[Ride Safe]: 7 motorcycle safety tips!

There are countless practices one should follow in order to increase their safety while riding the tiniest and arguably the vehicle on which the traveller is most vulnerable to damage. While there's always a scope of learning no matter how experienced you are, this article is an effort to bring forward some very basic practices which everyone of us can follow without the need of much investment and technical know-how.

How to change engine oil of a motorcycle.

The instructions are given in the pictures itself quite briefly and precisely, so you don't really need to read text separately.

Note: The illustration in this article is done on TVS Apache RTR180, though it can be generalized for almost all motorcycles in Indian market and most of the motorcycles in the world.

Things you'll need:

Service Manual and Parts Manual for TVS Apache RTR

Tip: Hide the side bar by clicking on the arrow at top-left corner of the file to get rid of the horizontal scrolling hassle.

TVS Apache RTR180 Service Manual

Tappet Adjustment

Fed up of excessive engine noise?
Does the bike's performance seems hampered even after checking air filter, tuning and sparkplug?
You may need to adjust the tappets. Loose tappets cause the engine noise and too tight tappets hamper the performance. This article simply shows the step-by-step detailed procedure to adjust the tappets of a single cylinder motorcycle in the form of pictures.


Note: The nut/bolt/spanner/feeler sizes mentioned are of RTR180. Your bike may have different sizes.

Brakes Adjustment (Drum brakes)

BRAKE, a vital part of a motorcycle, even any random vehicle...! Without brakes, no matter how powerful your machine is, its of no use as the power is uncontrolable. As they say, great power comes with great responsibility, the brakes are a vital component of that responsibility to exist.

So, one should keep the brakes of his/her motorcycle suitably tightened because loose brakes can cause some accidents. Even if you keep your brakes tighter than required, it can prove to be fatal sometimes as the bike tends to skid due to excessive braking when applied all of a sudden.

Drive Chain adjustment

The DRIVING CHAIN is very important part of a motorcycle as it drives the wheel with the rotation produced by engine via sprockets. If the chain play is not right, then the performance as well as 'health' of the machine is badly affected. Here, the procedure of adjusting the chain is given and anyone who has some basic knowledge about bikes can do it easily.

Bear with the AXLE mistakenly written as AXEL in the pic.
Picture courtesy: Sam Takidar.

Tuning a Carburettor for Optimal Performance

Are you tired of cold starts? Need to raise the throttle everyday to get the cold engine running?

Does someone have the same bike with same setup as yours and are you tired of losing to him in drag races?

Suddenly, the fuel efficiency has reduced after a service?

Has the mechanic screwed up your tuning?

Engine gives hiccups when you open the throttle?

Or your bike is just missing that smooth acceleration whenever you want?

Or your engine overheats even if you did not race too much.

 May be the following will help you in tuning your mean machine for optimal power delivery and best fuel economy. This guide aims at tuning the fuel/air screw to give you an optimal air-fuel mixture.

Clutch Adjustment

This is a basic thing which a biker is supposed to know... Adjusting clutch is no rocket science but just a simple thing which anybody can learn and it comes quite handy for bikers.

The process of adjusting clutch is as follows:

Rotating the screws in the direction shown in the image will loosen your clutch. But first always start from the 2nd nut (as mentioned in the image below) if you want to loosen the clutch, and start with the 1st nut if you want to tighten it because the 2 nuts move the cylinder in the middle that makes the clutch loose or tight with the direction indicated here.

Carburettor Cleaning

For all those who still need to depend on their local mechanic for Carb cleaning, just follow these steps which will help you to clean it yourself properly...

Things needed:

• Screw driver.
• 13mm box spanner.
• 12mm box spanner.
• 8mm box spanner.
• WD40/Diesel/Petrol/Carb cleaner.
• Old/New Tooth-Brush.

Step 1-

Close the Fuel Valve and remove the Fuel connector to the carb (take a plastic container to collect the excess Fuel), then take a Flat-head screw driver and unscrew the Fuel-Drain screw