Let's Ride (12 page)

As good as modern electrical systems are, you’ll still need to give the electrical system a thorough examination just to be safe. This is easier said than done, however, because most of the parts are buried deep within the motorcycle. Some things are easy to check, like whether or not the lights and horn work, but other things are going to take more work.

Take the wiring harness, most of which runs along the frame, or even through it; it would be damned hard to examine an entire wiring harness without completely dismantling a motorcycle, but you should make sure that at least the parts of the harness that you can see are in good shape. Big chunks of black friction tape around some section of the wiring harness, particularly up by the steering head area where the harness can get pinched in a bad crash, is a sign that the bike has likely had some major repairs.

Even the battery can be difficult to see on some bikes, but you should try to take a look at it because it can tell you a lot about a motorcycle. The terminals should be clean and free of corrosion, and the cables should be bolted on tightly. Most motorcycles now used sealed batteries, but if the bike you’re looking at was built more than five or six years ago, it may have a refillable battery. If so, make certain that the battery water is set at the correct level.

The more accessories a bike has, the more powerful its electrical system needs to be. Be wary of bikes that have a lot of aftermarket electrical accessories, like GPS systems, heated seats and grips, stereos, and a couple of dozen driving lights. Modern bikes have reliable electrical systems, but only within reason. If your system was designed to produce a certain amount of power reliably, and then you mount accessories that draw twice as much juice as the system was designed to provide, your formerly reliable electrical system may not be very reliable at all. It’s best to stick with a bike that only has the accessories with which it left the factory.

A lot of aftermarket accessories aren’t a deal breaker. If you don’t like them, usually they are easy to remove. If you do decide to keep them, make sure the owner knew what he or she was doing when they were installed. Make sure that they are wired properly, that the exposed connections are taped or sheathed, and that all connections are properly soldered or crimped.

You may not even consider the most important electrical accessory—the starter—an accessory, but those of us who began riding back when starting a motorcycle required a strong leg and a good boot know better. This is one accessory that needs to work properly. If the bike hasn’t been run in a while or if the weather is cold, a bike you’re looking at might need a little help to turn over, but once the bike has been run for a while—say thirty minutes or so out on the highway—the starter should spin the engine to life with no drama. Failure to do so might just mean that a bike needs a new battery, but it could also be a sign that a bike needs expensive repairs.

If you aren’t able to take the bike out for a test ride to charge up the battery, at least check the charging indicator light. Most bikes will have some sort of idiot light (that’s what we used to call indicator lights that were used when what was really needed was a good gauge) for the charging system. Although it does not provide much useful information, at the very least an idiot light lets you know when there is a problem. If the light continues to glow after the engine is running at normal idle speed, the bike either has charging problems or soon will have them.

If you do uncover anything amiss with the electrical system, my advice is to run as far and fast as you can and find another bike to buy. The problems may well be simple and inexpensive to fix, but usually they will be difficult and extremely expensive, and they’ll undoubtedly be tricky to find and diagnose. If you have any doubts about your expertise in motorcycle electrics, this is one of the best reasons to have a competent professional examine the bike you’re thinking about buying.

With more and more bikes using antilock brake systems (ABS), electrics also are playing an increasingly large role in brake performance. These are highly complex, computer-based systems that defy intuitive understanding. But it doesn’t take a scientist to understand that brake performance can be the difference between life and death. If you look at a bike that has ABS and the brakes don’t seem to perform properly, do not buy that motorcycle without having a qualified mechanic check the ABS equipment. I know that in addition to being dangerous, ABS failures are extremely expensive. I personally would not buy a bike with ABS problems.

The Chassis

You’ll need a good electrical system just to get your bike out on the road, but once you’re out riding, you must make sure the rest of the bike is up to par, too—particularly the frame and suspension.

I’m going to start at the front of the bike and work my way back. The most complicated system (and thus most prone to failure) is the fork. A fork is probably the most likely item to get tweaked in a crash, since it is at the front of the bike and the first thing that connects with whatever a rider might be crashing into. It is also prone to less serious problems, like worn-out seals.

The majority of motorcycles you will be looking at will use hydraulically damped telescopic forks. These are the two long shock absorbers connecting your front wheel to your handlebar. There are other types of front ends—Harley uses an old-fashioned springer-type fork on some models, and BMW has too many oddball systems to keep track of—but I’m going to focus on the hydraulic front fork, which is the most common type.

The fork assembly is held together by metal pieces called “triple clamps.” These attach the fork to the steering head, which is the tubular assembly on the front of the frame in which the fork pivots. The triple clamps hold either the fork tubes or the fork sliders, depending on what type is used. Think of the fork tube as the male part of the fork, the part that inserts into the female part, and the slider as the female part that gets penetrated by the male part. (This may seem crude, but these are the terms that mechanics have always used.)

Traditionally the male part is at the top and the female part is at the bottom, but I’ve noticed that in recent years the trend has been to reverse these positions. Consequently, the inserting male part is now often found at the bottom, down by the wheel, and the female part is up by the triple clamps. These were originally called “upside-down forks,” and are still often referred to as “USD forks,” though they are becoming so common that more often than not people just call them “forks.” At first USD forks were only found on sport bikes, but now they’ve begun to appear on all types of bikes, including cruisers. Harley uses USD forks on its new Sportster XR1200 and Victory uses them on its Hammer and Kingpin models.

The first tools you’ll need to check a bike’s fork are your eyeballs. Look at the fork from the side. The two legs of the fork should line up perfectly. If one of the legs is skewed at a bit of an angle or looks bent, chances are the bike has experienced more than the normal amount of wear and tear. If the whole assembly looks a little cockeyed, then either the triple clamps are bent or the frame itself is bent in such a way that the steering head itself is tweaked. In the grand scheme of things, these problems range from really bad to downright terrible, and they should motivate you to find a different bike.

The other thing to look for in the visual inspection is oil leaking from a fork seal. If the fork hasn’t been cleaned, you’ll easily be able to see a ring where oil has collected and grime has built up around the fork tube, right at the end of the fork slider’s travel (the point at which the male part is most deeply inserted into the female part). Even if you don’t see this telltale ring, the fork seals may leak; the owner may just have wiped the tubes down so the leak wasn’t obvious.

You can tell if this is the case with a simple test. First, make certain that the owner or the mechanic you brought along, or anyone else capable of standing on his or her own two feet, is standing beside the bike to help keep it secure. Go to the front of the bike and get a strong grip on the handlebar. With the front wheel placed firmly between your legs, squeeze the front brake lever to keep the bike from rolling away from you (or worse yet, over you) and lift the bike up off its side stand. Once you have the bike securely upright, pump the fork up and down a few times. When you are finished, put the bike back down on its side stand, making sure that it’s resting in a secure position, and rub your finger along the exposed part of the fork tube above (or below on USD forks) the slider. If the seal is leaking, you’ll feel a thin film of oil.

If the bike is more than a few years old and hasn’t had the fork seals replaced, there’s a good chance you’ll find a leaky fork seal. A leaky fork seal shouldn’t be a deal breaker, but like just about everything else associated with a motorcycle, it will be relatively expensive to fix. Call a motorcycle shop that sells the model you’re looking at and get a quote for replacing the seals. Your final offer for the bike should reflect the money you’ll have to pay to repair the fork.

Follow the same procedure to check for other possible fork problems. When you’re pumping the fork up and down, make certain that both sides of the fork legs are moving up and down freely, without binding or making noise, both of which could be signs of expensive problems to come.

Steering Head Bearings

You can check the steering head bearings at the same time you’re checking out the fork. While you’re holding the bike up turn the handlebar all the way to the left, then all the way back to the right. Listen to see if you hear a clunking sound, which could indicate that a steering head bearing is loose or worn out; it may have dents and flat spots that can’t be adjusted away.

If the bike has a center stand, put it up on the center stand, as described in chapter 3.

Once the bike is securely on the stand, have the person who’s with you place his or her weight on the rear of the bike. This should lift the front tire in the air. When you’ve made sure the bike is secure, center the bar so that the tire is facing straight ahead and let it fall to one side, and then the other. If the wheel moves evenly and smoothly, chances are it’s in good condition. If it moves with a clunky, jerky motion, the bike likely has problems with the steering head bearings.

Again, this is not uncommon on older bikes, and it shouldn’t be a deal breaker; the bearings may just need an adjustment, but there is a good chance that they will need to be replaced. This will be even more expensive than leaky fork seals, especially if the bike has a lot of bodywork that needs to be removed. Check with a local shop to find out what this will cost to repair, and if you decide to buy the bike, make an offer that will reflect that cost.

While you have the front of the bike up in the air, check the condition of the wheel bearings by grasping the front wheel at a right angle to the fork and rock it from side to side. If you notice any play in the wheel, the wheel bearing will need shimming or replacement.

Tires

If you’re used to automobile tires, which often last fifty thousand miles or more, you’re in for a rude and expensive awakening when it comes to motorcycle tires. The very best motorcycle tires won’t last ten thousand miles; in most cases you’ll be doing good to get seventy-five hundred miles from a set of tires. And these tires are expensive; on big touring bikes like the Gold Wing or Vision that require the removal of a lot of plastic bodywork to gain access to the tires, you could be looking at $600-plus to buy a set of high-quality tires, and another $300 to have a shop mount them.

There’s really no way around this—it’s just the price you’ll pay to ride a motorcycle—but with that said, you can still do a few things to help keep your costs down, even when you first buy a bike. Pick up a tread-measuring tool and measure the depth of the tread on any bike you’re thinking of buying. Make sure the tires have at least 50 percent of their tread life left. If they don’t, get an estimate for the cost of tire replacement from your local shop and reflect those costs in any offer you might make for the bike.

Check the air pressure of the tires. Low air pressure is obviously not a major problem, but you’ll want to make certain that the tires are properly inflated before a bike is safe to take out on a test ride (consult the owner’s manual for the proper air-pressure level). Low pressure can mean a tire has a leak, but as often as not it just means the bike might have sat unused for a while. If a bike has been unused for more than a few months, check the sidewalls for dry rot, cracks, and weather checking. If a tire shows signs of problems like this, it should be replaced regardless of how much tread is left on it.

You can get a lot of information from the tire itself, like the date the tire was manufactured, for example. The date of manufacture is found in the final four-digit code stamped into the small oval area on the tire’s sidewall, right after the word
DOT
(Department of Transportation). The first two digits denote the week of the year in which the tire was manufactured and the last two digits represent the last two numbers of the year of manufacture. For example, if a tire was manufactured in June of 2006, the code will read: “2806.”

If the tire has a code that ends in three digits, that means the tire was manufactured before the year 2000. If that’s the case, then figure that you will need to replace it regardless of how good it looks. There is no hard-and-fast rule about how old a tire should get before replacing, but if you don’t have the sense not to ride on tires that are over ten years old, you should probably take up a safer hobby, like knitting. Even if a tire is just six or seven years old, you can assume it’s past its prime and will need replacement before you start riding the bike. Again, this isn’t a deal breaker, but when negotiating to buy the bike, your offer should reflect the cost of tire replacement.

Frames

Modern motorcycle frames are generally pretty robust pieces of equipment and won’t shake to pieces the way they used to on earlier bikes. (There are, however, exceptions, including Suzuki’s first-generation TL1000, a high-performance V-twin sport bike built in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and which developed a notable reputation for frame failure. Most frames you look at will either be made of tubular steel or aluminum alloy beams, though those found on BMWs from the 1980s and 1990s are virtually not frames at all, but rather consist of a couple of subframes bolted to the engine cases. In general, these were strong and reliable and should be no more problematic than the frames on other modern bikes.