armed with a little information.

OK, I know, checking a motorcycle’s tire pressure is super easy. All you do is take out your handy tire gauge and apply it correctly to the wheel’s valve stem. Well, yes…and no. Tire manufacturers recommend that you check your bike’s air pressure when the rubber is cold – meaning at ambient temperature. If you’ve ridden your bike in the last few hours or have parked it in the sun, where the tires can absorb heat, the pressure will read artificially high.

Brakes perform a critical job on a motorcycle, which means you should pay special attention to the condition of your bike’s pads. So, plan on replacing your pads when a minimum of 2mm of the pad material remains. Even with 2mm of pad material left, your braking power could be compromised under heavy braking, like at a trackday or a panic stop. Yes, if you like to gamble, you could run them to the absolute limits of their service, but why roll the dice on such an important safety feature.

Changing your motorcycle’s oil is one of the most important – if not the most important – maintenance tasks you can perform for its engine. All those expensive moving parts within your engine won’t last very long without a coating of quality lubricant preventing metal-on-metal violence. If you’re new to wrenching, an oil change is the perfect confidence builder. It’s almost impossible to screw up and requires very few tools: sockets or allen sockets to remove bodywork, a wrench to remove the drain plug (ultimately, you’ll really want to use a socket and a torque wrench to get it tightened to factory specs on reassembly), an oil catch pan, and rubber gloves. Don’t worry about voiding a new bike’s warranty. Just save your receipts and keep a record of the date and mileage of each change.

Spring is here. The sun is slowly warming the earth and the snow is melting fast. It’s time to get your ride out of storage, tuned up and on the road, and grab some refresher lessons. Great riders never stop learning. But maybe you don’t have your license yet, and you’re not sure if this is the year you take the plunge. Maybe you’re content to sit on the sidelines and watch your friends head out on their bikes for heaps of adventure and thrill seeking, always putting it off until next season because…what’s the point? You can’t get your license and go on the epic trips with them in one season anyway – or can you?

We last left you hanging November 1 with Part I of our Evan Steel Performance-built 2000 Yamaha R1 project bike, wherein ESP took our hard-knock $1,500 Craigslist R1 and turned the old girl into, if not quite a beauty, a liter-bike packing enough performance to run with a much younger crowd. A little cylinder head work and a little bump-up in compression, a little crankshaft lightening, a little expert Dynojet carb-kitting and Akrapovic race-pipeage – nothing really radical, in other words – and here’s what we’ve come up with.

I bought my $1,500 mongrel 2000 Yamaha R1 during a sad period of my life when people weren’t giving me new motorcycles every week or two, and I needed a project I could ride. A couple years later, I bumped into Evan Steel ( evansteelperformance), who trained under the great Kaz Yoshima of Ontario Moto-Tech fame, and worked with Jeremy Toye at Lee’s Cycles in San Diego for some time. A few years ago, Evan and business partner/ fellow moto-wiz Phil Allison (Toye’s ex-Superbike mechanic) set off to open their own shop in Tucson, Arizona, where they love the warmth. More recently, Evan has been off in Italy tuning Aaron Yates’s EBR World Superbike, yet another thankless task … Before all the EBR stuff transpired, though, Evan said I should drop off my old R1 at his shop so he could build a beast like the first-gen R1 he and Kaz and Phil built for multi-time Willow Springs Champ Curtis Adams back in the Formula USA days. Why not? By then, people were giving me new bikes again, thank God.

Previously, I covered how to install a Powerlet accessory electrical socket. While having access to constant power for accessories is convenient (particularly for maintaining your battery with a smart charger), it has a major drawback: If you leave your electronics on when you shut down the engine, you can easily kill your battery. The best way to prevent this from happening is to make the socket switch itself off with the ignition. Although the task is fairly simple, you’ll need to perform a little detective work before you start.

Only a few years ago, about the only thing that required electricity on your motorcycle was an electric vest. Now, with the proliferation of GPS, smartphones, and other power-hungry devices, you might find yourself needing to plug in while you’re out on a ride. Or perhaps you don’t get to ride your bike as much as you’d like to and need a way to connect to your smart charger. Accessory wiring company Powerlet has created wiring sockets that can be used to power just about anything you could want to mount on your bike. Powerlet’s systems range from simple bar mounts to bodywork mounts to custom brackets for a wide range of motorcycle models. Once you mount Powerlet’s socket on your motorcycle, simply plug in the appropriate adapter for your device.

Alain Bernard is French, but he lives in South Florida. His shop is named Santiago Choppers, and while he has built custom choppers and trikes, Bernard’s fame stems from meticulously designed and crafted café racers. The Santiago name originates from a shop he owned while living in the Dominican Republic’s capital; Santiago.

In the last six or seven years, I have managed to be a very good boy and have gotten no traffic tickets, none. And by bragging about that to a few people instead of clamming up, I knew I was asking for it. Last April I got it, riding up the 110 freeway in L.A. on my way to Corsa Motoclassica on a shiny new FJR1300.

While in Germany for the unveiling of the BMW nineT, BMW arranged for the five attending journalists to spend a day at the Hechlingen Enduro Park and experience how BMW has partnered with the school to deliver a first-class riding experience. Although most of the riders who visit the facility are from Germany, many do come from the rest of Europe with a smattering coming from as far away as the United States.

Newsflash: Lean a motorcycle over far enough in a corner and something other than those black, round, sticky things we call tires is gonna touch the ground.

One of the hallmarks of proficient motorcyclists is the smoothness with which they apply the controls. Downshifting and braking are two of the skills that require the most finesse. Get ham-fisted with either, and you will display (and anyone riding with you will see) the telltale bobbing of an unsettled chassis – or worse, crash. This is why novices are recommended to master the basics of both braking and downshifting separately before trying to cram them together while rushing headlong into a corner.

Being smaller than the majority of road users is both an advantage and disadvantage of riding a motorcycle. However, many riders don’t give much active consideration to how they can apply a motorcycle’s advantages to help mitigate its disadvantages. Thanks to lane positioning options afforded by a bike’s small size, we can take proactive steps to keep those big, lumbering cars from becoming overly intimate with us.

Depending on your experience, skill, preparation and risk tolerance, riding a motorcycle in the rain can be anything from frightening to fun. In any case, it is at least more complicated, potentially more hazardous, and afterward, your bike will need a bath.

Riding a motorcycle safely and in control means not just better bike handling; it also means judging road conditions.

Back in 2010, Honda realized the motorcycle industry was changing. Prices for many models had increased over the prior decade, making it difficult for new riders to get into the sport.

If you love your bike, change its oil on a regular basis. Period. If you ever have to question whether or not to change your oil, just err on the side of caution and do it.

When Honda introduced its new Grom, the little 125cc funster was heralded as the modern return of the classic Monkey Bike. One of the first reactions – likely immediately after “what the heck is a ‘Grom’?” – was “what the heck is a Monkey Bike?”

Are you and your motorcycle insured well enough to satisfy your state’s legal guidelines, as well as your own risk tolerance? You owe it to yourself and those who care about you to be sure you are up to date.

There was a time when being a motorcyclist also meant being a mechanic – or at least being mechanically inclined.

Motorcycling has always been about fun and without a doubt it can be a blast, but it’s not a video game, or a trip to an over-safety-engineered amusement park.

Pretty girls sell motorcycles, that’s no secret; but did you know that silver screen leading lady Audrey Hepburn may have been the face that sold one hundred thousand Vespas? Read on, but first up, how it all started for Vespa.

Whether you have decades of experience or are a newbie, it pays to realistically size up this activity called “riding a motorcycle,” and to look at yourself as a lifelong learner.

If you are fortunate enough to live in an area where well-stocked motorcycle shops abound, it’s likely possible to get same-day service on tire mounting and balancing. For the rest of us, purchasing new tires often requires leaving a bike at a shop for a few days. As often as I go through tires, this involves considerable down time. Since I can change a set of tires in about 90 minutes, and save money in the process, it makes sense for me to do it myself. It might make sense for you as well.

It’s a devastating feeling, walking out to the curb where you parked your beloved ride and finding nothing left but the flattened soda can you slid under the kickstand.

But wait! Before you loosen those purse strings, you must consider other necessary expenses and how to fit them into your budget. These hidden costs can add up pretty quickly and, in some cases, may end up totalling more than the price of a used motorcycle.

Unless you’re fortunate enough to live in an area with year-round sunshine and warm temperatures, you’ve probably had your motorcycle in storage for the last few months. Many riders decide to pay a dealer or garage to store their motorcycles over the winter.

This new Polaris, believed to be named “Slingshot,” is looking to capture a niche market of people who are drawn by the open nature of a motorcycle but worry about the inherent risk of falling over. A reverse trike design like this isn’t groundbreaking, however, considering models like the Campagna T-Rex have been around for years. And let’s not forget others like the aforementioned Spyder and even the Morgan three-wheeler.

We MO staffers are gluttonous consumers of motorcycle technology. Active suspension, programmable engine braking, slipper clutch, cruise control, ride-by-wire throttle, quick shifter, etc., anything that makes a motorcycle go faster, handle better or enhance rider comfort opens the drool gates. The downside is that with each technological upgrade is a commensurate increase in price, elevating many modern two-wheelers beyond the financial grasp of the bourgeoisie. 

Items like windscreens, heated clothing and communication systems are just some of the tricks we use to keep us happy over rough roads and rougher rides, but there's no need to look like weenies while doing it. We know riding with our fists in the wind, dirt beneath our fingernails and a scowl on our face is part of the look we’re after, but here are a few accessories that will make it hard to keep a smile off your face while ironing out that 1000-plus-mile run to the next rally.

If you, by opening the throttle too far, make a torque request that overwhelms the ability of this contact patch to transmit force, the contact patch of the tire will begin to slide relative to the pavement. Not necessarily the end of the world, as you’ve still got some leeway and the contact patch is still capable of propelling the motorcycle. But you shouldn’t get too greedy. When the tire’s contact patch is moving at roughly 115% of the speed of the bike, the slip-vs-force curve of the typical tire reaches its peak and turns negative. Any higher slip results in less force. Less force to propel the motorcycle is okay, but less force to react to the side load induced by cornering is definitely not okay.

“I didn’t just say no, I said hell no,” Walker quips, insisting that he had little desire to run a team. LaTrasse persisted anyway. Walker, thinking he could change LaTrasse’s mind started talking numbers. “I made it clear that we would take his large fortune and turn it into a small one,” Walker says. LaTrasse didn’t flinch. It was then that discussions became serious.

This is Nick Ienatsch’s goal with the Yamaha Champions Riding School. Ienatsch and his hand-picked team of instructors — all of whom have won championships in this sport — strive to make every student become a better rider. This is my story.

So, on a purely subjective basis, we comprised a list of our favorite motorcycle sounds. Exhaust notes change according to OEM or aftermarket manufacturer, but regardless of muffler configuration, these bikes sound good in any guise.

For me this event is one big adventure as I’ve never been to the north of Norway apart from in my army days. Since this is just around midsummer, it’s daylight 24/7 up north whilst the south of the country gets 3-4 hours of darkness, hence we have daylight all the way and arrive around 10PM.

But during the launch of the updated 2012 Gold Wing, we were reminded that its surplus of luxurious amenities doesn’t preclude the ability to tear up a twisty road. Our group of Wing riders departed North Carolina’s infamous Tail of the Dragon just in front of a Suzuki DR-Z400 supermoto, and I expected it to quickly pass us on one of the Dragon’s 318 corners in 11 miles. But the surprisingly sporty Wing was never overtaken.  

Our first installment focused on adding a small bevy of custom parts to the all-black bike to make our 8-Ball stand out from the crowd at the local biker roadhouse. We bolted on items available through Victory Motorcycles’ catalog so all the improvements we made are doable by 8 Ball owners wishing to make similar upgrades to their bikes, too. Check out Evil 8: Part 1.

No doubt, our black beauty is an eye-catcher in terms of boulevard appeal, but its eye-candy luster grows dull when we take it off the beaten path to explore a twisty canyon road. Chassis ingredients that include a 21-inch front wheel, forward foot controls and a stubby rear shock absorber create a recipe more for good looks than good handling. Simply, when variable-radius turns are put on the menu, bikes like Evil 8 need a little hamburger helper in order to satisfy our hunger for handling performance.

Motocross is a fun sport for riders young and old, but it can also be very dangerous. Wearing the proper protective gear will help keep you safe but it will also give you the peace of mind to have fun.

1899 Orient: America’s First Production Motorcycle

To tell the story of our two-wheel world, we enlisted the services of bike historian Paul Garson who begins his Motorcycle Milestones series with a look back at the origins of the species that stretches over the 19th century. –Ed.

Certainly some monsters reared their heads, and the fragile economy continues to hamper a rebound in the moto industry at large, but a few highpoints bear noting, too.

Sounds kind of dramatic, doesn’t it?

Traditionally, in regions where the winter thermometer dips below freezing, many riders would prep and store their motorcycles, not wanting to brave sub-zero wind chill.

The Biggest: GUNBUS 410 – World’s Largest Ridden Motorcycle

Maybe the motorcycle brand’s name was a metaphor for the character’s action-packed life and the reason the movie makers chose a Triumph, or maybe Brando just preferred the machine personally. Whatever the reason, after the movie’s release, black leather jackets and Triumph sales skyrocketed. Bad was now good.

Cyber technology has all but eliminated the finger dance in the Yellow Pages, but we still have paper catalogs to help with our shopping. Trees continue to make the ultimate sacrifice so that we, as human beings and rulers of the planet, can do what we do best, and that’s consume.

Rarely will motorcycle manufacturers specifically label or market a model as Brand X’s bike for the first-time rider. This litigation-avoidance tactic then swings the doors of opinion wide open as to what constitutes an entry-level two-wheeler.

The quick summary: new motorcycle. The components that missed our first race were crucial to the overall qualities of the supersport racer we built (to see more information on these components and their installation, see Parts 6 and 7 of the Road Racing Series).

Burn-outs are fun for the heart, but stinky. GP bikes sound fun, too, but they can pierce eardrums. So taking precautions is a necessary step just to get through life without expiring too early. Doing it in comfort is the next logical step, if not down right American.