What motorcycles teach about maintenance
books.worksinprogress.co
books.worksinprogress.co
Teletypes were originally rented, with maintenance included. So they were intended to be reliable and repairable, and capable of a long life with periodic maintenance. All parts outside the motor are individually replaceable. Parts were treated against corrosion by Parkerizing, a chemical treatment involving hot caustic baths that leaves a rust-resistant coating. Few parts are unreasonably tiny, so you don't need tweezers and magnifiers. This did result in a bulkier machine than really necessary. Most moving parts are powered in one direction and spring return in the other direction. If something sticks, that doesn't cause further damage. Almost every screw has a lock washer. One of the few exceptions was due to a drafting error, as I mention in my writeup.
Mechanism design balances size, cost, ease of repair, wear, and lubrication requirements. The number of people really good at that is not large. All the good Teletype machines were designed by two men, Howard Krum and, later, Ed Klienschmidt. There were some other, inferior designs best forgotten. (The Teletype Model 26 was what happened when management wanted a cheaper machine than the classic Model 15. Many Model 15 machines are still running; few Model 26 machines are. And the Model 26 turned out to be no cheaper to make.)
Once you can appreciate this, you'll see good and bad mechanical designs more clearly. It's clearer in the mechanical realm than the software realm, because failure is more obvious.
There are a few examples on my car like that that are a bit infuriating (and were corrected on later revisions of the model, which I know because a friend has a later revision).
I wish I was articulate enough to properly detail how really interesting the book is even for someone who has absolutely zero interest in maintaining a combustion engine
also curious to hear your learnings on holding onto inspiration.
I was lead infrastructure engineer for middleware at a large retail company. When I started, they were just starting a project to roll out a content management system. Because they didn't have expertise in house at kickoff, they paid the vendor to do the infrastructure design. The visio drawing was delivered to me when I started for review. Despite the guy who drew it supposedly being an expert from the vendor, it was missing two of the most vital components in the drawing. He'd also asked for a total of over 30 physical machines which was way over the capacity that was needed then (or now). I setup a meeting with the Enterprise Architect who was heading the project. He didn't know anything about the solution and was the one who had suggested they hire the vendor to do the design. I explained to him the issues with the design and suggested a different design. I explained how the vendor charged by vcpu so implementing this overkill of a solution would result in millions of unnecessary dollars being spent. His response was "they've already budgeted the money so we should spend it while we've got it." I said ok and that was the end of the meeting.
I had already drawn out my corrected design and I assigned my team to build my design. This was 2012 and outside of a hardware refresh and updates/upgrades, that design is still in place and still being used. The company has saved millions in licensing fees and they don't even know it.
Most people would have just gone ahead and built it as told. My inspiration was to always do the right thing. It was obvious to me that the EA didn't have that same motivation.
Even closer to the general idea, the radio show "Car Talk" was less about cars than the name would have implied. Would love to see it revived in spirit.
That said, still a fun read. Not entirely sure there are general learnings that can't be found anywhere. Such that I would push for the takeaway of "don't stop looking for lessons when out of the job or classroom."
If nothing else, the tight loop created by the motorcycle teaches preventative maintenance schedules in a way that is tough to replicate outside aviation. Or you die/stop riding.
For example, I've blown a front tire in my car at speed on the highway with no adverse consequences except having to steer off center for a moment and swap the wheel in 5 degree weather. No biggie.
My bikes get routine chain, tire, fluid and electrical checks however, as a similar failure could end me.
That is, the miles you have put into a car "at speed" is almost certainly far greater than what you put your motorcycle through. For reasons of the car giving much more utility of use. And the fact that you still have a motorcycle is clearly a choice. One that you have to put effort into keeping up. That you would also choose to see something special about that choice is not at all surprising.
If you are putting the same number of miles on a motorcycle as a car, you either don't have to drive much, or are in some other very fringe situation. Pretty much period. Yes, it can and does happen. It is in a minority of cases though. Happy to be shown data that this is not the case, of course.
Edit: I got mixed on some other posts, I didn't say this one "sounds like it." Apologies for the odd rephrasing in this post. I stand by everyone that has every pushed this idea forward to me does so in what feels like a post-hoc justification.
What are you doing so much driving for that requires a car?
But getting at a "how much do you personally drive" is silly. My point wasn't that some folks don't exist. It was that the norm is very very different. A google search claims: "The average annual mileage of a motorcycle is about 3,000 miles." Compared to: "The FHWA states that the average person drives around 13,500 miles per year. It equates to well over 1,000 miles every month."
Not quite an order of magnitude, but still highly skewed. Even in "commuting" miles driven, you lose the utility of merging your commute with a grocery run. Or dropping kids off at school. Very real limits for many.
Which brings it back into the realm of hobby. Note that if you are taking "hobby" as some sort of derogatory claim against it, that is not my intent. My point is pretty strictly on the fact that it is largely maintained for the pleasure of the activity. The utility of the alternatives is typically undeniable.
Here is additional reading about mechanical things from a different era.
https://mossmotoring.com/manhattan-mechanic/
https://mossmotoring.com/souvenirs-and-socket-sets/
I'm sure non-british cars of that era are similar.
My father taught me the skill of listening to the car, I can diagnose many problems with a motor with barely any description, but I can get really far with a screwdriver as a stethoscope. Thanks to understanding how they work, even rough descriptions of symptoms or noises 20 yards away and I'll remark about what's wrong with the engine or accessories. (Granted, as a kid, we had the sounds of Sebring on reel to reel)
Luckily, ICE knowledge is also transferrable to fun things like boat engines. Boats, then have their own set of physics to try fun things with (like trim tabs, outboard hydrofoils)
As it turns out, a 20 year old car, a 20 year old boat, hobbies like track days and slalom skiing lead to many busy weekends.
Stuff like needing a lift, or needing a hoist to lift heavy parts like the engine or transmission.
And even almost new motorcycles have minimal computer/electronic issues where the manufacturer is hiding how to do things. Get the Service manual and it tells you basically everything except how to hack the ECU.
I'm surprised you would say modern motorcycles aren't harder, honestly. Even modern bicycles are getting into the "you really can't do this without a dedicated shop" for a lot of things. Regular maintenance is easy enough. But that is true of cars. I'm always surprised when I hear folks have never changed brake pads. Drum brakes are a pain, sure, but most folks don't have drum brakes.
It's just nowhere near as severe as cars where the manufacturers are ultra hostile to the owner working on the car and even do their best to make it hard for independent mechanics & shops to work on it.
If cars were like motorcycles I doubt we'd have movements for right to repair.
I don't think there's any evidence to suggest passionate motorcyclists are dramatically more passionate than car guys. Lots of car guys have their entire identity tied up in their choice of car and bury themselves financially to drive that car and are pretty much obsessed with it.
Fortunately there's a constant flow of user friendly "low end" bikes coming out of Japan, India and China.
Stock prices have to go up, and that means subscription models and pay-to-fix
About the ECU. Bikes are becoming increasingly hobbled by emissions compliant ECUs. The aftermarket ECU options allow you to tune the bike the way you want. I'm not talking diesel-gate here either. My Honda ECU was getting me 40mpg, my aftermarket is getting 50-60 mpg but with maybe higher CO2 per gallon??? I dont understand what the rules/laws are optimising for?
As a car person I am a bit envious and long for the day when cars could be smaller, cheaper, lighter, and more simple.
Accessing the troublesome parts of a motorcycle is orders of magnitude easier than with a car. And few specialty tools (I can’t think of any right now) are generally required.
I owned a few motorcycles in my 20s, but sold them after my first child was born. A decade later, after a significantly challenging year, I decided to buy a motorcycle because, “I just want something to look forward to.” Beautiful days are more meaningful when the weather is granting you permission to go for a ride.
The shortest summary of it I could describe is from the concept of "trueness," where you have a wheel or a reference point, a straight edge, or even just geometry, so you can physically apprehend what something is supposed to do as an objective ideal, and then you use that reference to reason, refine, and gauge your effort against it. Like the process of truing a wheel. Once you have an idea of what the perfect case is, chosing to align to that case is essentially moral.
In the case of a motorcycle, someones life depends on the integrity of your alignment to ensuring the trueness of the moving parts together. The effect of people generally choosing this now-moral alignment to precise measures and ideals produces desirable outcomes. This is what I think makes bike maintenance and other physical competencies philosophical, as their logic translates into metaphors pretty seamlessly.
Great article anyway. His comment on the public good of providing live saving organs is funny and accurate:
> The supply of organs and tissue from motorcycle riders has gone up in recent decades, especially in the 22 states that still don’t have helmet laws.
It's why EMT's call them donor-cycles.
This past weekend I was on a road trip to South Carolina. On the way, most every motorcycle that I saw was a BMW. I told my girlfriend after seeing the Nth that it can't be a coincidence, and I went and found out there was a BMW motorcycle rally taking place that weekend. Anyway, seeing some old BMWs made me remember the book, and I mentioned it to my GF. She had read it too but may years ago like myself - like 40 years ago. But one thing that I had remembered was that the bike was a BMW.
After reading the above quoted line about Pirsig not mentioning the make, I looked it up, and I had to reset my memory. It's the Sutherland's who are riding a BMW, and they don't have an interest initially in doing any of their own maintenance. Well, at least I remembered that there was a BMW in the story. ;)
Also, this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/cycle...
One channel is mostly teardowns of different busted car engines, and as those are essentially all postmortem operations, they play out like murder mysteries as different parts of the engine face varying degrees of damage from whatever went wrong (oil starvation/clogging typically, sometimes hydrolock or more exotic combustion failures). Apart from absorbing some small amount of understanding of how internal combustion engines work, the need for regular oil changes and inspections has been impressed on me about 20x.
A 1L 3cyl Ecoboost w/ 120hp has the same highway MPG as my 3L 6cyl w/ 340hp.
Smaller engines push in extra fuel to cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aO2vC_iMTI
It’s more accurate to say these engines are more efficient under normal driving conditions, but have the option to be driven at high acceleration or extreme speed. Anyone can get poor gas mileage in a Prius if they drive like a race car driver, nobody has the option to drive a big V6 efficiently.
Aka Nobody publishes cannonball run fuel efficiency because that’s abnormal conditions.
First, it is the Honda Magna. Second, this mechanic took him to the cleaners. The Magna isn't nearly as complex as a Goldwing. $1000 for cleaning the carbs and a new battery simply isn't honest.
As one who has made the mistake of buying a bike that had been sitting a few years, if someone asked me to ball-park an estimate, $1000 might begin to cover it. One might very well get away with less, but I wouldn't count on it for my estimate.
(And I've owned several Honda V4s over the years: those carbs do NOT come out easily, and they go back in even harder.)
A motorcycle that has been sitting for 2 years does NOT need a complete overhaul, as you point out. But there is much-better-than-even chance that the 1983 motorcycle hadn't had ANY major maintenance done to it up to the point it stopped being ridden. It was probably parked in the first place because it stopped running due to lack of maintenance. And everything the mechanic listed that needed to be done likely hadn't been done in decades.
When you err in the other direction it tends to produce worse outcomes for everyone involved, with the mechanic often ending up eating the difference.
(I've worked as an auto mechanic in a former life)
My last encounter with a VFR750 involved a heat gun and a pry-bar to remove the carburetors, they're no joke.
[^0]: I love my GS1000G, but this wasn't my favorite part of getting it roadworthy.
[0] You might have a plastic reservoir with a screw-off cap, in which case... you'll use the JIS for something else.
P.S. Congrats on the new bike! Take an advanced riding course, read Keith Code, and buy good gear and you'll have a ton of fun with it.
Now, if he had recommended a full carb clean and battery replacement, of course that would bring the total to over $1000. Those recommendations are optional though, and your bike can live without them (if you enjoy using the kickstarter constantly ;)
Also remember - if I am doing repairs for fun, I only count the parts cost.
But if I go to professional mechanic, it's $100/hr in labour. So $1000 might be $300 of parts and a day of labour to restore to safe operation an old motorcycle.
That is quite in line with the amount of work I've seen friends do to bring old bikes back on road (well... my friends would spend weeks and dozens of hours, but we're assuming mechanics are more efficient:)
For the labour of an oil change, I was quoted $25 for my car, and $65 for my motorcycle.
To change the oil and filter on my car, you have to reach in a super terrible spot prone to burning and cutting people who attempt it.
On my motorcycle? It's an enduro, I have a foot of clearance and can see the single bolt required from across the driveway, it also requires exactly 2 quarts.
I got quite quick at changing my bike oil, and continued to pay someone else to burn themselves on my car.
Few thoughts / possibilities
- was work done as part of larger work, as incremental?
- does 25$ charge include parts?
- was this a quick turnaround lube shop or an actual qualified mechanic
- do you have a relationship
- what's their business model? A lot of them have loss leaders because when they change your oil for 25 they'll find out you also need a brake change or filter change or or or
$160 last time I got an oil change at the dealership.
There is usually one bottle that meets spec in retail stores, and it is $80 alone.
I kick myself for the VW diesel pretty consistently, but I still have some time left on the Dieselgate warranty extension.
Canadian prices?
Pre-COVID I was doing full synthetic (Mobil-1) for $25 a bottle on sale plus a $15 filter in my other car. A good sale is $45 now.
Everything feels like highway robbery now.
I use synthetic, and their markup is so much it's cheaper to just provide them with my own. Hell their price for filters is more than the parts counter at the dealership.
Quick lube shop, so the least qualified people you can get to lay their hands on your vehicle. Gonna be honest, I check there's still oil in my car when I get home.
And yes, the quick lube shop is always trying to upsell me services I "need", like $100 to change my air filter, or $80 to change my cabin air filter (both which are literally 1 minute jobs), and $20/$40 parts from the dealership. Same with brake fluid flushes and other things.
That being said there's going to be a bell curve. If you're going to ask mechanic for a quote, presumably you were unable to kick start it doth two tries, and now you're in a different bucket.
As well, not all bikes that start are safe to ride. A mechanic may - should - have a safety minded standard of service.
On the bright side, I’m learning more and more about sidewalk mechanic-ing. It’s a lot of fun. Very flow state in that way that programming just hasn’t been able to scratch in years. You go to replace some mufflers and what feels like 5 minutes was actually 2 hours.
a lot of younger folks are impatient (past me included) and get suboptimal results for a lot of time spent, which puts them off of doing work themselves. the irony is of course that younger folks have all the time and none of the money. they are also the ones complaining the most about how expensive home/auto/whatever services are.
this will also teach you the limits of what you actually can and can't do, so that when you do spend money on a pro it's money well spent. they also prefer to do the more complex jobs (less customer overhead, setup and cleanup time eating into margins) so it's win-win. as someone above said, they're far more efficient at the actual work but you can't make a lift go faster or shortcut any consumables used.
Because just like we have bugs in production, things break when you wrench on them, even if you do everything by the book (note: first-hand experience there).
But those are just setbacks, and no big deal if you are prepared for them.
Even something as simple as an oil change can go wrong. Drain plug broke and you need a new one? Or you forgot to put a gasket and it leaks and now all your oil is on the floor? Well, now you need a trip to the parts store, or order it and wait until parts get there.
In my case, it was a routine maintenance operation: changing brake fluid. I used a power bleeder, and at a third of the pressure specified on the manual, the reservoir ruptured. So now I needed a new reservoir. Parts store didn't have it, and it took 2 weeks to get there.
Hey, better this happen while you're wrenching than when you're zooming through the twisties and need to stop
Luckily that one was just a quick trip to the parts store to get the right fluid and reconnecting the line properly this time!
Often I'd invite a friend over while I did the work, keeps me company and that way they can be the backup vehicle (and I'd return the favour).
This is the other reason a lot of people will do their own motorbike maintenance - for a lot of people, the motorbike is the second vehicle.
It's also rare to order too many parts or tools. Rental tools are very useful, but many times as a car ages, you may need to order other parts.
Though I don't get this complaint; because there is often lead time at a mechanic's for the parts too; you still need a backup transportation plan for that situation. (And it's even more likely to effect you during a 9-5 if you your wrenching on weekends or weeknights)
The parts for that these days would probably be over $500, and around here shop labor is $100/hr, so it would probably be more than $1000 today.
There is no fuel pump to break (or weight the bike down), I could run the carb with a soda bottle if I had to. There are no complex computers to break and brick the bike.
Beyond the reliability, the real value of the carbs is the FEEL. This bike is analog, the rumbling sounds, the brilliant popping and gurgle on deceleration. Its a motorcycle, mechanical gear changes, cable operated throttle, controlled explosions.
We loose something with tft displays, riding modes, non analog throttles, and every granny safety algorithm in between our brains and the rear tire.
And the # of people who ever drove a car that had separate throttle butterflies + carbs for each cylinder is miniscule. Even with EFI not many people have driven a car that is built like a motorcycle. Pretty much only supercars are built that way.
Most cars with carbs seem to have had far more issues than bikes too.
I’d bet a fair number of old people and old car enthusiasts have driven them.
My 65 and 66 Mustangs run great as long as I don’t let modern ethanol-polluted gas sit in them.
What cars had these?
I imagine it makes for an amazingly close interaction between driver and vehicle
In modern fuel injected cars, secondary intake and fuel injection systems get more complex with rpm; typically its about 3500 rpm or 50% throttle position cause a different fuel map, an intake runner flapper, and for the last 30 years, some automatic cam timing adjustment.
My EFI bike has none of these.
EFI is just fuel metering. And properly designed EFI can theoretically do even better at a carb at doing what you've commanded the bike to do, because it can adjust fuel mapping in many more dimensions than a couple of needles.
I love my carb'd bike for what it is, but it ain't any better at doing what I've told it to do. It has character, and I can appreciate it for what it is, but it is not more precise or direct in feel than my EFI bike.
> There is no fuel pump to break
Some carb'd bikes have fuel pumps
Someone needs to write “Zen and the art of keeping my filesystem tidy” or “Zen and the art of keeping a rolling release distro up to date.”
motorcycles are more exposed and intimate so it’s easier to detect issues earlier .
Modern cars have adopted more non-user-serviceable tech. Intermediate procedures like clutch replacement , brake maintenance , tune ups are accessible to beginners on a motorcycle .
in general motorcycle maintenance is more accessible due to the open drive train, smaller footprint and user-serviceable technology .
For those discouraged to put their life in their own hands – it’s much riskier to put your life into someone else’s . You can mitigate the risks with checklists and solid testing procedures . Trust me , you will develop safety and quality standards that are much more rigorous than a shop .
And if you don't trust the shop you are taking your vehicle to for rigorous standards, you should probably look into a different shop. :(
That said, I am mainly referring to modern gearing and injection systems. Basic maintenance is probably well within what folks can do. But that is true of cars, as well. No?
100% of a mid level bike and 80-90% of a premium bike can be self serviced
I suppose the market catered to itself, and things were kept more home serviceable for longer?
I get the car back and the idle is rough…it stalls (car is running lean)when disengaging the clutch and oddly enough brake booster vacuum is completely lost when it stalls…(not normal as breaking should work for a couple of pumps before stiffening the pedal). Almost crashed…
Anyhow I open the hood check all vacuum hoses for cracks or improper connections. Long story short the mechanic forgot to put the break master cylinders coupling gasket back on the brake booster was letting in unmeasured air causing it to lean and stall; which also caused me to loose breaking when stalled. Worst case scenario.
Honest mistake probably but I feel like the shop mechanic may have been rushing and completely messed up. Luckily I caught it. So yea I don’t trust most shops mechanics…
Further, you can always split it. Hire them to do it, but then you inspect it when done. If you are good enough that you can inspect after you did the work, you can inspect after anyone else did, too. Right?
I may know less, but I'm not being watched for efficiency; I'm less likely to break out an impact gun (partly because it doesn't fit under the car as easily) and I can compare the old to the new. And if I'm tired, I can take a break and check the manual.
And if I do the work, I do the test drive; and if something goes awry, I should know what to look for, for that rattle, that noise, or the next warmup. A quick lube tech might drive your car 30ft to a parking spot, and is likely thinking more about the next car than, any given noise, or whether the thermostat has cycled even once.
On your further, sure you can split the difference, and I do do that when I do take it to a shop, and most of the time I've not been impressed (though I have been with some bmw shops). But this only works if you know what your engine sounds and looks like when clean.
That all said, interesting to read your perspective and how different our "priors/expectations" are. Would love to see some collected data to know how well this plays out.
In the vein of "car guys," I'm also curious if it conveys information to see clearly restoration vehicles near local shops. Just this AM, I noticed a classic mustang next to the main shop we use. I know they have fun working on some older vehicles.
Say more. I feel I'm the exact opposite if I understand you correctly.
This seems intuitively sensible for mechanical / physical objects, although I'm not sure how well it applies where the broken thing is software, with deep complexity and multiple layers of abstraction.
I.e. ontologies exist in consciousnesses, not in the universe, and they're really powerful tools
Which is fair, given how most riders I see out on the road have zero concern for their own safety, let alone others.
If you're going to go twice the speed people are expecting a vehicle to go, in a space nobody expected a vehicle to fit, in a vehicle that offers none of the usual protections, your luck may run out sooner than average.
It's frustrating because everyone wanted to cite the statistics at me when I started riding, but I just wished I could get those stats filtered by people who ride in a civilized manner.
As someone who enjoys working on my own car and motorcycle - and as someone who does find a certain zen in maintaining the machines that I own - the book was a profound disappointment. Instead of finding philosophical insight from a relatable perspective, I found the ungrounded ramblings of a man who is seeking to understand a world which only quite exists inside his own mind.
A motorcycle actually taught me my main lesson of maintenance: sometimes it's just better to leave a well working system alone instead of servicing it for fun. I once did a task that was 2x behind schedule, and while doing so exposed a problem that almost caused it to fail hard the following weeks commute. If I had done that before a long trip, it would have been a serious problem.
I told this story to a prior air force mechanic and he laughed. He told me the military learned long ago that there is a limit to preemptive maintenance such that the likelyhood of problems from human error and just chance overshadows the benefit of the preemptive maintenance. I now no longer do any "might as well!" maintenance at all, and never do major maintenance before a trip without a good chunk of time prior devoted to road testing the vehicle again before the trip.
It was posted here a while back and I’ve been enjoying the detailed build up.
1st a mechanic learns to fix things without breaking things along the way.
2nd a mechanic learns to do things quickly.
3rd a mechanic learns to do things without getting dirty.
Bicycle maintenance can be annoying, but it doesn’t seem nearly as time-intensive as motorcycle maintenance. On the other hand, the process of cycling feels better to me compared to being on a motor bike. It’s quieter, slower, and great exercise. I can talk with others. I feel as though I can get into a state of peace on lower effort rides, as well as a state of flow while racing.
Sometimes going slow is the point, and there's a certain peace of be able to view and interact with the world in that way.
- long distance trips through N America led me close to a ton of wildlife I would not have seen or dared come close to on bicycle. Mama bears with curious cubs, moose drinking water by the roadside, wolves in one case
- allowed me to tackle trails in a day I would not be able to do on a mountain bike (eg. the trails around Moab)
- ability to go on roads Bikes are not legal (crossing the confederation bridge to get to PEI; don’t think bikes are allowed)
- ability to traverse distances equivalent to a car, but while feeling much more connected to your surroundings. Helps when you only have so much vacation time you can take.
Bicycle:
- much more enjoyable trips through Toronto via routes not possible on motorcycle (parks, ravines, etc.)
- many trails do not allow motorcycles but allow mountain bikes
- allowed a limited freedom at a young age to explore the city around me
- the wonderful post exercise feeling
Of course the powertrain and packing of components is orders of magnitide more complicated too, it's more similar to car maintenance that doesn't require a lift
I think the thing is a lot of bicyclists are not really doing things half-assed YOLO style.
Bicycle mechanics are rarely really professionals. There's very little training or education requirement for being one compared to motorcycles or cars.
I have had a lot of cases where so called professional bicycle shops did work that was so bad they'd be in legal trouble if they were working on cars. And I can and do buy most of the same tools they do.
The only thing I really draw the line on is I do not do major wheel repairs or build wheels or disassemble & service hubs. Those jobs are so rare I just can't justify the space or cost for the tools. If I only need something once every 10 years I just can't see dedicating that amount of space & money to it.
Motorcycle maintenance is more rewarding. I have a 70s bike so it requires a lot of work to keep it running smoothly. Motorcycle maintenance more complex and I find far more enjoyment in it. It can be tedious, but it’s not as bad as adjusting a derailleur or lubricating a chain.
I think this article could be summarized as “problem solving offers many learning opportunities”
On the other hand, cars (and I assume motorcycle as well) maintenance is enjoyable: there is no fiddling with stuff, you fit it, torque it and it's good.
First - Repairs after a big racetrack crash where the bike slid and then cartwheeled after crashing around 70mph in a corner. Bike would have been totaled for sure if it was a street crash. It took me months to fix everything considering I was working full time.
Second - Repairing a coolant leak in a horrible spot that required removal of gas tank, airbox, EFI system, etc.. massive surgery. The leak was not that bad but was driving me insane and the shops were all trying to talk me out of doing it as they said they'd charge me a lot.
Those big motorcycle maintenance jobs were insanely rewarding once complete though. And I think they cause you to really view that motorcycle as "yours".
Some bike jobs I do find tedious (cleaning) but things like adjusting a derailleur I'm so good at it I can do it in my sleep so it's quick and hard to get bothered.
Bicycle stuff that bothers me is stuff like routing internal cables or bleeding badly designed brake systems. I do tend to do those though as the shop will charge like $100/hr labor for it and tell you that you have to wait weeks for them to do it. Bicycle tools are super overpriced but they still pay for themselves after only 1-2 jobs!
Bicycle repair does not grant as much of a rewarding feeling when your done and so much bicycle stuff is throwaway. The components all wear out pretty fast and are mostly not repairable.
I should have elaborated more, but I have a tiny 70s bike. It’s has a two stroke, air cooled, carbonated engine. I could probably rebuild the motor in an afternoon. It’s incredibly easy to access nearly everything so it’s far more enjoyable. I much rather do that than work on my bicycle.
Motorcycles naturally offer more range for explanation and carry more load . i use mine to discover new routes and destinations and later hit them on the bike
Motorcycle handling requires similar techniques and the mindfulness that is developed on a bike . Though handling doesn’t translate 1:1– an expert cyclist will quickly develop expert moto handling – especially off road
Maintenance has similar parallels. Bike maintenance is a great intro to moto maintenance . Troubleshooting , understanding systems , experimentation , observation , patience , using hand tools etc are all skills that are foundational for motorcycle maintenance
I would encourage every cyclist to take on motorcycle riding . Motorcycling benefits from a similar mindset and expands on the skills and experiences
The most annoying thing for me is that I can leave the motorcycle outside with a lock but I need to bring in my bicycle into the garden shed (it is just too light).
Bicycle on the other hand is different, it is much easier to get a puncture, the bolts get lose, it wears off much more quickly. You can also fix it in your home, e.g. change tubes and tires easily.
I'm at an extreme end on of the cycling hobby by hours spent on the bike and miles covered (mountain biking, road biking, racing) and currently ride a very modern, and very red Italian sport bike - just for pleasure on quiet roads, no commuting or errand running. From a maintenance perspective given my use patterns (~8,000 miles/year human powered, ~4,000 miles moto powered) I'm wrenching, fixing, replacing parts far more often on my bicycles. An absolute money pit, but one that gives me the best emotional and physical ROI. YMMV but my experience with modern motorcycles has been they are almost shockingly reliable given their power output, electrical and rider aid improvements, etc.
I've had vintage motorcycles that required more tinkering which is engaging in its own right but am thankful modern tech has gotten to a point where I'm not constantly doing maintenance on my entire two wheeled fleet. I get my joy from the use of the machine, rather than the upkeep. I'm eternally grateful to those who view things the other way. My preference is to wrench on bicycles though, mainly because of their relative simplicity and limited number of specialty tools required. With 2mm-8mm allen keys, and a small screw driver you can do most basics of maintenance. Not counting suspension service, bearing service, and the like.
Side note: Being deep into both worlds I feel that my bike (motorcycle) handling skills have vastly improved because of my mountain biking: Body positioning, threshold braking, leaning the bike independently of the body vs. leaning with the bike etc. Curious if anyone else here has had that same realization. I've tried converting some cycling team mates to the moto world... few takers but I believe there is true cross-training to be had there.
Road motorcycling, especially if you can fix anything on the motorcycle, comes with a strong sense of freedom compared to car driving, and it’s for traveling longer distances. There’s an aspect of shedding all your dependencies, not needing to rely on a huge machine that you can’t fix, but still being able to go fast & far. Weird analogy, but I find it similar to long distance running - there’s a threshold for me above about 15 or 20 miles where it suddenly starts to feel like I can go anywhere with my feet.
Dirt biking is technical motorcycling, shares some aspects of downhill mountain biking, but requires a lot of very different skills from any other kind of riding. Learning those skills is really fun, and being able to get far out into the wilderness and access places you can’t go by any other means is also very fun. The technical riding requires a lot more simultaneous clutch, brake, and throttle work than road riding, and I find it similar in certain ways to playing the drums in the sense that you need a lot of body awareness and the ability to do things with hands and feet at the same time. Technical uphill riding is very different from downhill and/or mountain biking. BTW technical dirt biking can be insane amounts of exercise. Some dirt moto rides I’ve done are equivalent to doing 50-100 miles with big climbs on a bicycle, everyone in the group burned thousands of calories and started bonking by the end. Can’t talk while you ride, but it’s very social; riding with others is an absolute must, there’s planning beforehand, there’s lots of stoping and talking, and you can end up with a lot of camaraderie when working through difficult features and pushing your abilities or helping others.
Mountain biking has all the advantages you mentioned for cycling, it can quiet and serene. Even better than road biking sometimes since you don’t have to deal with traffic. I usually ride with others, but sometimes alone is very zen. There’s anything from riding dirt roads, to cross-country single track through the forest, to adrenaline: technical downhill or mountain bike park with jumps. Fabulous exercise, and a great way to experience the outdoors.
For the maintenance question, I’d say I probably spend as much or more time on bicycle maintenance, but it’s mainly because I currently ride bicycles much more frequently. The maintenance tasks are smaller, shorter, and simpler, but need doing more often. Cleaning, chain & joint lube, and fixing flats is the majority of bicycle maintenance. I bled my mountain bike brakes once, and that was pretty involved for a noob, required a special kit & a couple hours. The moto maintenance tasks take longer per session, they’re more difficult, and require more tools and knowledge, but they’ve been less frequent. Changing oil, bleeding shocks, fixing electrical, replacing parts. A tire/tube change on a bicycle is a 5 minute task, while a tire change on a motorcycle can easily take an hour or two if you try to do it yourself with tire irons (not recommended!). The big stuff goes to a professional mechanic, of course.
In general with a few exceptions everything on motorcycles is far more competently engineered.
Bicycle manufacturers brag about engineering a lot but actually seem to employ very few engineers. The bicycle industry is still re-engineering things like brakes over and over when all those lessons were learned on motorcycles decades ago and the bike companies could have copied almost all of it from motorcycles.
There's just a lot of stuff on bicycles where the tools are more expensive than the motorcycle equivalents and the maintenance procedures are more annoying. Motorcycle brakes are a great example. Things are relatively standard and all the tools are affordable and the maintenance procedures are great. Do the same job on hydraulic disc brakes on a bicycle and it's all terrible. Tools cost 3x more and might be vendor specific, procedures are terrible because of the design of the brakes, and the job probably takes longer.
You can go spend more on a Trek or a Specialized than a lot of motorcycles at this point. Other than the amount of carbon fiber there is almost no justification for the price, especially since 99% of the bicycle is outsourced.
I always found the education level among motorcyclists in terms of how a bike actually rides much higher. The % of "expert cyclists" who understand basics like counter steering is shockingly low, and bicyclists are far more likely to have poor understanding of how to ride in traffic safely. Mostly because motorcycling actually has a training & education system. I always felt like motorcycling actually taught me more about bicycling than the reverse.
I have a pet theory, that the proliferation of top-shelf Class 1/pedal assist Ebikes ($14-15k) has given manufacturers the green light to raise prices on top of all the covid supply chain gremlins. The number of $10k analogue mountain bikes has blown up in the past 3 years.
I do wonder how any cost impact that comes from miniaturization of bicycle components (coupled with smaller production quantities using composites) looks compared to their moto counterparts. Offering the same bike frame with 5+ different component builds must have some cost ramifications with supply chain management in buying /allocating groupsets & components en masse. It does seem like the mountain bike market has matured a bit: fewer radical yearly geometry changes, more streamlining and sensible, incremental changes. Just my thoughts as a voracious consumer of bike stuff. I'm all for a standardizing brake bleed ports and hydraulic maintenance - mineral oil please!
It's funny, I've anecdotally noticed the opposite here in Austin. The number of motorcycle riders who clearly have no concept of handling a moto seems to outnumber the people acting the same way on bicycles. Can't speak to your locale, but Austin certainly has a strong cycling community with lots of proficient riders; I think I'm also in a bit of a filter bubble with my riding crew.
There’s a reason many innovations in the bike world have come from aerospace.
But they both come back to basics: What is the overall model of how it should work? What are the symptoms? What do we know about the possible underlying causes of those symptoms? How do we design a test to see if the hypothesis is right? When we run the test, do we get confirmation, denial, or something else entirely? Did the test properly test the right thing?
And so on...
And at some point, is it worth fixing?
A lot of analogies here with fuel systems in cars. When a car isn’t “running right” we generally start with the basics: is it getting air, fuel and spark, and go from there.
I'd prefer to have those narratives delivered as part of the product when maintainer is hired.
Talking loudly about your accomplishment too, on the dedicated Workspace/Facebook @ Work—too much to the taste of several of my colleagues.
Someone once connected the two. They did so using a metaphor that compared the sound at the end of the digestive tube with the exhaust. I won’t repeat it here, but thought it was clever.