If you’re still in denial that riding season is indeed over for the year, and you’re a little hesitant about putting your bike in winter storage, just stick your head out the front door and take a look. Winter has arrived, baby, and there’s no two ways about it. Heck, it’s even been raining in Southern California and they never have weather!

And unless you’re a motorcycle newbie, you know that putting your ride in hibernation doesn’t mean rolling it into the garage and putting the kickstand down. If that was your best thinking, we’ve got some more bad news for you. Winter storage requires some action on your part.… Continue Reading

Patrick Garvin, one of our more prolific bloggers and motorcycle tech experts grabbed a microphone and wandered around what he calls the “belly of the beast” here at J&P Cycles, asking a sampling of employees for their New Year’s resolutions.

Were this a bank or financial institution, you would expect those resolutions to center around balancing a checkbook or putting more into savings. But J&P Cycles sells motorcycle parts — about 130,000 of them at last count — and our employees seem to have a common theme when it comes to resolutions.

And that theme is this: Fix the bike that’s in the garage. For example, senior technician… Continue Reading

Josh Schmit is a problem solver and he’s been resolving customer issues here at J&P Cycles for the past seven years. Heck, he’s got answers for questions posed by other J&P techs. All this equipment knowledge comes from years of working on bikes. And Josh will be the first to tell you that squatting down in front of a bike with a wrench is the best education you can get in this industry.

Meet Josh Schmit:

J&P Cycles: What got you interested in motorcycles?

JS: It started for me the first time I actually tore apart a lawnmower engine at 9 years old and my older brother helped me get… Continue Reading

J&P Cycles team member Brett Koranda is one of our supervisors pulling the strings in our Iowa call center, not only fielding calls himself, but monitoring others and offering on-the-fly advice to his fellow J&P staffers. As a sales and customer service supervisor, it’s Brett’s task to make sure all your questions are answered when you phone in. He’s been doing an excellent job of it these past four years or so. If you call in and you hear, “Good afternoon, this is Brett,” give him a shout out. Tell him you read about him on the J&P blog:

J&P: What got you interested in Motorcycles?

Brett Koranda:… Continue Reading

Most of our Meet the Team introductions have been with J&P staff members who have been with us a long time. Today, we’re changing that up a bit in order to fill you in on two of the newer members of our team. These two gentlemen joined us within the last nine months and both guys are sharp as tacks and equally fun to work with.

Duane (Bud) Probus is a recent graduate of the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute (Phoenix) Harley and Kawasaki program. James Dean — that’s right, James Dean — is a graduate of Wyo Tech’s American Motorcycle Institute (Florida) Harley program.

Meet Bud (left) and James… Continue Reading

A few months back I wrote a blog entry about becoming a new Harley motorcycle rider after the passing of my grandfather. In that post I shared how, quite unexpectedly, I became the owner of a 2001 Heritage Softail Classic.

J&P Cycles Senior Technician Scott Holton, recently blogged about how motorcycling is often a hereditary thing – an obsession that’s often passed on down the family tree. What Scott didn’t explain is what happens if that trait skips a generation in the gene pool. Where’s your mentor? How do you learn? Of course there are huge benefits when you have a close relative or friend… Continue Reading

Chances are, you’ve spoken to him on the phone. Maybe he sold you a new leather motorcycle jacket. Or a new open belt primary. He may have given you some spot-on advice about the installation of your new Performance Machine wheels. Or he could have been the guy who helped you diagnose why your FXR is running in reverse only (Yeah, it happened).

We’re talking about Don Sasko here, head of our tech specialist program at J&P. Don works out of our Destination Daytona-based call center in Florida. He dishes out advice on everything… Continue Reading

If loving motorcycles — and Harley’s in particular — is a hereditary trait, I guess you could say I came by my infatuation honestly. My dad was a mechanic and I grew up surrounded by disassembled machines, frames hanging from the garage ceiling and the intoxicating aroma of half-filled oil pans. My dad had bikes around our property before I was born, and he actually dabbled with open wheel racing with the United States Auto Club.

Dad never owned a bike when I was growing up, but back in the early ’70s, at the impressionable age of 14, he helped me pick out a 1968 Montgomery Wards Riverside… Continue Reading

Jason Hayes loves the thrill of the ride. Doesn’t matter whether it’s tearing down a black diamond on his snowboard in the Adirondack Mountains, taking a dog-sled team up a steep pass in the Rockies, or flying over twisty roads on his GSRX 1000.

There’s just not a whole lot of extreme sports that Jason won’t attempt at least once. In fact, it was his love for the outdoors that sparked his passion for motorcycles.

Jason received a motorcycle technician’s degree with a specialty in Asian bikes from Wyotech in 2008. And along with the diploma came some pretty impressive technical honors.

He’s always been… Continue Reading

Editor’s Note: Tim Barcz is J&P Cycles’ senior ecommerce manager, and while he’s been doing a bang-up job for us in this capacity since April of 2008, he’s never taken riding and getting his license as seriously as his work on our award-winning website. As you’ll read below, events have changed all that, and Tim will be blogging from time to time on the trials and travails of switching from being a sidecar rider to his anticipated evolution as a seasoned Harley rider.

The Journey of a New Harley Rider, Part I

By Tim Barcz

You know the call is going to come. You just don’t know when. Days… Continue Reading