Four Things to do before you start to troubleshoot your bike's issues

We help a lot of new persons with a lot of issues every week.   Repeatedly, we see them tripping over the same things, very simple things really.   Things that YOU MUST DO before you even try to troubleshoot your bike.

1)   Have a full fresh trickle charge (multimeter over 12.6 volts) on a known good battery.   Not a battery tender, a no more than 2 amp normal bike style battery charger.   Why?  Tenders send right at 12.1 volts and your battery drops down to that amount overnight.  Your tests are all based on a FULL fresh charge at 12.6 volts which takes 13+ volts from the charger (which is what you get from a normal 2 amp charger).

2)  Have a fresh FULL tank of gasoline.   I know, it only makes common sense -- but you would be amazed at the people killing themselves with 1/8 tank of last summer's very stale gas and they simply can't get the bike to start .....    10% ethanol gasoline and its "age out" issues has only made this requirement more important, so drain your gas tank and refill if you think you have old or not enough gasoline in it.

3)  Not having necessary and common tools.  If your bike won't run you need to have a set of metric tools and a volt/ohm multimeter, minimum.   If all you have is the tool kit that came with the bike, please say so up front.

4)  You must read and understand the POSTING GUIDELINES at the top of Rubber Side Down.  Rubber Side Down isn't the chat section -- that is over in Cafe.   Next, if you consistently ignore what the moderators tell you to do to try to fix your bike, well --    ........