incidentally, this is a hobby that I strongly recommend to other LW members—you get to put the scientific method into practice in a hands-on manner, and at the end of it you get a car which is slightly less crappy.
Does the same principle apply to motorcycle maintenance? :-)
A book I was reading that suggested doing your own minor auto repairs, warned strongly against doing motorcycle repairs for anything after the late 1970s. He claimed that newer cycles were so tightly integrated and the tools for working on them so specialized, that you were too likely to get something taken apart that you literally could not reassemble.
I’d say that’s true for modern supersports and superbikes, but a beginner bike like a Kawasaki Ninja EX-250 has very little in the way of electrics or other tightly-integrated mechanisms. Just as an anecdote: I do regular maintenance on my 2006 SV-650/S, but anything more complicated than oil changes on my 1972 Honda CB350 is done by a mechanic. While newer bikes have complicated parts like ECUs and fuel injection, those are usually the most reliable parts. Repairing older motorcycles typically involves scrounging e-bay for parts that are no longer manufactured.
The thing I like most about motorcycles is that they are simple, so it’s pretty easy to diagnose any problems. It only takes a minute to tell if you’re running lean or rich. Simply starting, hearing, and smelling an engine can tell you whether you just need new piston rings or if you’ve damaged the crankshaft journal bearings.
If you really want the most mechanically simple vehicle, I’d suggest an old scooter such as a Honda Cub. The set of failure modes for an air-cooled single-cylinder engine is quite small.
Does the same principle apply to motorcycle maintenance? :-)
A book I was reading that suggested doing your own minor auto repairs, warned strongly against doing motorcycle repairs for anything after the late 1970s. He claimed that newer cycles were so tightly integrated and the tools for working on them so specialized, that you were too likely to get something taken apart that you literally could not reassemble.
I’d say that’s true for modern supersports and superbikes, but a beginner bike like a Kawasaki Ninja EX-250 has very little in the way of electrics or other tightly-integrated mechanisms. Just as an anecdote: I do regular maintenance on my 2006 SV-650/S, but anything more complicated than oil changes on my 1972 Honda CB350 is done by a mechanic. While newer bikes have complicated parts like ECUs and fuel injection, those are usually the most reliable parts. Repairing older motorcycles typically involves scrounging e-bay for parts that are no longer manufactured.
The thing I like most about motorcycles is that they are simple, so it’s pretty easy to diagnose any problems. It only takes a minute to tell if you’re running lean or rich. Simply starting, hearing, and smelling an engine can tell you whether you just need new piston rings or if you’ve damaged the crankshaft journal bearings.
If you really want the most mechanically simple vehicle, I’d suggest an old scooter such as a Honda Cub. The set of failure modes for an air-cooled single-cylinder engine is quite small.