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MOTORING : BIKES: Make a Bike Your Own the Easy Way

Posted on: Wednesday, 9 November 2005, 15:00 CST

By William Leece

MANY years back, when I turned up at my first meeting of a bike club I had just joined, I was asked "are you a rider, a camper or a tinkerer?"

My questioner had a point. There are many who get as much pleasure from crawling over their bike with spanners and screwdrivers as they ever do by taking the vehicle out on the road. And if the spanners are old BSF or Whitworth sizes, then their happiness is complete.

The habit even persists among owners of modern bikes. It's all part of tailoring the machine to your own preferences, whether it's something as practical as installing an alarm or a raised screen or a fairing, or as whimsical as stencilling Celtic runes on the tank.

Some modifications and tweaks just come naturally, of course.

But for others there's a lot to be said for the helping hand, the wiser friend who will show you just how to do it and perhaps talk you out of some of your wilder dreams.

Finding that same advice in printed form can be a little trickier. Maybe there's plenty to be found in magazines, if you know where to look, but they tend to accumulate inexorably. Sooner or later, unless they're indexed, there will come a time when you're turning a room upside down - as often as not a bedroom, as the magazines have been banned from the rest of the house - because you just KNOW that the article you want is out there somewhere. But you're damned if you can find it, and it's going to take hours to put it all back together again. The bedroom, not the bike.

Been there, done that. But at least some help is now at hand, in the shape of a new book that should be easier to keep track of.

Pete Gill's new book, published by Haynes, is entitled Motorcycle Modifying - The Definitive Guide. I doubt if there's really such a thing as definitive where bike tweaking and tinkering is concerned, but if you're a superbike owner looking to make your bike your very very own, it's as good a working title as you're likely to get. It's part a catalogue of goodies, and part a guide of how to do it. The basics come first: as many after-market components can be unbolted all too easily, security is paramount and takes up all of the first chapter.

If, as a result of this, a bike owner goes out and makes his machine a bit more thiefproof, then the pounds 19.99 purchase price will have been money well spent. Particularly if you discover one day that the bike appears to have been tampered with, but is still there in one piece and undamaged, firmly secured to the solid object of your choice.

After the serious bit, it's fun all the way, from the pros and cons of clear indicator lenses (remember to buy coloured bulbs!) that cost little more than coppers, to exhaust and suspension modifications that start with a three-figure bill and work up towards a skywards limit.

As a source of ideas it's invaluable, and even those whose chosen mounts are solid tourers or undemanding commuter bikes will probably find something new to learn here

Source: Daily Post; Liverpool

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