YouTuber Breaks Down Easy 90-second Pre-ride Safety Check

By Cameron Vanderhorst - September 23, 2019

Before every ride, you should check your motorcycle to make sure it’s safe. ‘FortNine’ has an easy process that anyone can follow.

Motorcycle safety is important. Believe it or not, it starts before you even get on the bike. After all, there’s enough stuff out on the road that’s trying to kill you. It’s important that your motorcycle isn’t one of them.

So how do you make sure that your bike is in fighting shape? The Motorcycle Safety Foundation recommends following their T-CLOCS checklist. T-CLOCS stands for Tires, Controls, Lights, Oil, Chassis, and Stands. The problem is that their checklist takes up an entire page.

Safety is important, but who has time for such an in-depth inspection before each ride? The YouTube channel FortNine, hosted by Ryan Kluftinger, is one of our favorites. Every video is packed with useful advice, honest opinions, and wrapped in a layer of excellent production. Most of his content isn’t Harley-centric, but you should subscribe anyway if you love riding.

Kluftinger dramatically crumples up the T-CLOCS checklist and proposes a quick 90-second motorcycle health checkup that anyone can do, called ABCDEFG. He starts off, like the T-CLOCS checklist, with the motorcycle’s tires and wheels (that’s “A” for “Air”).

Using a tire pressure gauge, he first checks the tire pressure. Next, he uses the same tool to check the tread depth. He also looks for bulging, weather checking, or any other issues.

Lastly, he runs the end of the tool over the bike’s spokes, listening for a tink-tink-tinking sound (just watch the video; you’ll see what we mean). In his words, “thud means dud.” If you have a bad spoke, you’ll be able to hear it easily. Obviously, those with aluminum wheels can move on with just a visual check.

The next step is B, for bars. Kluftinger manhandles the bike in places, compressing the suspension and checking the brakes while moving the handlebars back and forth. This allows him to check the suspension, brakes, steering head bearings, and the handlebars themselves quickly and efficiently.

Kluftinger moves on to step three, controls. “Controls are the only step I won’t condense,” he says. Check your lights, turn signals, horn, and throttle for proper operation. Next up is D for drive. In our case, that means a belt check – we have it a little easier than the chain-driven guys. Just make sure your belt isn’t cracked or checked and you’re good to go.

E is for “Earth.” This one is simple, too: check the ground for fluid leaks. Kluftinger explains it by simply saying, “If there’s no fluids there, they’re probably still in here.” Pretty self-explanatory.

F is for fasteners. Expecting a motorcyclist to torque every bolt on their bike before taking off for the day is a little extreme. Instead, Kluftinger recommends checking for loose bolts by hand, and putting a dab of paint on bolts that have been torqued to make sure that they don’t move. This takes a complicated job and turns it into a simple visual check.

G is for guy (or gal). Make sure that you’re in good condition both physically and mentally to ride the bike. If you’re tired, drunk, angry, or otherwise distracted, stay home. This might be the most important part of the pre-ride check so far.

Once all of those things are set, you’re good to go. Kluftinger then goes through all of the steps again with a timer, proving that it can be done in just 90 seconds. In closing, he explains that this is “in no way an exhaustive inspection, but the safety check that is doable is formidable.”