"How to" section in mechanics forum?

[tigertim20]

been trawling the net for how to stuff, and always seem end up back here asking questions.
was thinking this site could benifit from a how to section that things can be posted in there.
from oil changes, to carb cleaning and balanceing.

i have found enough info on the interwebs about home made carb balancing tools to make one of my own and plan on making a rather detailed guide on how to do your own.

just an idea that might give us newbies a good starting point before heading down to the bike shop or pestering the wise ones for the answer to a question they have been asked 5000 times.

Hey. Kb isnt really the place for it. what you want to do it join a site that is specific to your bike. when I had a cbr600, I joined a cbr site, i have an R1, so I joined an R1 site, and so on and so forth.

If you join a site that is dedicated to your bike, you will find that site already has a how to, mechanical section and a whole host of other things that you will find very usefull.

The problem with asking for help on here, is that there are only a handfull of peole with the same bike as you. maybe 20-30 if you're lucky. and of those, only a few people will have had the problems you want help with at a particular time, and even less again will remember how it was fixed.
Thats where bike specific forums come in real handy.
Im a member on here and I use this for seeing whats going on, read the jokes, talk about bike issues and bike related politics etc.
Im Also a member of a south island site, which is where i go for info on regular local rides and other stuff.
Then I have the bike specific forum where I go for information and advice on troubleshooting and modifications.

KB is an OK site, but its not a one stop shop for every biker!!

[motorbyclist]

So you would like that some experienced people sit down for hours and hours a day typing out " how to do things on your bike"?

Good luck with that mate.

I've done one or two..... I normally take photos as I go along anyway and the hour or so writing is mildly enjoyable - and saves me constantly having to repeat the same advice.

whether this warrants a whole subforum or just for writers to include keywords and searchers to use sensible search terms is another issue.


I mean, yes there are other bike forums, yes there are haynes/clymer manuals and yes those are great, but sometimes it's good to see a "general" howto, such as carbs or brakes.

obviously, if the author hasn't a clue there will be comments made - maybe even if just to give alternative methods!

There's a lot of guys out there who aren't mechanics who DO know what they're doing on a particular job, jut as there are mechanics who DON'T know what they're doing on a particular job. It's all good for "industry" to rag on about trained mechanics, but frankly the "industry" has in the last decade only driven me to have more faith in the garage specialists and "one-man-band" mechanics than the bike shops who put the parts boys onto the menial jobs all too often while still charging $70/hr for them to fuck it up! On both sides of the fence there are the idiots who ruin it for the rest - at least if they're posting online with photos there's opportunity for discussion before money is wasted (and the real munters probably aren't that literate anyway )


but, as I said before, i doubt it warrants an entire subforum - just use google: *insert component/task here* photo howto guide *insert bike here, remove if no hits*

possible suggestion?

what about like 'finding oil filter' type thing?

wouldn't it be great if people left the owners manual under the seat where it can't get lost?