Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Popular motorcycle journalist and author Mark Zimmerman brings a comfortable, conversational tone to his easy-to-understand explanations of how motorcycles work and how to maintain them and fix them when they don't. This practical tutorial covers all brands and styles of bikes, making it a perfect companion to the owner's service manual whether you need to use the step-by-step instructions for basic maintenance techniques to wrench on your bike yourself or just want to learn enough to become an informed customer at your local motorcycle service department. This book includes more than 500 color photos and a thorough index to make it an especially user-friendly reference for home motorcycle mechanics of all skill levels.

Rating : - Not just Do-It-Yourself, but Understand-It-Yourself.
Well-organized, easy on the layperson's eyes but without talking down to us either. "The Essential Guide to Motorcycle Maintenance" is divided up into sections and subsections that make it both an interesting cover-to-cover read but also very easy to use as a fast reference when repairing on the fly, taking the "Teach a man to fish" over the "Give a man a fish" approach. If all you want to know is how to change a spark plug you can probably find a faster how-to online. If you want to know how to change the spark plug AND just what the spark plug is doing, why and how and what happens when it's not doing it right, this is the book you're looking for.

My '03 Kawasaki Vulcan isn't a toy, it's a tool; my only mode of transportation in this poor economy averaging 2,000 miles per month. And if I can't afford a car I certainly can't afford a conventional motorcycle mechanic looking to squeeze my wallet for what isn't there. So when my work-out-of-the-backyard mechanic isn't available or my work takes me away from him for a few months, I want to be able to do a fair amount of maintenance and repairs myself. Or at least know what I'm talking about when I do go to the conventional mechanic. Especially being female, it's still a challenge for some mechanics to see women as anything but walking, gullible, bags of money.

This book has been my first giant leap into that realm. For all the varied motorcycles and configurations out there, Zimmerman gives a solid, most-common overview. More importantly, he does a fantastic job explaining to the layperson just how the various components work. This way, when I have a weird power loss happening under specific weather conditions, I'm not just looking at a laundry list of possible suspects in my owner's manual (or the appendix of this book). I can also go back through paragraphs and sidebars about just what the engine needs, analyzing for myself what the symptom tells me the engine isn't getting, and from there, I'm better equipped to diagnose the likely problem(s) myself than just blindly "Try replacing A, B, or C."

For any biker out there, male or female, looking to be a little less dependent on your local Super Acme Made Of Money MegaMotorsports service shop, for those looking to better maintain your bike (and trust me, the key to hitting 130,000 miles is maintenance, maintenance, maintenance), and for those who want to learn in plain English just what makes your dream machine tick, "The Essential Guide to Motorcycle Maintenance" will be your new best friend!