SV Maintenance

I've just aquired a nice little curvy, my first bike!

Can't wait to take it out on the road but i seriously would like to keep it in the mint condition it is in already

Want to ask what things I should do to keep it nicely maintained (clean and in good condition ie chain and the like), what products are good, and how to give the beast a proper scrubbing down

any help would be much appreciated

Draper

*general motorcycling stuff aswell, what wash, polish, chain lube, degreaser, engine cleaner...


but any SV tips and so on

i would recomend a scottoiler for the chain & crash bungs

with the dont give advice, if you dont know thread going , i feel kwak is the best to advise you on cleaning

Keep her clean. I use a dedicated bike spray on conjunction with a bucket of auto glym car wash.

At the moment my clean programme consists of:
Rinse off with water,
Apply bike cleaner(scotoiler one at the moment), agitate with a brush and leave a couple of min,
Rinse off,
Wash with sponge and car wash,
rinse off,
clean wheeels and brakes,
Chamois off bike,
Apply duck oil to all exposed fasteners,
Apply grease to all greasing points,
spry engine and with a light covering of scotoiler FS spray,
Polish paintwork and plastics with bike polish,
Polish exhaust and link pipes wuth autosol.
check fluid leves, oil and scotoiler resivoir.
That seems to work on my bike to keep her clean and in good order.

[Lissa]

If the bike is really minging, I'll spray it with muc off or similar, leave for a few minutes, they hose down. Then I'll hand wash it. I'm a big fan of Crystal Glo products, so I use their acrylic total wash, then their acrylic bike polish. Gives a nice, deep shine to all coloured plastics. For black plastics and rubber I use armorall.

For a quick buff up on plastics Castrol bike polish is pretty good.

For metal polishing, I use solvol autosol or Belgom alu. Belgom is slightly less abrasive than autosol.

[rictus01]

I must admit I don't do a lot of the cleaning stuff (spend the time riding ), but two or three times a year do a really good job, I use "Gunk" for the really stuck on grease & oil (you can use paraffin for this), then a generic car shampoo (or if you can't get any,rob something from the bathroom, but never washing up liquid(high salt content)), then as Lissa said the "Crystal Glo acrylic bike polish" is very good and easy to use, Once again I favour " Armor All Gloss Protectant Spray" for the plastics (works well on tyres to if you really want to impress), then "ACF 50" for any exposed metal bits, if I haven't got any "WD 40" works but doesn't last long, also heat the engine and spray some on it, you'll get a big cloud of vapour, it'll coat the underside of the tank and engine (make sure to wipe down bar grips and such after though.

Cheers Mark.

and it smells nice when the enigne warms up.