Couple of us are very close in age. My 67th is staring at me in ten days.
It's nice to walk up to a machine or motor and look at it and understand what it all does, how it works, and how to fix it. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, we used to do our own oil changes until the quickee shops came in. And after getting burned at some of them due to rounding off your drain plug or overfilling your engine by a full quart, you try going to the dealer.
Ah, now it
usually is done well; the only difficulty is enduring the loud tv in their waiting room. . I've been letting the dealers and a private shop do my oil changes for a few years, mostly because getting to the oil filter has often been a serious pain. Buried under plastic or steel plates,
accessible only by multi-jointed midgets. Perhaps the manufacturers are intentionally making it hard to work
on the engines, therefore guaranteeing work for their dealers and parts dept? No, they wouldn't do that to us. You think?
I only worked on two motorcycles I owned, one a pitiful 50cc Harley Davidson, which ironically I drove to my summer job where I drove a semi, a sod boom truck. At age 18. yeah, owner broke a few laws and I didn't know any better. What's a CDL? I drove fine, always liked driving, just a new challenge on how to be safe and not wreck the truck. But even that tiny Harley needed its oil changed, I think less than one quart.
The second bike was a smaller (150?) Bultaco which I rode all over the farm, but it never got licensed for the road. That rather cool bike with knobbies was super easy to work on, everything was exposed. No decorative or aerodynamic plastic to get in the way. Or carbon fiber now...
Once I went into the insurance business as an underwriter, evaluating risk all day long, I gave up on motorcycles. Particularly since I had to drive the DC Beltway every day. Wouldn't last long on that.
But now that I'm retired, wives are done with, perhaps it's time to get back on a bike. Something comfortable but not too heavy, bad arthritis, and also something easy to work on. Do they still make such a motorcycle? I haven't followed bikes at all, other than to marvel at the engineering in today's bikes.
The OP and many others have talked of the hard bikes to work on, are there easier ones? As I get older, the
mind is willing but the body doesn't fit in tiny places any more. And bikes are amazingly miniaturized, lot more stuff on the handlebars and in the rear, with ABS disc brakes and other systems, complicated powerful lighting, stereos, communication systems, etc., most I'm sure trying to stay down low for handling.
Am honestly curious if one bike manufacturer making a cruising bike intentionally designs for easier user maintenance, a better user "interface", with OBD I'm sure.
