Name: A Simple Guide to Motorcycle Maintenance (Watch Before Riding)
Uploaded: 2025-11-24T12:32:26.000Z
Duration: 12 min 49 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Whether you've got a new bike, an old bike, a BMX bike, a unicycle, no matter what, you're gonna have to maintain it.

But some motorcycles are gonna require a bit more intensive care than others, depending on how hard or frequently you ride and the age and complexity of your machine.

Adverbs of manner

But luckily, most basic motorcycle maintenance can be done yourself, at home with just a few simple tools.

Maintaining your own motorcycle will save you lots of cash, provide you with a more intimate knowledge of the inner workings of your bike, and

give you a sense of confidence and accomplishment from doing the job yourself and knowing it was done right.

So without further ado, let's explain some basic motorcycle maintenance to help get you well on your way to working on your own bikes.

Let's get into it the first and most paramount piece of motorcycle maintenance that's the easiest is changing your oil and filter.

This is considerably the most crucial maintenance item, while also being the simplest.

It's also the most universal job for motorcyclists because regardless of if you have a brand new motorcycle, a used motorcycle or even an air cooled motorcycle, they all use oil and it needs to be changed.

Luckily, with advancements in motorcycle engine and manufacturing and synthetic oils oil change interfaces intervals are as long as they've ever been.

New motorcycles can have service intervals to go as long as 10,000 miles, but

of course check your service manual or do a quick Google search to find out the specific interval recommended for your motorcycle.

Regardless of how long your service intervals are, they always recommend to change at least once a year at the minimum.

Erring on the side of caution never hurts, and

for most riders who typically ride about 5,000 miles a year or less.

Changing your oil and filter once a season is pretty standard, and

Make sure you buy the correct viscosity and volume of oil again based on your service manual or the trusty Internet, because I'm sure all the forum dads would love to give you all the microscopic details required to change the oil for your given model.

You guys ever notice that how old guys on Internet forums write hundreds of words debating the minutiae of engine oil on an online forum?

But then we'll just respond to every text message with a single letter K as well as a new oil filter and a replacement cush washer for the oil drain plug Never hurts either.

Take it out for a quick rip around the blot just to get the oil warm and eager to drain out.

Let the bike rest for five or ten minutes while you gather your supplies.

This will ensure all the oil drips down to the bottom of the engine.

Again, take the cap off the oil fill to allow the air to flow through.

To prevent a vacuum, loosen the drain bolts at the bottom of the engine.

If your motorcycle was recently serviced at the dealer, that bolt is probably torqued on at 1,000 foot pounds, so brace yourself for that.

Then unthread it the rest of the way with your hand, making sure to not drop it in the drain pan and scald your hand with hot oil.

And if you're feeling overly cautious, you can set a block of wood beneath your side stand to keep the bike level to try to extract any remaining oil.

Doing all this with a rear paddock stand works too and gives you a little bit of extra room to work under the bike.

Don't get too in your head or you'll end up like the oil dads in the forums.

Remove the oil filter and let the oil drip all over your exhaust and make a huge mess.

Then take a clean shop towel and wipe the inside of the oil filter housing for good measure.

Then just do it all in reverse order pre fill the new filter halfway through.

Put a touch of fresh oil around the entire circumference of the filter gasket.

Screw it on by hand, screw it on until the gasket meets the mating surface, then give it about another half turn or so.

It doesn't need to be crazy tight or torqued on with a wrench.

Reinstall the oil drain plug with the fresh kush washer.

This can be torqued to spec based on your service manual, but

usually around 20 foot pounds or so is good.

It's a giant pain in the butt to remove that if you strip that bolt.

Once your new filter and drain plug are reinstalled, refill the oil based on the recommended volume, which is usually a tad less than the maximum capacity.

Since some of the oil will always stay within the engine.

This amount should be easily found in your manual or online.

Once you got your fresh oil in, start her up.

Make sure the oil pressure light goes off quickly.

Let it run for a bit, make sure you don't see any leaks, then shut it off.

Check your oil levels in the sight glass or dipstick depending on what kind of bike you have, and

Your oil is changed and your dealership's gonna charge you like $200 or more to do this.

Do you want to debate the specifics of engine oil with others online?

How about nerd out about another motorcycle topic?

Maybe ask the advice of elder squids who have yeeted thousands of nooners over the years.

Well, I've got the place for you our online community.

At Yammy Noob Co, we've got a huge community of riders of all types, Fast boys, cruiser boys, adv boys and more.

Bike maintenance, buying advice and even connect with riders in your local area.

Members also get access to exclusive content like weekly live streams and sign up for our hilarious newsletter.

If that wasn't enough, Yammy Noob Co members also get a discount on bike rentals through Twisted Road, a discount on Yammy Noob merch, and

automatic giveaway entries to win our current giveaway motorcycle, we recently gave away the BMW S1000RR to a gentleman in California by the name of Jorge and now currently have a 2024 Suzuki GSX8R up for grabs.

If you like what we do here at Yammy Noob and want to support us directly and get access to a bunch of cool per, check out Yammy Noob Co.

Thank you so much to all of our supporters on our community over there.

The next most important piece of maintenance is cleaning and adjusting your chain.

This actually is required to be done more frequently than an oil change, but

delaying it or avoiding it would not be as catastrophic as neglecting to change your oil.

But that's not to say it should be neglected, because having a chain break while you're riding can be bad news.

Cleaning a chain is really quite straightforward as well.

You'll find all sorts of contradicting information about how a chain needs to be cleaned.

Some nerds will brag about how they clean their chain after everything single ride, which is very excessive.

The more accepted consensus is as long as you're not riding through torrential rain or mucking it up on some serious off road conditions, cleaning your chain once every 500 miles or so is just fine.

Cleaning your chain is easiest when using a rear stand to jack up your rear wheel off the ground and allow you to spin the rear wheel freely.

With the bike in neutral, you'll just spray down your chain with the chain cleaner, making sure every part is covered.

Scrub it all with a chain brush, ensuring you get all the nooks and crannies in the entire length of the chain.

Some people rinse the chain off with water after others just wipe it with a shop towel to get all the grime off.

If you rinse your chain, let it dry before re lubing, then spray on the lube getting the entire length of the chain.

Wipe up any excess and you're good to go.

While you're down on the ground, you can inspect the slack in your chain compared to the specs on your swing arm or your manual.

If your chain needs to be tightened, loosen the axle nut and adjust the sliders to bring it into spec, lining up with the notches on the swing arm.

Lock the adjusters and re torque your axle nut to specific super simple maintenance, but it's very important.

Keeping your chain clean not just ensures the health of your chain, but your sprockets as well.

And everybody loves a good clean looking chain.

While tires don't need to be maintained per se, outside of ensuring proper inflation, which I highly recommend, check your PSI often and regularly.

Oh my God, they do need to be inspected and replaced as consumable wear items the lifespan of motorcycle tires is much shorter than you might think if you're coming from commuter cars where you can get 50,000 miles out of a set, especially if you live in the south and you can keep your tires for 100,000 miles since you never have to drive in the snow.

Yes, I'm talking to you with the 2014 Nissan Altima that looks like it's running racing slicks and you've been on the same set of rubber since it rolled off the lot 10 years ago.

Motorcycle tires, on the other hand, typically have a lifespan from anywhere from as low as 3 to 10,000 miles, depending on the type of tire and how you ride.

Sport touring tires are going to work a lot better and last great quite a bit longer than a super sport tire.

If you're doing long stretches on the highway, you'll notice the center of your tire will wear down more quickly.

Different tires are made differently with different compounds for different styles of riding, and

since there is no hard and fast rule to guarantee how long a tire will last, it is the responsibility of the rider to keep track of the wear to determine the time for replacement.

Many tires have wear indicators or you can measure the remaining tread depth.

Most DOT regulations say 1.32of an inch is the minimum tread allowed for motorcycle tire.