MotoGarage

A Service Log Built for the Way Riders Actually Use Their Bikes

Most riders eventually face the same conversation in the garage: "Did I change the oil at the end of last season, or was that the season before?" The folded receipt in the toolbox is half faded. The notebook by the workbench has three different handwritings in it because the bike got handed down. The Excel spreadsheet on the laptop hasn't been opened since the laptop got replaced. MotoGarage exists to make that conversation never happen again — every service, every fuel fill, every mod, every part, in one place, on the phone that's already in your pocket.

Why Motorcycle Owners Need a Service Log (Hint: Resale Value)

Used motorcycle buyers care about two things: clean title and documented maintenance. A bike with a binder full of receipts and a service history that lines up with the odometer sells for 15-25% more than the same bike with "I think I changed the oil regularly." MotoGarage gives you that binder in digital form — every service entry timestamped, every receipt photo attached, every mod logged with vendor and cost. When the buyer asks "when was the valve check?" you don't guess, you scroll. When they ask "how much have you spent on it?" you hand them the mod-spend total. That documentation is the difference between a $4,200 sale and a $5,000 sale on the same bike — and the app cost you $4.99 once.

User-Defined Intervals: Why We Don't Preload OEM Data

Almost every other motorcycle app on the Play Store proudly advertises "service intervals for over 5,000 motorcycles preloaded." Sounds great until you check what they actually loaded. Owner's manuals change between model years, between regions, between emissions packages. A 2018 R6 sold in California has a 26,600-mile valve clearance interval; the same bike sold in Europe has a different one. A Harley Iron 883 sold before 2017 has different primary chaincase intervals than one sold after. The "preloaded" data is wrong about half the time, and the user has no idea which half. MotoGarage takes the opposite approach: every interval is blank until you fill it in from YOUR owner's manual. The app remembers what you entered and never overrides it. That's why our liability footer says "you set this" instead of "manufacturer recommends" — because we never claim to know what your manual says.

Tire Rotation, Tread Depth, and the Math Riders Forget

Motorcycle tires are not car tires. The rear wears 2-4x faster than the front, the tread wears unevenly depending on whether you're a chicken-strip rider or a knee-down rider, and rubber has a calendar age regardless of mileage — most manufacturers consider a motorcycle tire over 5 years old to be at end of life even if it has tread left. MotoGarage lets you log tire mounts as service entries with the date, the mileage, the brand, the compound, and a photo of the date code. When you set a tire-life reminder for 5,000 miles or 3 years (whichever you choose, whichever your tire's spec sheet says), the reminder fires on whichever trigger hits first. No more wondering whether the rear was new last August or the August before.

Valve Adjustment Schedules: The Service Riders Skip Most

Valve clearance check intervals are the most-skipped service in motorcycling. The interval is usually long (16,000-26,000 miles), the labor is intimidating (shim-under-bucket bikes require special tools, the Ducati Desmodromic system is its own special hell), and most owners convince themselves "the bike runs fine, I'll do it next time." Then "next time" is 50,000 miles in and the cam lobes are wearing because the clearance closed up. MotoGarage's dual-trigger reminder system was built specifically for this — set a valve check on miles AND time, whichever comes first, and the notification arrives early enough that you can book the shop appointment before the interval is blown. The notification text is deliberately blame-free: "Valve check reminder triggered — you set this for every 16,000 mi." You set it; we just remembered.

Brake Fluid Bleed Cadence and the Hygroscopic Problem

Brake fluid is hygroscopic — it absorbs water from the air through the master cylinder reservoir and the rubber hoses, lowering its boiling point until your front lever pulls to the grip on a fast downhill. Most motorcycle owner's manuals call for a brake fluid change every 2 years regardless of mileage, and almost nobody does it on time. MotoGarage's time-based reminder is the killer feature here: even if the bike sat in the garage for a season, the calendar trigger still fires when the 2-year interval you entered is up. Bleed cadence is one of those services where a $30 bottle of DOT 4 and an hour of garage time is the difference between confident hard braking and a sketchy ride home.

Sport vs Touring vs Cruiser: Different Service Rhythms

A sport bike ridden hard on weekends needs oil every 3,000 miles, chain lube every 300, and a tire every season. A touring bike piling up interstate miles can stretch oil to 6,000-8,000, chains last twice as long because of constant speed and shaft drives skip the chain entirely, and tires might run two seasons. A cruiser sees the lowest service rhythm of all — most are belt drive, most run modest RPMs, and the maintenance manual reads accordingly. MotoGarage handles all three because the user enters the intervals from their manual, not from a one-size-fits-all preset. Track-day riders can log the post-track inspection separately from street services. Adventure riders can log valve checks, fork oil, and counter-shaft seals on a different cadence than a daily commuter would. The app adapts to the rider, not the other way around.

Multi-Bike Households and the "Which One Did I Service" Problem

The riders who need a service log most are the ones with three bikes in the garage. The daily, the project, and the track bike. The vintage UJM that gets ridden monthly, the modern naked that gets ridden weekly, the off-road bike that comes out twice a year. Memory fails the moment more than one odometer is involved — "I changed the oil last spring" applies to which one? MotoGarage's multi-bike garage view solves this with a card per bike, each showing the next-due service in a coloured badge so you can see at a glance which bike is overdue and which has 1,200 miles to its next reminder. Premium removes the one-bike cap. The garage view is also the screen most riders open first — it doubles as a quick sanity check before a long weekend ride.

Garage Notebooks vs Phone Apps: Why Paper Loses

A lot of long-time riders still use a paper notebook in the garage. Nothing wrong with that — until the notebook gets oil on the page, the page tears out, the bike sells and the notebook stays in the seller's garage, or the rider can't remember whether the chain lube is in this year's notebook or last year's. A phone app has three advantages paper can't match: it's always with you (you don't ride without your phone), the data survives the sale (export the JSON, hand it to the buyer), and the reminders are active — paper doesn't notify you that valve check is due in 800 miles. MotoGarage was built to replace the notebook for riders who like the notebook habit but want the reminders, the receipts, and the resale-time export that paper can't give them.

Privacy and Offline Use

Your service log is your business. MotoGarage stores every bike, every entry, every photo locally on your device. No account, no cloud upload, no analytics on your maintenance data. The only network traffic is AdMob banners on the free tier and Firebase crash reporting — your garage data never leaves your phone. The app works completely offline, in basement garages, in barns, in the middle of nowhere on a tour. Backup is a JSON or CSV file you generate and store wherever you want — Google Drive, Dropbox, a USB stick, your laptop. You own the data.

For Tracking Only — Verify Against Your Owner's Manual

MotoGarage is a tracking app, not a manual. The intervals you enter are the intervals you typed in — we don't validate them against any OEM database because we don't have one. Every reminder notification reminds you that the interval came from your own input. Always cross-reference your bike's actual owner's manual, your dealer's recommendations, and your own riding conditions (riding in rain, riding hard, hot climates) when setting service intervals. MotoGarage helps you remember what you decided; it doesn't decide for you.