SlowSteve
New Member
I went looking for the official Honda Manual ( hard to get hold of in the UK - dealers very reluctant to sell them ) and found this instead.
UK: Honda NC700 Service Workshop Owners Manual NC700S NC700SA NC700SD NC700X NC700XA | eBay
US: Honda NC700 Service Workshop Owners Manual NC700S NC700SA NC700SD NC700X NC700XA | eBay
What you get is a spiral bound manual of about 100 pages written by a guy who really knows his stuff. He's taken all the best practise from the actual manual, and re-ordered it to be lined up into specific tasks.
So, there is a laid out, tested process to check valve clearances. Another to change the discs. Another to change the pads etc etc, rather than a true Workshops manual is which is usually laid out in terms of tasks - i.e how to lift off the cylinder head, and the mechanic threads the tasks together to get a specific job done.
Every major and minor task that I can imagine doing in a home workshop is covered and is the best laid out manual of any of the cars and bikes I have had previously.
Every process is laid out with a difficulty rating, an estimated time, followed by some commentary and then a well broken down step by step set of procedures, followed in all the cases of needing it with a method to test that the work has been completed properly and safely.
I am an especially big fan of the commentary he gives before the step-by-steps. He clearly states where ever he is diverging from any practice which Honda set down, either because he's found a better way, or he's found a safer/more reliable way for the home mechanic. So, for example, he shows a longer process for checking and setting valve clearances than Honda themselves use, but there is much less risk of making a mistake and it's a lot less fiddly if you haven't done it 50 times before.
If you are a guy who has been working on bikes for 30 years, you might find some of his methods a little conservative, and there might be too much detail for you, but you can quickly get to the few bits of information you need and work from there.
The intro to the book also lays out some really good best practise for someone who hasn't done a lot of work on bikes and cars before. This covers everything from actual useful advice about putting a set of tools together on a budget ( where it's worth spending money on tools and where it's not) to how to tighten up a component with lots of nuts on it. This is the kind of stuff that you're dad taught you as a kid, but written down really clearly and concisely.
The single best thing about the book is that he calls out where you should stop - he shows you how to get the bike safe enough to get it to a main dealer. This is something that I don't think I've seen many other books do - knowing when you're out of you're depth saves you an awful lot of money.
If you've got any mechanical tendencies at all, this book is all you need to get into home maintenance of you're bike, even if you have no previous experience of it. If you are in that catorgary, start with the Level 1 processes, and when you get the confidence up, move to Level 2 and so on.
There are a couple of downsides - it would be great if there were a few more pictures, and in some cases, it's hard to tell what the black and white picture is actually showing, although if you hold the image next to the bike itself it becomes obvious. I'm also not the biggest fan of the order in which some of the processes are laid out - for example, there are different brake maintenance tasks near the front, in the middle and near the end, rather than all grouped together in a section called "Brakes"
Lastly, if you were going to be exceptionally picky, you could mention that he doesn't call out every single minor risk - for example he doesn't do things that a Haynes manual would do such as "WARNING!!! Using Brake Cleaner on Hot Brakes gives off fumes is potentially dangerous". Personally I like that - too much molly-coddling is making people go a little odd, but it might bother some people
Aside from those couple of niggles, I can't say enough good things about this book. It has a place in pretty much NC700's owners garage I think.
Note: I have no affiliation with the author or anything to do with him - I'm just very impressed by his book
UK: Honda NC700 Service Workshop Owners Manual NC700S NC700SA NC700SD NC700X NC700XA | eBay
US: Honda NC700 Service Workshop Owners Manual NC700S NC700SA NC700SD NC700X NC700XA | eBay
What you get is a spiral bound manual of about 100 pages written by a guy who really knows his stuff. He's taken all the best practise from the actual manual, and re-ordered it to be lined up into specific tasks.
So, there is a laid out, tested process to check valve clearances. Another to change the discs. Another to change the pads etc etc, rather than a true Workshops manual is which is usually laid out in terms of tasks - i.e how to lift off the cylinder head, and the mechanic threads the tasks together to get a specific job done.
Every major and minor task that I can imagine doing in a home workshop is covered and is the best laid out manual of any of the cars and bikes I have had previously.
Every process is laid out with a difficulty rating, an estimated time, followed by some commentary and then a well broken down step by step set of procedures, followed in all the cases of needing it with a method to test that the work has been completed properly and safely.
I am an especially big fan of the commentary he gives before the step-by-steps. He clearly states where ever he is diverging from any practice which Honda set down, either because he's found a better way, or he's found a safer/more reliable way for the home mechanic. So, for example, he shows a longer process for checking and setting valve clearances than Honda themselves use, but there is much less risk of making a mistake and it's a lot less fiddly if you haven't done it 50 times before.
If you are a guy who has been working on bikes for 30 years, you might find some of his methods a little conservative, and there might be too much detail for you, but you can quickly get to the few bits of information you need and work from there.
The intro to the book also lays out some really good best practise for someone who hasn't done a lot of work on bikes and cars before. This covers everything from actual useful advice about putting a set of tools together on a budget ( where it's worth spending money on tools and where it's not) to how to tighten up a component with lots of nuts on it. This is the kind of stuff that you're dad taught you as a kid, but written down really clearly and concisely.
The single best thing about the book is that he calls out where you should stop - he shows you how to get the bike safe enough to get it to a main dealer. This is something that I don't think I've seen many other books do - knowing when you're out of you're depth saves you an awful lot of money.
If you've got any mechanical tendencies at all, this book is all you need to get into home maintenance of you're bike, even if you have no previous experience of it. If you are in that catorgary, start with the Level 1 processes, and when you get the confidence up, move to Level 2 and so on.
There are a couple of downsides - it would be great if there were a few more pictures, and in some cases, it's hard to tell what the black and white picture is actually showing, although if you hold the image next to the bike itself it becomes obvious. I'm also not the biggest fan of the order in which some of the processes are laid out - for example, there are different brake maintenance tasks near the front, in the middle and near the end, rather than all grouped together in a section called "Brakes"
Lastly, if you were going to be exceptionally picky, you could mention that he doesn't call out every single minor risk - for example he doesn't do things that a Haynes manual would do such as "WARNING!!! Using Brake Cleaner on Hot Brakes gives off fumes is potentially dangerous". Personally I like that - too much molly-coddling is making people go a little odd, but it might bother some people
Aside from those couple of niggles, I can't say enough good things about this book. It has a place in pretty much NC700's owners garage I think.
Note: I have no affiliation with the author or anything to do with him - I'm just very impressed by his book
