How To Pick up A Motorcycle
At the Harley-Davidson display in Daytona this year I filmed the demonstration of “How To Pick up a Motorcycle”

So many women raise the question “what will I do if I drop my bike?”   Here is proof that you can lift your bike upright; this demonstration is based on the bike pickup technique by Carol Youorski.

Lifting the Motorcycle:

1. Squat down with your back toward the bikes seat
2. Grip underneath the back fender with one hand and the lower handlebar grip with the other. Your knuckles should be facing down
3. Place your butt between the center of the seat and the upper edge of the seat
4. Find your foot placement, whether both feet together underneath you, or one foot forward
5. Keep trying new stances and positioning your body differently if you don’t get it on your first try
6. Use only the butt and leg muscles for this lift. Do not use your back and arms
7. Begin to rock the bike up to a 45 degree angle
8. Re-situate your body position. Place your feet closer together and place your butt in the middle of the seat
9. Lean back and start taking baby steps backwards, walking the bike up to 90 degrees
10. Simply rest the bike onto the kickstand

Why be aware of motorcyclists?
The failure of motorists to detect motorcycles is the most frequent cause of accidents for motorcyclists. More than one half of motorcycle accidents occur because the driver simply "did not see the motorcycle coming."

Drivers also contribute to another 10% of motorcycle accidents where the motorcycle is the only vehicle involved. Drivers who unintentionally pull out in front of a motorcycle often force the rider to over brake, slide, and fall.

Why Don’t drivers see motorcyclists?
There are several reasons why drivers may not see the motorcyclist coming:

• Motorists tend to look for other cars, not motorcycles.
• Motorcycles have a smaller profile than larger vehicles. This makes an approaching motorcyclist harder to see, and estimating the distance and oncoming speed is more difficult.
• Motorists have "blind spots" in their vehicles such as mirrors and posts between doors and windows that could obstruct their vision of motorcycles.
• Also, everyone has a blind spot in each eye where a motorcycle could be "hiding."

Accidents are most likely to occur in these high-risk situations:

Left Turns
The most common accident between cars and motorcycles is at an intersection when the automobile driver is making a left turn in front of a motorcycle. Over 40% of all motorcycle accidents occur at intersections.

Obstruction of View
Cyclists riding alongside a lane of cars are often out of the view of the driver. An unsuspecting driver may collide with a motorcyclist as the driver tries to change lanes.

Hazardous Road Conditions
Motorcyclists have to be much more concerned about road surfaces than motorists do. Although road obstructions such as potholes, fallen tree limbs, or railroad tracks may be minor problems for drivers, a motorcyclist may have to slow down or change lanes to avoid these obstacles.

Weather Conditions
When the road surface is wet or icy, motorcyclists’ braking and handling abilities are impaired.

Strong Winds
A strong gust of wind can move a motorcycle across an entire lane if the rider isn’t prepared for it. Wind gusts from large trucks in the other lane can be a real hazard.

Large Vehicles
A large vehicle, such as a van or truck, can block a cycle from a driver’s view. The motorcyclist may seem to suddenly appear from nowhere.

Alcohol and Drugs
 These substances will impair your vision, physical coordination, and timing. They will affect your judgement. Don’t use alcohol or drugs and drive.

Top 10 ways to drive aware

You can drive aware of motorcycles, if you know what to expect from motorcyclists and the situations where accidents are likely to occur.

Look out for motorcyclists. Be aware that although you may not see any cars, there may be an unnoticed motorcycle. Be careful at intersections, particularly when making left turns.

Anticipate a motorcyclist’s maneuvers. Motorcyclists may change positions in the lane to better observe traffic flow, respond to road conditions, get motorist’s attention and other factors. Expect and allow room for such conditions.

Signal your intentions, even if you don’t see cars in front or behind you. Again, be particularly careful when making left turns across lanes of approaching traffic. Look carefully in all directions for approaching motorcyclists –"Look Twice, Save-A-Life!"

Respect motorcyclists’ rights to the road. Give motorcycles a full lane to maneuver, just as you would a vehicle.

Do not tailgate a motorcycle. Motorcyclists may need to slow down quickly, swerve or change lane position to avoid gravel, rocks, oil slicks, animals and other road debris. Tailgating could lead to a severe accident or death of a motorcyclist. Keep a four second distance between you and the motorcycle.

Drive aware of your surroundings. Motorists have a steel cage around them with four or more tires on the road. Motorcyclists are far more vulnerable to serious injury as a result of being in an accident with a motorist.

Motorcycles are easy to maneuver. They can turn and swerve very well at slow speed. However, people think that they can get out of any situation. This is not so. Motorcycles traveling at highway speed are more difficult to maneuver in problem situations and, unlike motorists, require more concentration and coordination to be operated safely.

Pay attention to the motorcyclist’s hand signals. Some motorcycles do not have self-canceling turn signals. Therefore, wait to see what the motorcyclist does before you make your move.

Motorcyclists often ride in groups. When entering or exiting a highway and attempting to pass a group of motorcyclists, do not cut into the group unless the group has provided space for you. If there isn’t any space, let the group pass the exit before making your move. And when passing a group, make sure you can safely pass the whole group or move into the space provided for you!

Inside a 4 stroke…
 
You have to watch this video to get an understanding of what is actually going on inside a 4 stroke engine.  I know how it works, but to see it is amazing. Hopefully this will get the point across of how important it is to properly maintain your bike. Click here to see the video

 As a gear head it doesn’t get any better than this. You can actually witness the “4 Strokes” of the engine working. When you fire your bike the battery (the power source) powers the trigger mechanism or control unit which ignites the coil.

The coil turns 12 volts of power into 10’s of thousands of volts 50,000 or more into the spark plug, which is under pressure. Here comes how the 4 strokes work. On the intake stroke as the piston moves downward it pulls the air fuel mixture into the cylinder. At the bottom of the stroke the piston then starts to travel back up, the intake valve is closing at this time and the fuel air mixture is compressed in the combustion chamber, this is the compression stroke. Next just as the piston is reaching top dead center (TDC) of the compression stroke, the spark plug fires igniting the air fuel mixture, which causes an explosion and then pushes the piston downward, making this the power stroke.

On returning up in the cylinder from the power stroke the burned fuel air mixture is expelled through the now open exhaust valve. This is obviously the exhaust stroke. When the piston moves it pushes the connecting rods which turn the engine crank (bottom end). The cam gear is driven off of the crank shaft pinion gear.  The camshaft has an eccentric lobe which rotates and pushes upward on the valve lifter.  The pushrod connects the lifter to the rocker arm, the rocker arm is a lever that changes the upward movement of the pushrod to downward pressure to open the valve. This should illustrate just how important timing is on your bike. All of this work needs to happen at the right time. 

This is all happening rather fast, about 1,000 rotations a minute at idle speed. This video is in major slow speed…..If the engine has had a performance cam installed it will require a faster idle speed than stock.   For every rotation of the flywheel the piston moves up once and down once. Which means the piston moves twice as many times as the crank shaft at any given RPM.  Pretty cool to watch it happen, I love it! 

We start by removing the seat, you might need an allen wrench or a Phillips screw driver, check to see what type of bolt is holding your seat in place and go ahead and remove the seat.

Next we’ll need our 10 mm wrench to disconnect the battery cables, very important, when disconnecting remove the negative cable first, once the cables are out of the way, lets go ahead and attach the pigtail harness to our connections.   Red is marked for the positive connection and black is for the negative connection.
Time to hook the battery back up, when reconnecting Negative is always last, so attach your positive connection first, and then negative.

  The reason we disconnect negative first and re-connect negative last, is to eliminate the chance for a direct short.  The negative terminal is connected to the frame, so if you touched the tool to the frame while working on your positive connection, you’d end up getting an extra zap of energy or worse.

 Now we are all connected, we can just plug our harness into the charger, and let the tender do its job. The Tender will automatically switch from charge to float so it won’t overcharge your battery.   The little light on the charger will let you know the status of your battery, red means it’s working, and green means it’s good to go, fully charged.