I suspect most people are aware that vintage bikes require more maintenance than do newer models. But some may not realize that these bikes do so by design, not simply due to age, though that factors in significantly as well.

Take a look at your Honda owner's booklet. Late 60s to early 70s maintenance intervals were just 2,500 to 3,000 miles apart, and 80s bikes only double that. Yup. A little shocking in the present powersports climate of 25,000-mile valve adjustments, not to mention cars that are simply replaced at 80,000. Don't you think? But it's real and it's critical and it’s at this late date in history, a problem. An issue. The money some riders save over the years by not doing necessary maintenance they will in the end have to spend all at once. It's kind of vehicular Karma. But whatever you label it, is that any way to treat a motorcycle? And a person who treats a bike like this will actually have to spend a little more than the equivalent of all those years. Guaranteed. Neglect indebts with compound interest.

I'm afraid many riders view maintenance as something performed only when something goes wrong. Maintenance by crisis, in other words. Perhaps we have been lulled into this complacency by the absence of the kinds of troubles cars and motorcycles used to give a couple generations ago; their dramatically decreased incidents of breakdown. Their utter reliability. To the point that we have learned to treat vehicles as disposable. They virtually are, you know, when regarded as such. Use 'em til they start costing you and replace 'em. Unfortunately, however true this may be for today’s cars, it just doesn't work for 1960s through 1980s Honda motorcycles. Not at all. You will not enjoy them if you don’t realize this.

I didn't start writing this article thinking of Robert Pirsig but now suddenly I am remembering him and his maintenance as meditative catharsis ethos. As a lifelong professional mechanic I have a strong empathy for something like that philosophy, but I would rather instead call it taking responsibility for the truth and reality of entropy; heading off at the pass problems that will surely come if they are not anticipated. This is why the word "preventative" is often used when describing necessary, regular maintenance. Even if you're riding your vintage—nowadays even antique—motorcycle at anything approaching regularity, 2,500-mile intervals may be quite a bit longer than a year for you. But even then, they spell virtually a lifestyle of maintenance. While that fact was assumed without a second thought by riders of that era, we of the current time more than fifty years later must work at it; be proactive and intentional—make more of an effort in this day in which the maintenance ethic has, very demonstably, been lost. Preventative maintenance. Judging by the attitude of most of my customers, we as a generation seem to be mystified by its implications.