Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Services
If your Vintage Japanese Bike needs some
Extra Special Love
This is Your Shop
About Metric Motorcycles
Our Story
Founded in 2010, Metric Motorcycles started as a small
'late-night-shop' of friends, riders, and mechanics doing motorcycle repairs, art, and customization.
Just for fun and to get away from ... everything.
Over the years, we have slowly and quietly become one of the
(smallest, most personalized, and almost completely unknown)
reputable niche motorcycle shops in the area.
Our Services
To Start: We don't do EVERYTHING.
We do, however, offer a wide range of services for most Metric Bikes (Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki, Royal Enfield, and more), even including an occasional Harley or two.
If you own one of these vintage beauties, you probably already know how hard it is to find a competent shop you can trust to love your bike as much as you do. The number of good shops available to you is dwindling fast these days.
We specialize in the big four Japanese makers, and are tooled up and capable with some other brands as well.
Here's a list of SOME of the things we do:
Bike Safety Check
Restart after Storage
Detailing
Battery Service
Oil, Filter, Lubrication
Cable Service
Carburetor Rebuild (stock spec)
Vacuum Synchronization
Tuning
Petcock Services
Brake Pads / Shoes
Brake Caliper Rebuild
Master Cylinder Rebuild
Fork Seals
Steering Stem Services
Chain & Sprocket Service
Tire Services
Wheel Bearings
Spoke Wheel Building and Truing
Seat Recovering (OEM Style)
Cam Chain / Valve Adjustments
Blasting, Aluminum Polishing
Control and Grip Upgrades
Electrical Sorting
Accessory Installations
Original Bike Art / Photography
Engine work and Performance Mods
And more.
Our Team
Our team consists of a few experienced and passionate motorcycle guys who treat every bike as if it were our own and take pride in our work.
Attention to Detail is our thing.
Robbie: (pictured, testing a customers front brake)
JUST KIDDING!
Honda Trained and Certified on period (1983 and older) bikes, expert engine builder and tuner, World Record Holder, IDBA 1/8 mile 1986-1988, timing and carb specialist, jetting and tuning specialist, legit speed freak and hot rodder.
Jim:
Extremely Patient vintage motorcycle tech, veteran rider, artist, attention to detail freak, wheel builder, bike rebuilder, metric tool-collector, general mechanic, pain in the ass, on-the-spectrum old school shop owner at
Metric Motorcycles. (oh, That's Me!)
You:
Yep, you, our clients.
You bring us those wacky, hard to solve issues that keep us paying attention, keep us up at night, keep us interested, and when we wrap up your project, you often text or call us and tell us how great it's going.
"I can't believe this is the same motorcycle" is the common refrain.
(see "Testimonials" below)
You also sometimes send us a great new customer or two, with similar issues that they can't quite seem to get resolved anywhere else, and well ...
I guess that's why this site and our Motorcycle Shop still exist.
So yea, You.
Thanks For That!
Couldn't do it without you.
Working With Us
Locally, we serve central NC, USA, which includes the Raleigh - Durham - Research Triangle Park metro area.
You can also send us your bike with a shipper, (we can help coordinate that).
You can also ship parts for rebuilding, polishing, recovering, restoration. (carbs, seats, calipers, wheels, etc.).
We are generally pretty communicative once we start making headway with your work, and typically document all work with photographs which we share with you as we proceed. We save all parts and track your specific bike and services provided in our records for future reference.
As a general rule (with some exceptions, email me below for details, -Jim), we work on Vintage Japanese Motorcycles manufactured in 1983 and Older.
Our pricing is relatively modest, and we often "throw in" small repairs (loose wires, heat shrinking positive leads, minor adjustments, tidy-ups, touch-ups, and the like), at no extra charge.
If we see something else wrong, that's gonna bug us.
Bikes leave here much better than they came in, we take the time to fix your bike correctly.
Due to the nature of this work, parts availability, our small scale, and the complexity of some of the work we tend to attract, we
Do Not Offer Tight Deadline Scheduling.
It takes whatever it takes, we work efficiently but have found that rushing this work only leads to tears. Much of the time, bikes land Here because another shop or two had already 'fixed' the machine quickly and collected the money, but ... hadn't actually accomplished the fixing part.
Please plan ahead.
