Jeff Thompson: Hi I am Jeff Thomson in Motorcycle Riding Concepts and I am going to teach you how to ride a motorcycle today. Before we get started, there is an important thing that you need to do every day and in every week or so, is to check your motorcycle out. We have talked already about safety gear and the type of motorcycles that are out there; let's talk about how to check your bike to make it safe before you ride.
As you step out of your kitchen into your garage and you are approaching your motorcycle, getting ready for your ride or whatever it maybe; what you should check on as you approach your bike is to check and see if there is any fluid underneath it. One of the most important things that your should check everyday is the oil level in your bike and we'll go over that here in a second but as you go to do your safety checks; in your mind do a little routine that you should do everyday, we call around the world, start at one point of the bike, walk around the bike and just check it out as you go, start at one point into your motorcycle and end back at that point.
Today we're going to start at the rear of the motorcycle and work all the way forwards. Take a look at the rear tire, make sure that it's okay, that there is no nails in it, that it is not dry-rotted near the rim here, and that the tire pressure is where it should be. There is nothing more important that you should check once a week; is the tire pressure, especially in the spring and fall when the tire temperature are the, excuse me, the ambient temperature goes up and down; the tire pressure could change up to 2 and 3 pounds a week.
So that's something you're going to need to check with a tire gauge, very simple go down to the gas station, pullover air and if you need to, but walk forward, check your belt on the back of the bike. This particular motorcycle has a drive belt; there are three different ways you can propel your motorcycle; there is a belt, a chain and a drive shaft like would be in a car. This particular motorcycle once again is an entry level star motor cycle; it is propelled with a belt, check your belt, make sure that there is no cracks, that it is not split, that it has the right tension, and by doing that just take your finger down here and thump that belt to make sure that it is at right tension. These things are fairly easy to maintain, and you should check it once a week to make sure that the tension is where it needs.
But as you're walking forward, shake your components and make sure that they are not loose or broken, that's very important. This is your rear foot peg that you can move up and down, if you happen to have a passenger. This component, right here, is the rear master cylinder to your motorcycle; it should have fluid, the fluid level is very easy to see on it; it's clear, it should be the color of beer or something medium colored like that, if it's dark that means it needs to be replaced, okay.
As you walk forward, this is the front foot peg on your motorcycle here and this is the rear brake. The rear brake is obviously important for you to know where that is to stop your motorcycle. This particular motorcycle has a carburetor on it, newer motorcycles now have fuel injection, they really don't need much maintenance at all, you turn the key on and go. This particular motorcycle has a carburetor; it has an automatic choke on it, you don't have to worry about choke in it, when you start it on a cold morning.
As we walk forward, this is the gas tank of the motorcycle inside this plastic shell; obviously you need to check your gas once a day. This particular motorcycle does not have a fuel gauge on it, so you have to check your fuel level by the mileage. When you go to put your gas in it at the gas station, check your trip meter and know how many miles you've ridden, when you go to fill your bike up in that way, it will be easy for you to fill it up next time.
Walking forward on the motorcycle, this is the front master, the front caliper of the motorcycle where the brake components are. This is the Rotor; you'll notice on the motorcycle that the front Rotor is a lot bigger than the rear Rotor, on the rear. We'd like to say that the front Rotor is the size of a dinner plate and the rear Rotor is the size of a dessert plate. The reason we make that important for you is because most of the braking on a motorcycle is done by the front end.
Okay, once again check your tires, as you go through, they shouldn't have any cracks or splits in them, no nails or screw stuck in the side, that's a dangerous situation. Also check your fork stems, this is your fork for the front end, this is your suspension component, check and see if it's leaking here, just run your finger around there, see if there is any fluid on it.
Walk into the other side of the motorcycle, check the other fork leg, as we just spoke about, and walk forward on the motorcycle, look and see if there is any leaks, this particular motorcycle has been polished a little bit down here, that's what that fluid is here. This is your clutch cable; make sure it's not loose or chafed as it comes into the side of the engine here. This is your Shift lever; its important to know where that is when we go to shift the motorcycle, walking forward, this is where your clutch is.
On the motorcycle this area here normally gets pretty hot, so be carefully when you're laying your foot up against this side of the engine. This is your kick stand, it's important to know that where the kick stand is, sometimes they're hard to find. This particular motorcycle has a switch built into it, if you try to put it in first gear and lay it off with the kick stand down, the engine dies; that is a safety component for this entry style motorcycle. That won't let you ride the motorcycle down the road with the kick stand down. Once again, as you're checking your motorcycle, make sure that, that kicks stand moves freely, it's not broken or split and the spring is still on it, that's important to check.
Like we've already mentioned, this is the rear brake, our component here, this is the rear Rotor, notice the size different from the one before, it's much smaller, which indicates that not nearly as much braking goes on with the rear. Again check your tire. One of the last things is you should check about the mechanics on the motorcycle is just push down on the back and make sure you don't here any noise or clanking from the rear shock absorber, occasionally, those shock absorber bolts come loose, you should check those in once a month or so.
There is no more important thing than you can do for your motorcycle is to wash it now and then. As you're washing your motorcycle, I mean all this is like a clean motorcycle, but, as you're washing it and you are putting the rag on the bike and drying it off, that's a good chance for you to find the parts of the motorcycle that are broken or missing.
Okay let's take a look at where the actual working components of the Shift lever and things like that are. What I'm going to do is turn the key to the ON position here and then on motorcycles the key position is important to know where the key is; to turn the ignition ON because on motorcycles they are in different locations on the bike, some of them are down here on the tank, some of them are here on the left, so it's important to know where the key is to turn the motorcycle on.
This is your High-Low beam indicator, which switches up the headlight from high to low beam and it's important to know where that is. This is the Turn signal indicator here; this particular motorcycle has the Turn signals removed because we took them off due to trainee accidents. This is your Horn on the left side here and most motorcycles after a certain year the Federal Government mandated that, that all the controls be in a certain location on the motorcycle.
That's your Horn, and working your way over to the right side of the motorcycle, this is the master cylinder for the front brake; it has a window in the front, once again you check that window to make sure that fluid is in there, should be that same beer color as we've talked about before. This is your On-Off switch; it's important to know where that On-Off switch is as that is where if you have to kill the motorcycle very quickly, that you can reach right down here and just kill that switch very quickly, not have to reach up with your other hand and turn the key off.
This yellow button here is the Starter button, that's what starts the motorcycle; we will talk about that here in a couple of minutes. Once again this motorcycle has a switch in the clutch that will not allow the motorcycle to start unless the clutch is depressed and a lot of newer motorcycles have that same feature. This is front brake and we'll show you later on how to effectively use that front brake in a controlled stopping environment. Now that we've learned where all the components of the motorcycle are, we're actually going to move on to starting the motorcycle.
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