What tools will it take to build a 'motard, especially with all the basic maintenance that goes hand-in-hand with buying a second-hand bike? First off, don’t ever, ever, buy cheap tools. What may seem like a bargain now will end up costing you; both in money and an unbelievable amount of time when your socket set fails to remove the slightly rounded bolt that any decent socket wouldn’t have even flinched at. So, what you need is a decent socket set and decent spanners, both open-ended and ring. Although you may see Snap-On in almost every tuner’s shop, closely followed by Facom, you don’t need to spend that much money. Teng Tools aren’t that expensive (around a third of Snap-On), but they are guaranteed for life and are more than capable of taking the sort of abuse dished out by even the most dedicated home mechanic. You can get a basic Teng kit, that contains 8mm-22mm sockets, 8mm to 19mm open-ended/ring spanners and screw driver bits, all with a 3/8 drive that’s big enough to just about handle a wheel spindle but small enough to get into all those little spaces you find on Japanese bikes without being big enough for you to seriously over-torque all those small bolts. The spanners too are long enough to get enough leverage behind them but again short enough to get into all those small spaces and short enough to make over-torquing quite difficult. You will need to supplement these kits with three other sockets, though. You’ll also need a 24mm, 27mm and 32mm - and that’s it. With the above Teng kit plus these three extra sockets, you’ve got almost everything you need to strip an entire engine. However, to make things a little easier for you, a few other things will come in handy. Such as screw drivers. You want small, medium and large flat head and Philips screw drivers, with rubber handles that are easy to hold, with heads that won’t disintegrate the second they encounter a difficult screw. Again, Teng Tools supply just the thing which, like their sockets and spanners, are guaranteed for life. A multi-meter will always come in handy, too. It doesn’t need to be a stupidly expensive, state-of-the-art one, either. A capable thirty quid meter from somewhere like Maplins will prove itself to be invaluable more times than you could ever imagine. Weak spark? Check the coils, stator, wires in-between the two. Only five minutes work with a workshop manual and meter yet you’ve just saved a huge amount of money compared to the cost of a shop doing the same thing. And it’s incredibly easy. A couple of different sized mole-grips should never be forgotten, but the next most important things you need are an angle-grinder and drill. Don’t think you need a grinder? Well, it’ll do everything from shorten your chain (which never, ever seem to be supplied with the correct number of links even when your bike is standard) to eradicating your whining other-half from life permanently. No biker should be without an angle-grinder. And that’s pretty much it, that’s all you’ll need 99% of the time - all of which will cost you less than £150. An amount of money you’ll save very, very quickly indeed. And now we’ve told you what you need get started yourselves, it’s time for me to start walking the walk and get the Honda up, running and racing… Extra Special Thanks To: Michelin Tyres Tel: 01782 401853 (Pilot slick tyres) Bert Harkins Racing - Tel: 01582 472374 (bodywork) Rush Racing - Tel: 01404 549696 (FMF exhaust) Big Four Engineering - Tel: 01663 734322 (switch gear) Bikes of Brighton - Tel: 01273 607635 (off-road clothing) Cambridge Motorcycles - Tel: 01223 360176 (dyno tuning) Vic Eastwood Motorcycles - Tel: 01322 669469 (Wiseco Pistons & official Honda components)