I've fix everything on my vehicles. My bike is actually so old that Honda wont touch it and I'm way better off doing the work myself. I've replaced timing belts, alternator bushings, rebuilt all my calipers, rebuilt my clutch and front brake master cylinders, replaced my rear master cylinder, replaced my clutch slave cylinder replaced all the brake and clutch lines, put on new brake pads all around, replaced all the filters, replaced my spark plugs, replaced my windshield, installed HID's with a delay relay and installed a wig-wag on my tail lights. After about a year of working on my bike its almost caught up with maintenance things. Its only now that I've started to add some cool things on the bike.
Almost anything on your bike is something you can learn to do yourself. Its not hard to do it just takes some learning. And I find that most garages will mess things up on my bikes and vehicles. Not because they dont know how to do it or have the right tools. Garages charge at certain rates and the mechanics have to get things done at a good pace to stay competitive. So I believe its a combination of the mechanic doesn't have extra time to do things perfect, he's got to get things fixed in a timely manner and he's working on other peoples bikes every day so they get a little unmotivated. So I get my bikes or truck back and then have to double check to make sure they fixed it correctly. And if they didn't sometimes I have to do a little extra work myself particularly when it comes to bikes. I'd just rather do it myself and save the aggrevation and money. And its a fair bit of money too. Recently did work on my truck and saved about $1000 in labor and parts markup by doing it myself. Not to mention the peace of mind knowing it was done correctly.
