Motorcycle Owner's Manual

Although I consider myself a pretty proficient backyard mechanic, I've never owned a bike before so I decided to add this to my Clymer manual that covers my exact model. What a great combo! The Clymer covers the specifics of my bike while the "Motorcycle Owner's Manual" covers basics of all bikes and has excellent sidebars on how things work. I especially liked the explaination of the two-stroke engine and the four-stroke as used in a motorcycle. Plus, if I ever sell my Suzuki, I have a general manual that will still be useful for my next bike.

I give this a 5-star for the fact that it's clear and understanding and will be very helpful for someone starting out or interested in motorcycles. Wether your young or older and have no background on mechanics, this book will teach you the basics, and you wont have to kill yourself trying to figure out how to do something, because this book makes it easy. Its how a book should be. Its for beginners of course, not for people who already know this stuff and still post bad reviews because they think there should be more, duh! what do you expect! The author did a fine Job, my hats off to ya....

I'm new to bikes (3,500) miles and even newer to bike terminology and design. Placing a handle on motorcycle language, design and parts, and concepts comes fairly easy with this short and simple book. I'm giving 5 stars because of Hugo's simplicity, clarity, and useful graphics. As such, his overall presentation is very comprehensible by the average reader. It will take the inexperienced rider-mechanic from ground zero to a respectable distance up the learning curve, considering the cost and time required by the text. I do recommend it for the novice, especially the electrical explanations.

Your new motorcycle came with an owner's manual. Why in the world would you need a more general one? If you are like me, you do not really know very much about motorcycles other than how to ride one. The manufacturer's owner's manual assumes more knowledge than you really have, and encourages you to get professional maintenance for all but the most routine matters. But if you love your motorcycle (and who doesn't?), you want to take good care of it. Here's where Mr. Wilson's guide is valuable. It simply explains keeping your motorcyle clean and safe. It also provides good background on how motorcycles are designed and the parts work. Even if you never plan to do any repairs, you will find this interesting. The photographs are very clear and detailed, and allow you to see what he is talking about. My only complaint about the book is that some of the explanations assume a level of knowledge above what I have. "If you can rewire a plug, you can work on your bike." Well, I still don't know what "rewiring" a plug is, even after reading the book. My guess is that he is referring to adjusting the gap for the spark, but I'm not sure. I did come away with a sense of what needs to be done with motorcycles. I recently read a similar book by the same publisher on bicycle maintenance. I found that there are more differences than similarities between bicycle and motorcycle maintenance. Also, because you will be riding your motorcycle at higher speeds than a bicycle, I came away thinking that professional maintenance is not such a bad idea.The economic benefit from this book will come mostly from helping you be more aware of the importance of preventive maintenance (so you are more likely to do it) and spotting repair needs before they become more expensive. But I doubt if all but the most ardent do-your-own-repair people can hope to recover their money by owning this guide right away. Rather, the return will mostly come from improved knowledge and the comfort you have in knowing that your motorcycle is safer because of your enhanced awareness.How much conscious competence is valuable to you? You probably don't know much about electricity, but you can turn on the lights. I suspect that you can improve your enjoyment of life if you learn more about how things work that you love . . . and use all the time. A good place to start is to seek out books like this one that explain and photographically illustrate the basics in simple ways. Have a great ride!

The April issue of Motorcyclist does a great review on this book. It spans the gap between seasoned monkey wrencher and the novice shop tinkerer. A deffinate must have for any bike owner.