What can I do to be more mechanically minded and able?

[dizzyblonde]

How can I be more mechanically minded, lets see, take one YC, a badly rotted SV, and a garage of doom. Spend many a day with him boring you to death with the ins and outs of why certain procedures are done in specific ways, get down and dirty and hand him many objects of destruction as he belts the carp out of your prized possession.
Then have the cheeky bugger bring you your brake calipers and make you clean and rebuild them yourself, and your left standing with two nasty brake calipers, a tub of red rubber grease and some basic info of what to do next!

Still only slightly mechanically minded, but slightly is much more than none at all these days, and I can almost deal with the boring bits! He is a great teacher, and much better in my quest for help when things break. Others have just turned and said, you've got a Haynes manual, use it...even though they know exactly what to do, and can help.

I did my first full bike strip down and rebuild at 16, by paying a nominal fee for a blown kx80 and deciding it would be my project. 1 Haynes manual and a decent set of tools got the job done more or less.

It took 6 months, lots of swearing and nearly giving up, some tips from the old man but my god when it fired up the first time the feeling was euphoric.

Its now been 8-9 years since I have done the most basic of maintenance now but one of the reasons I'm getting a bike again is to maintain it myself. Just wiah I never sold all my tools -.-

If time/space permits that what I'd do.

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

You learn by making mistakes. Man who never did owt wrong never did owt.

That was my old chargehand's mantra when I was an apprentice, with the regional accent a bit more Scottish of course!

[jambo]

Start small. Listen carefully. Understand what you are trying to do. If you can't get something to work, stop and think about it, never get angry and force something unless you're 100% sure.

I went from needing to do my first oil change on a bike when I started riding to happily dealing with engine swaps, re-shimming, fault-finding, and sorting out just about anything. In 53,000 miles I've owned my current bike, I've done all the maintenance.

The key thing is to work up slowly and learn a few things at a time. Brakes really aren't complicated, neither is chain adjustment, oil changes and lubricating cables. That takes care of a lot of day to day work by itself.

Jambo

you learn quick when you service a bike 3/4 times a year i guess anyone else on there second routine service of this year?

I learnt the same way as hong man but my second project has been taking 2 years so far so i September im going to chase up about my ts 250 exhaust and get it road registered soon after, i hope. my first project i start in june turned 16 in the august and got the bike road legal but oct. and been riding and maintaining my bikes since.