This is the first of five articles on “bike talk” for the ladies. If you ride you’re visually familiar with the many wires, lines and levers that create your motorcycle, but perhaps you lack to vocabulary and technical knowledge to dish about them at bike night or at your local bike shop.
Having a foundational knowledge of bike parts also helps beyond casual conversation and can help you identify potential problems and feel more comfortable on your motorcycle. Please read to get a general sense of components as each motorcycle varies in design.
To begin we will discuss the components that are in your face while you’re riding, your handlebars. Sportbikes normally have clip-ons for bars, which are literally bars clipped on to the sides of your forks and cruisers normally have a one-piece handle bar attached to the top of your forks. Your grips are the padded location for your hands. There are various types of grips, with different degrees of stickiness, padding and longevity. Your right hand side grip covers your throttle housing, a plastic tube situated on your bar with throttle cable running from it to your motor, rotating the tube back provides the motor with fuel to propel you forward.
Your right hand also has access to your front brake master. You can see your front brake master is attached to brake lines running to your calipers, which we will discuss in the braking Bike Talk article. Brake fluid fills both the master and the lines and as you squeeze your lever the fluid moves through the lines your brake pads are forced shut causing you to come to a stop. Your right handle bar will also host your kill switch assembly to prime and turn on your motorcycle.
Your bars will be attached in some fashion to your forks, providing suspension and a home for your front tire. The forks of your motorcycle will be clamped together with a upper and lower triple tree, placed respectively up and below the location where your frame attaches to your front end. Near your triple trees you will see two cups of fluid called brake fluid reservoirs. You can check the amount of fluid and also cleanliness of your fluid by peering at the side of these reservoirs.
Moving to your left hand you’ll find your grip directly attached to your bar and your clutch lever just forward of your grip. Your clutch lever is attached to the clutch cable which runs around the side of your motorcycle and is linked to your clutch. Normally clutches can be adjusted for softness and degree at which your clutch releases. Other controls for your turn signals and/or headlights are also located on the right side. Mirrors and gauges will also be present on most stock motorcycles.
So go out to your bike and find these parts on your motorcycle: grips, throttle, front brake master, triple tree and clutch lever. Follow the cables and lines from the brake master and clutch to get a feel for what you’re orchestrating when you squeeze the levers.
