Last week I picked up a nail in my back tire. I’ve never had that happen before and when the tire deflated it was a bit scary. I’m moving along at *ahem* highway speed when I notice that the front end of the bike feels wrong. It feel like it wants to go in to a tank slapper. In case you don’t know a tank slapper is where the handle bars on a motorcycle rapidly oscillate from one site to the other to the point that the clip-ons are literally slapping the tank. Anyway, because it is coming up through the handle bars I figure something is wrong with the front wheel. And it is getting worse! So I start to slow down so I can pull off and see what is going on. As I roll off the throttle it gets worse!
Great. I’m going to die because there is no way I can turn the bike like this and I can’t slow down. Luckily I was able to slow it down and pull off the side of the road.
I looked and the front wheel was fine, but the back tire was flat.
I called my wife and she brought the truck and got me home with the bike. This weekend I took the bike in and had new tires put on. Which brings me around to the maintenance thing. Sorry for the long winded intro, getting a flat tire on a bike seriously stinks and it gets expensive quick (tires aren’t cheap).
Anyway, I do oil changes myself. Changing the oil on a Ducati is an absolute pleasure. They designed the bike so well that the oil almost changes itself. You drop the lower fairing and everything you need to get at is right there on the right side. No odd angles, nothing gets in your way. The oil filter comes off easily with a strap wrench and the oil plug is in a convenient spot. The entire process takes about 10 minutes. The biggest problem I have is getting the right amount of oil back in the bike so that it is exactly on the full line. And the problem is really that I’m impatient.
The next thing is that if you can remove the wheels from your bike yourself you can save a fair amount of money doing so. Most shops charge for a full hour of labor to pull the wheels off your bike, put on the new skins and then put the wheels back on your bike. In general this isn’t really a hard work to perform if you have the right tools. In general.
A friend in the TSBA sold me his front stand so I’m not able to get my bike up off the ground so I can remove the wheels. I also picked up the sockets I’d need to remove the front and rear axles (30mm front and 46mm rear). The front axle isn’t too bad and comes off pretty easily. The rear though…. I couldn’t do it! The nut was so tight that even with help I couldn’t get it off. And this is where it gets expensive.
I decided to just take the whole bike in and have them swap the wheels. My time is better spent, in terms of money, working on building my business. However, in the process of loading my bike in my truck, something I’ve done hundred of times, I caused it to fall over on its right side.
Initially I thought it wasn’t too bad. There was some scuffing on the side of the upper fairing but that was it. Or so I thought. It turned out that I had broken the right mirror. It fell completely off! So now not only did I have to replace nearly new tires because of a nail, I also need to find a new mirror. I checked eBay and I should be able to find a new one, but damn – they are expensive. Maybe I’ll find a way to fix this mirror.
Next time – I’ll be more careful loading the bike. Also, I’m going to try using my impact wrench next time. I really want to be able to pull my wheels myself and not have to have the shop do everything for me. Big things like the valve adjustment that Ducati’s require I’m cool handing it over to a pro. But I really should be able to do the simple stuff myself.
By the way. I’ve mentioned before how stupid it is for people to switch to motorcycles for the better gas mileage. Here is an example: tires. Tires on sport bikes can get maybe 4000 miles before they have to be replaced. In many cases it is considerably less. Why? Because the tires on a motorcycle work harder than the tires on a car and they have to grip better. That means the compounds are softer. A set of street tires for a sport bike will set you back about $300.00 plus the cost of installation. If you can pull your wheels yourself installation will be about $30 for the set. But if you have to take the bike in it will set you back a lot more, as much as $100. Even just commuting to and from work you will go through 3 or 4 sets of tires a year. If you are like me and you also go to the track and do long rides on weekend you can end up eating up a set of tires every month or two. It adds up quick. Even more so if you can’t do your own maintenance. So that little bit of money you save on gas is going to get spent elsewhere along with a pile more.
If you want cheap transportation buy a used Honda Civic. They get 30+ mpg and run forever with nothing but oil changes. Cheap Goodyear tires will last 30K miles and sense you aren’t autocross they will be good enough.