What always surprises me about customer bikes is the ones that have been tinkered with through DIY work.
Especially the homemade parts really catch me off guard.
I tend to step back and think, “Well, it’s their own bike, so I guess it’s okay?” but honestly, I’m worried inside.
Maybe people can only truly understand something after they’ve experienced real pain and it’s been etched into both their body and mind.
Let me pick out three things that just occurred to me…
This could be fun to explore separately…
• Brake hose (aluminum)
Watch out for bikes with severely corroded fittings or ones that are abnormally long.
Long hoses can bend or get pinched and crushed, which will lock them up. If a fitting cracks and fluid seeps out, that’s dangerous too. If your front brakes fail, you’re headed straight to hell on a death road. No question about it. Weigh your own life against the cost of a brake hose… surely the hose isn’t worth more?
I think it’s just as dangerous as skimping on tires.
• Battery area (electrical components)
There are a lot of people who connect all sorts of things to the battery terminals.
Three or four grounds. Two or three positives. I’d bet even the person who installed it all has no idea anymore.
Anyone working on it later obviously won’t know either. From experience, I really don’t want to see DIY electrical work.
If you want to install electrical components yourself later, the best approach is to install a Daytona D-UNIT+.
With just this one unit, you can get three separate power circuits and a ground, like a power strip.
I think the safest move is to ditch any mysterious relays and swap them out for this.
The grounding culture just won’t die for some reason…
I think there’s effective grounding and questionable grounding.
Just running wires all over the place is honestly questionable… If you’ve installed grounding but can’t feel any difference and it’s just sitting there as insurance against poor grounding, the best thing is to remove it immediately.
Keeping a part on just because it seems wasteful to remove it is really not good.
• Homemade aluminum parts
I’ve seen all kinds—license plate brackets, master cylinder brackets, fenderless setups. With that thickness… there’s no way it’ll stay rigid…
But then there are times when something I was worried about ends up holding together surprisingly well. In a way, that’s educational too (*´▽｀*)
If you can take full responsibility for everything from start to finish, I think you can do whatever you want.
However, you do need to keep in mind what could happen if a serious problem comes up when the person working on it is test riding.
