Bike Prep for a long trip – Keep it running with good prep and maintenance
 

I've written a whole long piece on prepping the bike, originally as notes for an Adventure Rider Radio episode, but it quickly grew!

Lots of tips and tricks to help keep you on the road for any bike.

Feel free to add to it. ?c?

It's here at: /tech/bike-prep

Lots of great stuff on your notes. From experience of older Japanese bikes I'd add the following:

Electrical: 100% agree these are the most common faults and with what is written. Of also say pay particular attention to the regulator/ rectifier connector. This is normally a five pin or six pin plug and because it continuously carried relatively high currents usually suffers more than most. If it shows any sign of over heating or the wires have gone hard you have a problem you better solve sooner rather than later. I think most regulator failures are probably caused by this connector going bad rather than any failure in the unit themselves.

Cables: Beware aftermarket cables. I recently had a run of clutch cable failures which turned out to be due to poor quality eBay cables. OEM replacements are lasting much better (like 10 times as long so far).

Bearings: Yes wheel bearings are usually standard sizes you can buy anywhere. It's useful to find out and take the bearing code number with you ( it's 4 digit such as 6203, 6004 etc ) so if you find them failing you can buy them before you disable the bike taking the old ones out. And always buy bearings with two rubber seals even if the originals did not - this was common cost saving by some manufacturers in the past.

Whilst wheel bearings are standard sizes most steering head bearings are not, so for a longer trip (30,000km+) I usually take spares of these even if I have replaced them before the trip. Likewise fork seals.

Fuel filters: Be aware that paper or sintered metal ones whilst very good filters add flow restriction. I found in high altitudes in South America they caused enough blockage to cause real fueling problems. If you are going high only use filters that use mesh.

Tools: Japanese bikes use JIS cross heads on their screws and these are subtly different to Phillips head. A Phillips head screwdriver will work in them but when they are tight often damage the head. Get the right screwdriver type - the one that comes in the bike toolkit is usually a good one.

Take a workshop manual in electronic form on your phone or whatever. Even if you don't understand it you will find it appreciated by the person trying to sort out your bike and it might help you explain the problem/ point out the broken bit etc.

That's my two-pennyworth based on hard won experience. What else have others got to add?


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Good advice about aftermarket cables etc for older bikes. I was prepping my 125 Suzuki for a long (for a 125) trip last autumn and bought a replacement clutch lever and clutch cable from two different sources. It was only by luck I found out that the cable end was too big for the lever. It was an easy fix in the garage but it wouldn't have been at the side of the road.