Maintenance

Regular service, including oil changes and air filter inspections, is essential to the proper operation of your motorcycle. In general, motorcycle owners seem to take better care of their bikes than car owners do their vehicles, but the point still cannot be stressed enough.

Motorcycles have much smaller tolerances than cars for things like bad tire pressure, dirty air filters, and old burnt oil. Not only will your gas mileage and performance improve with a well-maintained motorcycle, but you will be that much safer while riding and less likely to end up stranded, possibly throwing off the entire schedule for a trip.

I make a point before every longer outing to spend some time with the bike in the garage, usually cleaning it as I go along, looking for loose bolts, checking filters and tire pressures, looking for anything out of the ordinary. If there's something severely wrong with the bike, you'll be a lot better off to find it and possibly delay a trip than to end up stranded away from home and paying for somewhere to sleep while your bike gets fixed.