15 No-Cost Tips To Improve Bike Performance

Hello everyone, I'm Scott Gustavson from Vitalmx. Today I'm going to show you how to do some low or no

cost

tuning

tips

that won't

cost

a lot of money and will help your

bike

run better without breaking. Now, the first area we'll look at is your forks. Generally, your forks are what you feel the most on the

bike

, so when you get an upgrade here, it really stands out in addition to general maintenance and having the clickers in the right position. Find that one of the best

improve

ments you can make is to lubricate the fork seals.

I know you can buy very expensive DLC coated fork legs and they move very freely, but just putting oil on the oil seal is a nice upgrade and what you're doing. What you need to do is just take a simple feeler gauge, you're going to insert it up here and you're just going to turn it to the side and by doing this you're going to create an air space and the oil is going to fill up behind the oil seal and it's just going to go away. To lubricate the fork seal by doing that everything will slide up and down much easier.

Now a second tip to make your forks work better will be to get your fork legs perfectly straight for a lot of people when they install their front wheel they are actually going to tie the fork leg and the forks will work better if they work on parallel instead of something like this where they get stuck, you'll find the fork becomes very hard if If you do this now, you're going to loosen the right leg of the fork here and you're going to do it down here on the axle. Now what you'll notice is that the axle block moves back and forth a lot, so you know.

This is the setting you want to fully center so you can remove the bike from the stand. Push the front part down. You can leave the bike on the stand. Simply pull the forks up and they will center themselves once they center you. You will want to screw the bolts back in and tighten them. Torque is always important with your fork. The next area that you are going to

improve

without spending a lot of money will be the brakes and two areas, one. You'll want to keep your rotors extra clean and two, you'll want to keep your brake fluid fresh and free of air, so the first thing you'll want to do every time you drive is clean your rotors.

We will only use a clean cloth and a little contact cleaner or brake cleaner. The next area to get good

performance

from your bike is the brake fluid. You won't need to do this on every ride, but it's a good idea to do it every race or once a month. Brake fluid can basically attract water and water is kind of the enemy here, it breaks it down and makes it dirty, so if you bleed your brakes once a month, it's a really good idea that you want to use a brake fluid. Very good quality brake fluid.

You are going to use point 4 or 5.1 in your brake system. They are both interchangeable so you don't have to worry about that, but a good indicator that you need to bleed your brakes is if you just look at the sight glass and if it's dark, it usually means it has absorbed some water and needs to be refreshed. The other thing this also helps with is if you get air in the lines and what's another obstacle you know in the brakes. This saves you from purchasing a set of aftermarket brake rotors that costs hundreds of dollars. One of the areas that professional cyclists are very particular about their bike is the controls.

Now you can spend a ton of money on levers and everything, but if you find that you simply clean and lubricate your controls, they will work much better. You should also keep in mind that bent levers and levers that don't necessarily fit very well are a problem, but basically, removing the pivot bolts from the brake and clutch levers from time to time, cleaning and lubricating them will be a big help, A big area of ​​concern will be the throttle tube. Now on a new bike you get really good action like this now, having ridden this bike many times the plastic throttle tubes can warp due to crashes or just holding on. and you'll get a throttle that doesn't work so well that you'll actually think your bike is losing power, so if you replace or lubricate areas like this you'll get better

performance

, okay, good way to clean. the throttle tube is just remove it, wash it with a good contact cleaner and then I like to use a good molle based motor oil on the handlebars.

I'll just put a thin layer on the handlebars, it lubricates it very well. It doesn't attract a lot of dirt and grit, like, say, grease would. So when I reinstall it, what I'll do is push it all the way in and pull it out about an eighth of an inch so that the end of the throttle tube doesn't touch the end of the handlebar and create some resistance or friction. Now, a good way to get the most out of your chassis without spending a lot on engine mounts or other special parts will be to simply apply torque. your nuts and bolts to the manufacturer's specifications or sometimes less if you have a very rigid chassis like a honda or suzuki, so what you need to do is maybe once a month loosen all the engine mounts and the swing arm nut and screw on and just retighten everything when you tighten these areas again usually what we like to do is tighten the engine mount to the frame first and then tighten the engine mount to the engine last now an area on the I see a lot of people make a big mistake with protective skid plates and a lot of aftermarket accessories that they put on the bike and what will happen is that if you use, say, a metal protective skid plate, you'll attach the frame and you'll find that it creates a really hard rigid chassis if you have to use a slide plate with slide plate or any of that stuff its best to use some kind of plastic, something that will flex and not bond the frame as the same will apply to the handlebars.

Obviously rubber mounted handlebar mounts are great and dampen a lot of vibrations, but the same could also be said with some handlebar mounts that are one piece at the top and create an overly rigid platform, so you'll want to have something like this. That gives you a little flexibility on the handlebars. One area of ​​the motorcycle that I am very critical of is the front end. I like a bike that has a lot of feel in the front and has a lot of weight in the front, so the steering is real. Precise, you can get this by, say, changing the offset of your triple clamps or putting something very inobtainium like offset bearing races in there, of course both items cost a lot of money now you can do it almost for free simply by increasing the fork tubes on the clamps triples you will get more bite in the front end if you lower them you will get more stability, maybe a little less bite in the front end, something that is desirable depending on your bike, now the other thing that will give you more or less feel in the front end Surprisingly, depending on what you're looking for, is how far back the axle is on the swing arm.

If you pull the wheel back you'll get more traction on the front, if you push it forward you'll get less a little less traction on the front maybe a little more stability now you can move the axle back just by adding links to your chain adding a link to your chain will move the axle back 14 millimeters and adding or subtracting a tooth on your sprocket will move the axle four millimeters forward or back depending on what you do, so those are two different ways to change the feel of your front end now engine modifications can cost you a lot of money port pistons pipes ignitions uh liners um not in this case but cams, there are so many options to increase the power of your bike.

A really simple way to increase the power of your bike without spending a lot of money is, in this case, to reject the carburetor that you will have to reject. different temperatures, altitudes, humidities, etc., so if you max out the jet you can probably get two or three more horsepower out of a bike just by doing it the right way. Well now on a modern fuel injected four stroke bike you have a couple of different options. To change the power of your bike, you can increase the power or get more manageable power on some bikes, you will simply replace an ignition clip which will change the mapping of your bike, some bikes will have a plug-in tuner that will allow you to adjust the fuel and ignition mapping and then some bikes will have the same thing, but on your phone and stream wirelessly, another way to recover some lost power will be to repackage your muffler.

Now FMF recommends that you repack the muffler after every 20 to 30 hours of use and their dyno testing has shown that the muffler will lose approximately two horsepower once it is turned off, so this will not give you more horsepower, but it will regain the lost horsepower that the last one once had now. The advice I'm going to give you is regarding your drivetrain, this will give you more horsepower, you'll get back some lost horsepower, a chain is worn out and the sprockets will lose about a horsepower from your bike, so that if once you put on a new chain and sprockets, you will regain that horsepower you lost.

Also, the difference between, say, an O-ring chain and a non-O-ring chain, is about half a horsepower, so that's something you can determine if you want to do depending on your uses, if If you're an off-road rider, you may decide, oh, it's worth denying that half horsepower by putting an O-ring chain in there if you're a motocross racer, especially on a small displacement bike. You'll probably want to just use a standard chain and you'll have a bit of an advantage. Finally, the last thing is the chain lube. Surprisingly, I spent maybe a few hundred dyno tests determining this, but chain lube is worth it. about three quarters of horsepower, so think of it like you would normally spray chain lube on, say, before your first moto and you can't put it on after your second moto, but a dirty chain and sprocket will lose about three quarters. of a horsepower, if you just apply chain lube you'll get it back, so it's something you don't think about, but it can be the difference between getting one bike length ahead of the next, so it's something you think about. you should think next time.

You're on the race track, so those are a couple of different ways you can increase the performance of your bike without spending a lot of money. I think the most expensive thing I did today would have been to tell you to put a muffler on your bike and that's it. between twenty and thirty dollars, amazing little things like just putting some chain lube on your bike, getting half a horsepower, three-quarters of a horsepower, you know, these are substantial things when it comes to racing, so what you can spend a lot of money on your bike has really cool triple clamps or you can spend a little money on your bike and move the rear axle, move the front forks doing these simple things just a little bit of smart tuning will get a lot of use out of your bike, so anyway I hope you liked these

tips

.

If you have any tips of your own, let us know in the comments below. If you want to see other videos or want to know how this works a little better, maybe we can explain it to you one more time. This is Scott Gustavson. from vitalmx and see you next time