Rise Of The Motorcycle Do It Yourself Hero

As a young motorcycle enthusiast during the early 90's I spent many an hour repairing and servicing my ride, most of the time it was very difficult to get the right information as some of my bikes where harder to find manuals for than others. The information I needed could be something as simple as tyre pressure or as involved as a full engine rebuild, also, advice on the best practice repair procedure also came in handy. Unfortunately for me at least, more times that I would care to admit, I was defeated and ask a third-party to get involved, this third-party near always came in the form of a local mechanic. As with any professional involvement, this came at a finical cost, and at that at this time I was not in the position to lay out cash regularly for repairs.

The arrival of the internet was a godsend to any motorcycle enthusiast, groups and forums sprung up across the web, where liked minded wannabe engineers and the "do it your yourself" armchair bikers collective opinion, tips and experiences with their communities. Later with the launch of YouTube and social media, this sharing of knowledge had become more prevalent than ever before.

Information overload

Today, we are spoiled as motorcyclists, we are seconds away from a tsunami as information on the most specific of topic, problem or review. Only a few decades ago I would never have imagined that we would have access to this amount on data. The main problem today is that there could be too much data and that information could be written by a spotty half drunk teenager that has no clue about motorcycles. Earlier this month I was engaged in a conversation about repairing my Kawasaki Z1000, specifically about the bikes fork oil capacity, and within 30 minutes of the thread on the forum is created, there was 6 different opinions on what the correct capacity was. Another example of this is if we are looking for reviews for a new bike that we are thinking about purchasing, for every 10 positive review we could read, there will be an equal amount of reviews that encourage us to stay away from the bike as if it was the black death.

So, what's the answer to this information overload, how can we as "Have A Go" engineers get the correct information, how can we find exactly what we want without spending several evenings or afternoons scrolling through pages of irrelevant nonsense, and it may be worth mentioning this irrelevant nonsense has impacted my time and pocket on more occasions than I would care to mention.

Back to to bad old days (not)

The answer may be going back to the good old days when the information came from the horse's mouth (so to speak), before you conjure up pictures of an old, oil-smeared, half torn pages of some workshop manual, that's I not what I'm talking about. Today 90% of manuals that are purchased are eManuals, these downloadable manuals are mostly developed by the motorcycle manufacturer and are updated more regularly than their printed counterparts. Other advantages include we don't need to wait for these eManuals as they can come through the mail, we can find the exact part we need and either views it on a handheld device, such as a phone or print the page(s) we require, this makes these motorcycle repair manuals more environmentally friendly. Incidentally, an old school friend owns one of the largest eManual companies on the web, Repair Books has a repository of over 13,00 manuals and growing every day, they state on there website if they don't have it listed on there database, they will be able to source it within days. Most of the manuals cost less than £8 or $10 (US), which is considerably less than most hardcover manuals.