Manufacturers used to fit grease nipples to swing arms pivots and shock linkage bearings. As part of the endless weight reducing quest and money-saving, grease nipples on road motorcycles are becoming a thing of the past. Now you're going to have to do it by hand.

First, check for bearing play by supporting the chassis of your motorcycle then then take up the bearing's free play by gently lifting the back wheel. A tiny amount of play in the typical six bearings adds up, so generally, a small amount of movement is acceptable, but it's worth making sure there's not any bearings which are much worse than the rest.

If your motorcycle is less than five years old and it's never seen a pressure washer, there's a decent chance that a re-grease is all it'll need, but bear in mind that the factory use only the minimum of lubrication, so after a couple of raining seasons and hot summers riding, and multiple jet washes, it'll be worth getting in there. Prevention is better than cure after all. In any case, be sure that you've got alternative transport to go and collect any parts you may need when your motorcycle's on stands with nothing to hold the rear wheel and shock in place.

Washing motorcycles is a chore, especially if you ride all year round. Grime penetrates every orifice, doing its corroding thing until you emerge after the end of the raining season with something that has serious rust and corroding spots.

The best thing to do it to wash your motorcycle down using pressure washer. The Bosch Aquatak 100 pressure washer offers up to 110 bar pressure, loads of accessories and an ease of use that no long makes cleaning a chore – just don't aim it at your wheel bearings.

If you're restoring a motorcycle with a steel fuel tank it's possible that rust has formed on the inside of the fuel tank. Often, when you have an old fuel tank the liner is also breaking loose and making a real mess. Rust on the inside of the fuel tank is an annoying problem that many motorcycle owners have to deal with.

The best way to fix it is to put steel goose shot or 10 to 32 steel nuts in 'dry' fuel tank, wrap it in a blanket, put the wrapped fuel tank in a 22-liter plastic paint pail, and take it to the local hardware store. Then insert it in the paint shaker and shook it until it knocked all the rust and loose stuff free. After all the rust and nasty crap is flushed out, you can then re-coat the fuel tank with a good petrol gas tank sealer. Now I have an edge when it comes to the fuel tank sealer, since I made a fuel tank sealer years ago and still have some left. But that's not going to help you reading this article.

Vibration on a motorcycle can range from lending a bit of character to the plot, all the way to destroying components – along with any pleasure in using the two-wheeler.

So what about the vibration? In order to know what can be done about it, as well as what can't, let's look at vibration in detail.

We all tend to think of engines as being the primary source of vibration on a motorcycle – they usually are and we'll come to them, but any moving part can generate vibration, and these secondary sources are easiest to minimize. Take a wheel for example – as you'll see from a washing machine anything rotating out of balance will shake around. It's down to the simple laws of mechanics – anything moving in a straight line will keep doing so unless some force makes it do otherwise. All the wheel components are moving in a circle, not a straight line, so there must be radial forces acting on each bit to cause it to move this way. If the wheel is perfectly balanced, then all radial forces cancel out. If it isn't, then there's an unbalanced radial force that has to be reacted by the axle bearings – hence a vibration.

It's not just rotary motion that's important – take exhaust gas exiting an engine. If a slug of gas is accelerating out the back, a reacting force must be bearing on surfaces inside the engine and exhaust system. The other thing about vibration is that its effects on parts of the motorcycle (brackets, bulb filaments etc) and parts of the rider (particularly joints and circulation) depend on the frequency as well as the intensity of the cause. This phenomenon of resonance is related to the natural frequency at which the part would vibrate, and the amount of damping (usually from friction) present. The point about resonance is that it's essentially the storage of energy, and so even if the source is relatively mild in its vibration, the resonating part can build up a far more violent shake.

Everyone always talks about how to find the perfect suspension set-up for scratching around in dry and perfect riding conditions. So, what if the conditions are not so perfect, and what can we do to improve our riding during the raining season.

There are a few things you can do – much as you would to a race bike in wet conditions. You can't physically generate more grip from the tires but you can try to get a better feel for how much grip there is.

Generally the best way to get this is to soften things off. You're not going to be accelerating as hard or leaning as much, although you'll probably brake just as hard. As such most of the changes are aimed at the rear end. You can back off the preload a little bit and open the compression and rebound settings too. Not lots, just couple of clicks or a 1¼ turn. This doesn't work the tire as hard and should increase your confidence.

When considering an engine rebuild or just looking for some additional performance, the first thought is often to increase the compression ratio. It's generally accepted that sports and race engines have higher compression ratios because, provided the volumetric efficiency is optimized, i.e. you can get enough mixture in, it will produce more power with better throttle response.

There are two types of compression ratio, static and dynamic. The latter is also known as running compression ratio and is dependent on camshaft design and the actual point that the inlet valve closes on the compression stroke. It is therefore lower than the static compression ratio.

Increasing the compression ratio is limited by several mechanical factors, including cylinder head material, surface area of the fins and combustion chamber design, though these days the main problem is the octane of the fuel.

Filters are the most basic of motorcycle consumables – but without air and oil filters, your motorcycle's engine wouldn't last more than a couple of hundred kilometers. So what are those filter on our motorcycles?

Cleaning your motorcycle is important, but there are two areas where cleanliness is absolutely vital – the oil in your engine and the air in your airbox. If either becomes contaminated with foreign objects, it can spell the end for your motorcycle engine in seconds. For this reason, booth are filtered, as you'll know if you've ever had your motorcycle serviced.

Oil filters first. There are two types of oil filter in general use: 'spin-on' and 'cartridge' types. As the name suggests, spin-on filters are the ones that poke out the front of the engine and refuse to unscrew-ever. Cartridge filters are simply made from the filter material and fit into a chamber in the engine.

Although the packaging is different, they work in the same way, passing the oil through a cellulose paper filter element. This paper is designed to trap particles above a certain size – given in microns (thousandths of a millimeter). To give you an idea of size, the thickness of an average human hair is usual around 100 microns. Depending who you listen to, filters will typically trap particles from 100 down to 5 microns.

One method for removing damaged bolts involves bolt extractors with a reverse spiral flute that grabs the remains of the bolt head when the extractor is turned in a counterclockwise direction. Using this time of bolt extractor is fairly intuitive when you see the tool. Just choose an extractor slightly smaller than the head of the bolt you're removing and press down while turning the extractor counterclockwise. There are several different styles of bolt extractors. Some are made to work with a reversible ratchet and have a square hole to fit either a ½ inch or 3/8 inch drive ratchet. Other have a hexagonal head and are meant to be used with a box-end wrench. The disadvantage to the extractors meant to be used with a ratchet is that if a bolt protrudes through a badly worn nut more than a fraction of a few centimeters, the ratchet may not fit all the way into the extractor. My preference is for the extractor with a hexagonal head because it's easy to use with a box-end wrench.

Nut splitters sometimes come in handy but have limited use on motorcycles because of their bulk. Nut splitters generally have a wedge and an anvil and one of those that forces the two parts together when the bolt is tightened. Using a nut splitter involves placing the splitter over the damaged nut with the wedge against one flat and the anvil against the opposite flat. Slowly tightening the bolt presses the wedge into the flat until the nut splits. However, some nuts will split quite harmlessly while other fracture abruptly and send sharp metal fragments in several directions at once. I cover the nut splitter with a shop rag in hope of containing any shrapnel created by using this tool.

Another need trick I learned while working on old motorcycles: use a grinder or other cutting tool to create two new flats on opposite sides of a damaged nut or bolt head. After using this method on a bolt, you grab the two new flats with an adjustable wrench or locking pliers. When working with damaged nuts, the adjustable wrench may be the preferred tool because locking pliers can squeeze the nut onto the bolt and make removal more difficult.

If you work on motorcycles with any regularity, you'll eventually encounter broken bolts, damaged screws, and nuts and bolts so badly worn a wrench can't grip them. Removing a damaged fastener is one of those tasks that, if not done properly, can add hours to a job, never mind drastically increasing your aggravation level. Also, verbal lubrication doesn't help get the fastener out, even if it does make you feel better. One of the features common to all the tools described in this article is that they work on SAE or metric fasteners. But before you reach for a drill, hammer, wrench, torch, grinder, or other tool, put on your goggles or safety glasses. You're going into battle!

Nuts, bolts, screws, and other fasteners rarely fail because of manufacturing defects, but it does happen. I once replaced a headlight bracket. A few months later, the head sheared off on one of the bolts even though it had been tightened to the recommended torque. More recently, while doing the first maintenance on a V-Twin motorcycle, one of the screws holding the clutch cover crumbled as soon as I put the tool on it. Some of the more challenging nuts and bolts I see are victims of corrosion, both on vintage motorcycles undergoing restoration or neglected modern motorcycles. Many of the damaged fasteners I see on newer motorcycles are the result of previous repair attempts.

Penetrating oils can sometimes release corroded nuts and bolts. These products carry names like Rust Buster, Liquid Wrench, and the ubiquitour WD-40. Many of these products are available as liquids and aerosols. Liquids allow you to put a few drops where you need them. Aerosols are handy f overspay won't make a mess. Penetrating oils won't work miracles, but they can be helpful if you're patient and allow some time for them to penetrate and do their job. I usually apply them, then work on something else for a few hours but apply a bit more liquid every once in awhile. I also tap on the head of the stuck bolt/nut, in the hope that the vibration will help the liquid penetrate easier.

Mess about with a motorcycle and chances are you’ll create problems. Motorcycle manufacturers don’t just design and build a motorcycle then put it on sale the following week. They spend months sometimes more than a year testing, riding the thing around test tracks and on selected roads, shaking down the systems, making sure it works under all conditions.

So it’s not surprising that my latest modification (nitrous) isn’t working 100 percent straight off. It’s currently working intermittently, with some unknown electrical problems still needing to be tracked down. I really need to take it back to the workshop, but I’ve struggled to find the time between travel and other obligations. One other thing I have discovered is the need to switch off the black box under the seat after a ride – it drains electricity and flattens the battery if left alone for a few days.