Advice

Jobs written out, one step after another

Every page here follows one job through from the first step to the last check, and names the step that everything downstream depends on. Products appear only where a procedure genuinely needs one — and several of these end by recommending no purchase at all, because cleaning and adjusting a chain does more than replacing it would. Where the answer turns on your own machine, a torque figure or a limit the maker sets, the page hands over to the documentation rather than rewording it.

Getting started

The order in which a first set of kit is worth buying, what can wait a season, and the checks that cost nothing before the first ride.

What to buy first, and what can wait a season Everything is needed at once and nothing can be afforded at once. This is the order that gets the most out of a first budget, and the honest list of what can wait.

Choosing a first helmet

Working backwards from the shape of your head and the riding you do, instead of forwards from an approval printed on a strap.

Choosing a first helmet, from your head outwards Every helmet on sale carries an approval. None of them publishes the one thing that decides whether you will wear it for four hours — the shape of its inside. This is how to work around that.

Chain adjustment

Measuring slack in the position the manufacturer specifies, aligning the wheel, cleaning before lubricating, and knowing when a chain is finished.

Adjusting a chain, in the position the maker measured The figure and the position are one instruction, not two. Everything below follows from that, and the values themselves are in your own machine’s manual.

Building a home toolkit

The few tools that turn dealer jobs into garage jobs, in the order they earn their place — and the ones that never do.

A home toolkit, in the order each tool earns its place Most of what a motorcycle needs between services is done with a small number of tools. This is which ones, in the order they repay buying, and where the line is.

Seasonal preparation

Putting a machine away for winter and waking it up in spring: battery, tyres, fluids, chain, cover, and what not to do to a warm engine.

Winter storage, and waking it up in spring Four things do most of the work, and they are all about moisture and the battery. The rest — fuel, fluids, intervals — is specified by your machine’s maker, and this page sends you there rather than inventing a figure.

Buying

How to spread a budget across helmet, jacket, gloves and boots, and which piece repays spending more on it than the others.

Where the money goes, and what it actually buys Spending more is only useful where more money buys something published. This is what it buys in each family, and where it stops buying anything at all.

Care & maintenance

Washing without reaching the brakes or the chain, keeping a liner usable, replacing a visor rather than a helmet, and the annual look at fasteners.

Washing it, without reaching what must stay dry Motorcycle cleaning products are judged on what they must not touch, which is the opposite of how they are advertised. This is the routine that follows from that.