Friday, June 12, 2009

CRAZY


These guys are nuts

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Take your bike any where



Many people buy motorcycles and never get more then 100 miles from home. Now I love to find new places to ride. The problem is finding the time to take long rides 800 miles or more. Don’t misunderstand that if I had the time I would get on my bike and go cross country no problem. Like most people I don’t have all the time in the world. I am lucky in the fact that I only need to get 1 bike from place to place. At least once a year I take a trip to Myrtle Beach and or Maryland from south fl. Up until about 3 years ago I put the bike in a pickup. As gas prices went sky high I started looking for a better way. I looked into shipping the bike NOT CHEAP. I came across this Local Company that builds aluminum trailers. This interested me because Along with the gas guzzling Truck I also have a Honda Civic. Now at first I thought that the Civic would not tow a bike. After researching it I thought this might work. Now these trailers are not cheap But It was a great investment. So far I have towed the bike from Ft Lauderdale to Baltimore and from Ft Lauderdale to Myrtle Beach twice. That works out to be about 5300 miles. At the end of this month going to Maryland for the fourth. With the truck I got about 14 MPG. With the civic I got about 30 to 32 MPG while towing the trailer. Plus with the truck I would need at least 1 maybe 2 other people and a good hill to unload the bike. With the trailer I can unload it my self. The trailer stores in my garage standing up. The only thing I did to the car was upgrade the brakes. I don’t think this was needed but it made me feel better other then that the car towed the bike with know problem. Now this wont work for every one but if you have a car with a 6 cyl you could pull 2 bikes with an aluminum trailer.
customcyclecarrier.com

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Go for it, It's easy




Let me start by saying that I am not a motorcycle mechanic. Over the past 20 plus years. I have owned lots of different types of bikes. The past 5 years I have owned a big twin Harley. The topic I am going to talk about is doing your own maintenance on your bike. If you are rich and can afford to pay someone to work on your bike then more power to you. I bought my bike new in 05 and I love it. I am not rich and this is a very big investment for me. For the first year I let the dealer do most of maintenance on my bike. After that I realized that as time went on I would not be able to afford to keep paying the high prices at the dealer.Dont get me wrong the place I bought my bike is really great and I am very happy with them but lets be realistic they are there to make money and I want to save some. The first thing I did was buy a shop manual specifically for my bike and read it. You will learn more about your bike then any salesman can teach you. This a great place to start for new or used bikes but not the only place. There are so many blogs forums and websites that you can pull up to learn different way to attack different problems with your bike. The one thing that is a constant is fluid changes on your bike, Motor oil, Primary fluid and Tran’s fluid. The first thing is to get all the right tools you will need. Believe me this is important. The first time you change all the fluids in you bike you will save enough money to pay for the tools and probably a tank of gas. Doing this kind of maintenance is not that hard to do. It is a great way to learn how your motorcycle works and you will know that is was done right. This is not a how to blog. I am not going to tell you how to do these things but just say that you can do them. Again I am not a motorcycle mechanic I was one of those guys who was afraid to take a wrench to my shiny new bike but I did and it was great. I ride a good bit. My bike has about 23k miles on and runs like it did when it was new and looks even better. The reason I am posting this Blog is to let people know that if I can do it anybody can. Money is very tight these days and to do your own maintenance can save you a lot.
Thanks
TERRY