How To articles – The ExhaustNotes Blog

By Joe Berk

As you may know, I’ve been writing for Motorcycle Classics magazine for about 20 years. It’s hard to believe, I know. I mostly write the travel-oriented Destinations pieces, with the occasional feature story on a motorcycle or an interesting business. A new editor (good buddy Mark) suggested I start a series focused on how to do selected maintenance activities. My first thought was that it wasn’t such a good idea, but I learned a long time ago it’s never a good idea to argue with people who buy ink by the barrel, so I took Mark’s suggestion to heart.

My second thought was that a How To series should be a fairly easy thing to do. I wrote the shop manuals for CSC a few years ago. There, the approach was to have one of CSC’s maintenance experts perform the maintenance activity with me snapping photos through the process. I already had the photo approach nailed (f/8, Aperture mode, on board flash, all with my trusty D810 and Sigma 50mm macro lens). The photos became my notes. I processed the pics in PhotoShop, I added a bit of text to each, and the shop manuals basically wrote themselves. I knew I could use the same process for the Motorcycle Classics How To series, and I was right.

If you subscribe to Motorcycle Classics, you’ve already seen a few of these (and if you don’t subscribe to the magazine, you should). I did a story on how to service drum brakes with Emma Booton up in Marina (she’s wonderful), another one on wheel lacing with good buddy Kenny Buchanan of Buchanan Spoke and Rim, and lately I’ve been doing a series with good buddies Moe, Steve, and Lindsay at Cycle Garden in Indio, California. I enjoyed making friends at all these places, I enjoyed learning the processes, and I enjoyed writing the stories.

You can see the Motorcycle Classics stories I wrote here. It’s been a hell of a ride. You can also buy Destinations, a collection of some of my favorites.