Tips for the New Motorcycle Owner

I got my first bike in May, 2007, and was lucky enough to have two very experienced riders help me in bike selection and preparing for camping on the bike. I bought a brand new bike, a 2007 Suzuki V-Strom 650 (model DL650). (If you're buying a new bike, I recommend paying for the report of what dealer cost is. I saved about $800 by doing that. I think I got mine from http://www.cyclebuy.com/invoice.htm )

I took the California Motorcyclist Safety Program (CMSP) (http://www.ca-msp.org/) Basic Rider Course so I wouldn't have to take the driving part of the test to get my license. Great class and I learned a lot, but not much about driving at speeds above 25 mph. Which is nice, because it's easy to fall over at low speeds.

There were quite a few things I still hadn't learned that are no doubt second-nature to experienced bikers. Here are the ones I can remember, two years later. I know you're going to be thinking "DUH!" after reading most of these. Better to be saying "DUH!" now than right after you have the bike fall over.

Pushing the Bike

Keep this in mind: The bike is weightless when exactly upright, and gets heavy real fast when it starts to lean over. The goal, then, is to keep the bike as close as possible to directly upright at all times. Don't be afraid to move SLOWLY. That was my first brainstorm. I wanted to look cool and experienced, but luckily I wanted more not to drop the bike. So I took it easy and kept an eye on other riders, and most of them keep things nice and slow when they're maneuvering into a parking space, getting on the bike, starting off, etc. You'll learn pretty quickly that when you see somebody trying to do any of that fast, they're a newbie.

Most people seem to feel that standing next to the bike and holding both sides of the handlebars with both hands gives them the most control over the bike. I say that because that's the way guys at the motorcycle shop always move bikes around. Maybe that's true for most people and most bikes, but not for me. My bike is a Suzuki V-Strom 650 (model designation DL-650). It's a rather tall bike with an upright riding position, good for long-distance touring. I'm 5'10" tall with I'd guess average leg length for that height, and I have to stand on my toes a bit to reach the ground while straddling this bike. As a result, I have to be a bit more vigilant about what I do with the bike to avoid tipping over. If your bike is lower, and most are, maybe you can get away with being a little more casual about how you move your bike around. But for me, I like to keep the thing resting lightly on my hip when I push it around, just so it doesn't get away from me and fall over on the opposite side.

When I bring my bike out of the garage, I have to back it out up a slight incline. There's no way I can sit on it and push with my feet to get it up the incline. And it's too tall for me to JUST hold the handlebars and keep it under control. So I stand next to it, holding the handlebars with both hands, letting the bike lean slightly against my hip as I walk it back. I have to go slow to make sure the bike doesn't lean into me TOO much, because it gets real heavy if I do. And I can't let it lean AWAY from me, because I'm not tall enough to bring it back if it starts to tip over away from me.

Putting the Bike Up on the Center Stand

You can do this starting with the bike resting on the side stand, BUT, before you take the bike off the center stand, be sure to put the side stand back up!

This is a two-step process. First, you want to bring the center stand down so it's lightly resting on the ground but without any significant weight on it, and move the bike side-to-side SLOWLY until it's settled over the center stand and both "feet" of the center stand are in contact with the ground.

To do that, hold both handlebars, or the left handlebar with your left hand and the left seat rail with your right hand. Now push down lightly on the center stand with your right foot, and move the bike slowly and slightly side-to-side until the center stand has both of its feet settled flat on the ground.

Once you're sure that the center stand is making stable contact with the ground on both sides, now you're ready for step two. With your right foot still on the center stand, keep your left hand on the left handlebar, and if you haven't got it there already, grab the left seat rail from underneath with your right hand. Now slowly shift all of your weight to your right foot while lifting up on the seat rail with your right hand. The bike should slowly rise up and gently take it's position on the center stand.

Taking the Bike Down off the Center Stand

WARNING: Put up the side stand before taking the bike off the center stand! If you don't, when the bike comes off the center stand it's going to depress the shocks and fall onto the side stand, and then pop over to the opposite side.

Of course, I know this from experience. It took me a while to figure out what was happening, but I'm convinced now that the side stand was down when I took the bike off the center stand. I've done this twice. I did it once in my garage, and have holes in the drywall from where the bike's mirror and handlebar end poked through when the bike fell over. I did it again someplace in Northern California after lubing my chain. At the time, I hadn't yet discovered the better way to take the bike off the center stand, so I'm sitting on the bike, rocking it forward and backward until it comes off the center stand, at which point I grab the front brake. So here goes: Rock, rock, rock, bike comes off stand, and then immediately tips over to the right, into a cement picnic table. Luckily, I was wearing my leather riding gloves and didn't scrape up my hands too badly, and the bike didn't fall all the way over because it landed on that table.

Adopt the same position as when putting the bike up on the center stand, but instead of having one foot on the center stand, leave both feet firmly on the ground, legs spread apart for stability, left hand on left handlebar, right hand on left seat rail. Again, make sure the side stand is UP, out of the way, not down! Slowly push the bike forward until it comes off the center stand.

Again, do NOT sit on the bike and rock until it falls off the center stand and then try grabbing the front brake. If it's come only part way off the stand when you grab the brake, you'll be perched on a partly deployed center stand and probably too far off the ground to support the bike with your legs. If your legs are plenty more than long enough to reach the ground, you might get away with this. In my case, my bike is too tall for me to straddle flat-footed, so even an inch higher than normal is a big problem for me.

Parking on Inclines

Once you've put the bike in a bad spot, it can be difficult to get out of it without help and without tipping the bike over. It pays to think through these scenarios BEFORE you plant the bike in one of them. One consideration is what the side stand will want to do, the other is getting out of the parking space once you've gotten yourself into it.

• If there is a side-to-side incline, look for it to be minimal, and rising from left to right (the bike will be leaning slightly more than normal) rather than right-to-left (the bike isn't leaning as much onto the side stand, or isn't leaning on the side stand at all). Either way, it's best not to have much side-to-side incline because you don't want the bike leaning too much in either direction. Too far to the left and it makes it difficult to lift it back upright. Too far to the right and it won't stay on the sidestand and just falls over immediately.
• If you have to park on a slope, try to park so that you're facing uphill, for two reasons.
  • One is that it will make the side stand want to stay down: if the bike's facing uphill and resting on the side stand, gravity is trying to make the bike roll backwards, which holds the sidestand in the deployed position. Just make sure the slope isn't so steep that the sidestand just slides on the pavement. On the other hand, if the bike's facing downhill and there's much of a slope, it wants to roll right over the side stand, the side stand retracts, and the bike falls over.
  • The second reason for parking facing uphill is that it makes getting out of the parking spot easier: if you drove in under power to wind up facing uphill, then when you leave you can just sit on the bike and let it roll backwards out of the spot. If you allowed the bike to roll backward to back into the spot, then you get to drive out under power. On the other hand, if you left yourself parked facing downhill, even if the sidestand didn't retract on you, you're still left with moving the bike backwards and uphill, without the aid of the motor (unless you have a bike with a reverse gear), to get out of it. This can suck big if you have a tall bike that's loaded down with gear. The first challenge is just standing next to the bike, lifting it off the sidestand, and holding it while standing on only one leg while you retract the sidestand with the other. And if you survive that, you still have to push the bike backwards.

Parking on Soft Dirt or Sand

If you're going to be parking on soft dirt or sand, or even really hot asphalt that can get soft, you'll want to have handy some kind of prop for the kickstand. You can look for a nice rock or piece of wood somewhere nearby, but what to do with the bike while you pick up that object? When I'm camping, I have a tank bag, and in there I keep an old soda can that I've smashed from top to bottom into a disk. That works pretty well -- I drop it on the ground as close to where I want to put the kickstand, move it into final position with my foot while sitting on the bike, and then lean the bike and kickstand onto it. The kickstand makes contact, pushes the can down into the soft dirt a bit, and ... then starts sliding off the can. Not an ideal solution, but I've been able to make it work after a few tries.

My latest invention worked great! I have a few disks made of car tire rubber, about 4" diameter and 3/8" thick, left over from an old project at work. I attached some thin nylon cord, about 6' long, to one of them. Now I can be sitting on the bike and drop the disk, and move it into position with the cord. As I lower the kickstand onto it, the kickstand "sticks" to the disk, and the disk slides on the soft dirt until the bike is safely resting on it. The rubber, being tire rubber, is really strong stuff, and while it does deflect some, it still does the job. You probably don't have any such disks lying around your garage. You might be able to make something similar with some 3/8" or 1/2" plywood, gluing some tire patch rubber onto one or both sides. I think I'd only put the rubber on one side. That way, the kickstand is guaranteed to stick to the rubber side, and the bare plywood side is pretty much guaranteed to slide on the soft dirt as you lower the bike's weight onto it.

Getting Ready to Ride - a Few Good Habits

• When you put your helmet on, immediately fasten the strap. Otherwise you're likely to start off down the road and then notice it's not fastened, and have to stop to do it. I've done this quite a few times -- put the helmet on, put sunglasses on, zip the jacket ... pretty soon I'm riding down the road and realize the helmet isn't strapped on. So make it a habit: when the helmet goes on, the strap gets fastened.
• Put the key in the ignition before putting on your gloves. It's tough to get them out of your pocket with gloves on.'Course, you can take the gloves back off, but it's a pain and you feel like an idjut.
• Zip all zippers, fasten wrist straps, etc. before starting off. You might be able to do something about many of those on the road, but the left wrist strap is especially is hard to do anything about while riding because it means taking your right hand off the throttle. I've done it -- if you pull in the clutch, you can coast for a bit and maybe not become too big a nuisance in traffic while you make an adjustment.

Maintenance Tips

Chain Adjustment and Lube

A chain stretches quite a bit when new. I think mine stretched significantly over the first 2 or 3 thousand miles. I had to adjust it at about 600 miles, and several more times up to maybe 3000. Since then it has been stable, I don't think I've adjusted it at all since about 5000.

As for tools, you might want to consider buying some proper wrenches, rather than relying on those in the tool kit. I don't know if my bike's tool kit even has the right size wrenches to fit the axle bolt / nut, but it certainly doesn't have big enough ones. I bought two wrenches, one for each side of the axle, and put them under the seat. Makes loosening and tightening the axle nut/bolt much easier.

I like the wax kind of lube, not oil. The brand I have is called Chain Wax, from Maxima Racing Lubricants (http://www.maximausa.com/). Their website needs help, but there it is. Looks like they're in Santee, near San Diego, CA, which is where I am, so maybe this stuff isn't available everywhere. Anyway, I like the stuff because it's less messy and seems to last longer than oil. My owner's manual says to lube every 600 miles. I probably go more like 1000.

Chain Lubing Tips

That chain wax I recommend burns if left on your skin. So if you're out on the road and lubing the chain, try to do it where there's soap and water available. Or don't get any on your skin.

To lube the chain, make sure it's warmed up by riding it for several miles. Then, if it's easy to take off the chain guard (mine is only two screws), do that. Put the bike on the center stand (this is why I bothered to pay all the money I paid to get my center stand) so you can easily rotate the chain around its full length. Get an old piece of cardboard (a piece of a twelve-pack drink carton is nice) and tear it into a shape that you can slip behind the chain while you're squirting on the lube. That'll keep you from soaking tires and other undesirable targets. Apply the lube, and let it soak in for a few minutes or more. I like to do this when I'm done riding for the day, and just let it soak in and dry overnight.

Riding Tips

Get this book: "Sport Riding Techniques: How To Develop Real World Skills for Speed, Safety, and Confidence on the Street and Track" by Nick Ienatsch. Amazon has it.

Look far up the road, not at the pavement below you

It is important to look for sand and severe pavement irregularities, but minor bumps or cracks aren't much trouble if you're not going at a speed near the limit. So go ahead and quickly scan the near pavement surface for trouble, but look up immediately and refocus on your intended path through the corner. Look FAR up the road. I've been driving cars for 35 years, and I'm pretty good at it. And I notice that when I'm driving a mountain road in the car I am always focused on pretty much the farthest point of a corner I can see. But on the bike, I've only been riding for two years, and I STILL find myself too often looking just ahead of the front tire. This is a terrible place to focus your attention, obviously. So practice practice practice, at speeds well below the limit. It has taken me quite a long time to be able to look far up the road and still maintain good lane position, but it's essential to learn this skill.

Another difference between cars and motorcycles I've noticed is that on a motorcycle, the faster you're going in a turn, the more the bike's leaning. And the more the bike's leaning, the more sensitive it is to steering input. Just the slightest movement of the handlebars has a huge effect on your position in the lane. Practice practice practice, and do it at a speed that won't get you killed.

Watch where you're going, not where you're at.

Watch the target path, not the obstacle to avoid.

Lean into the pavement; pavement is your friend. When you think you're possibly going into a corner too hot, it seems instinctive to try to sit up straighter and hold the bike up straighter, and that's the worst thing you can possibly do. I had a racer tell me once that the most common mistake people make is thinking the bike won't lean as far as it will, and they crash on corners they could have made if they'd just kept leaning.

When riding on uneven or dirt roads at low speed, where you might need to put a foot down to support the bike, watch out for high mounds in the pavement or dirt, especially if your bike, like mine, is so tall that you can barely reach the ground with your feet. You don't want to have to stop with the bike tires straddling a low spot, leaving an extra long drop for your feet to reach the ground. I almost dumped my bike in a campground this way.

On steep hairpins, be aware of transition between leaning and staying atop the bike with the bike leaning and you not. Like parking lot style where you stay atop and leave the bike upright or only slight lean versus at speed where you and the bike lean. On really slow hairpins in mountains, you can end up in transitioning and you don't want to find yourself leaning with the bike when your speed drops below the point at which that works.

Don't end up in a corner in neutral -- i.e. don't try to downshift right at the beginning of a sharp hairpin and blow the shift and have to coast. Coasting down a tight, steep hairpin having to rely totally on brakes is not fun.