Welcome back all you little gear grinding, grease guzzling,
chopaholics. I know what you are
thinking I dropped the ball and have left yall hanging. I have but the old wizardy one has had to
focus on a few things this summer namely paying bills. But such is the life of those of us who grind
away at life. Now that things are
winding down I have a few ideas for articles I would like to do. I will be
wiring the trike in a week or so and will feature that as well as the process
of doing my paint on a rattle can budget.
In the mean time I thought I would do a quickie on a subject we all hate,
winter. Like it or not old man winter
will soon be laying his frosty hand on much of the land and I am sure he has
already way laid some of the north of the border brethren. The question always comes up when first
getting into motorcycles how I store one correctly for the winter.
Step one get down and dirty.
Change that oil and check all fluids.
Make sure all systems are in the best possible shape. This is a key to keeping things good while at
rest.
Step two is Clean it.
I mean give it a good bath. I
know many people may think why well all of that road crud can have things in it
that will do bad bad things in the long run.
So it is best to get it off there.
Step three fill er up. I know this sounds odd but really
fill that tank and put some stabilizer in it.
When things are in use they tend to not get nasty problems like rust
nearly as bad.
Step four close up openings.
This refers to the pipes and the carbs.
Little stuff loves to get in there this can be as simple as closing the
choke and putting a bag over the pipe with a rubber band. This will keep the creepy and crawly boogers
out.
Ok this last part is a subsection depending on which kind of
guy you are. There are two for this
part. There is the I have easy access
and plan to crank the bike once every week or two to keep things fresh and
moving and the I actually have to store it guys. For the first you can probably skip pretty
much everything and be ok however maintenance is still a good winter habit and I
would suggest getting a battery charging device like a battery tender to keep
it fresh and ready. Small price for
sanity.
Now if you are the second kind there are two steps I would suggest
you consider. First pull your carbs and
clean them. This new gas most of us get
is shit. It likes to break down and do
really awful things. Cleaning fresh
liquid gas from carbs is so much better than letting it set up and become
something more again to roofing tar. Just
pull em, drain em, blow out passages with compressed air, and put em back
on. Another step I take is remove the
battery. Lots of people will leave it in
that is their deal but I have some truly nasty things happen because of
batteries while something is being stored.
My philosophy here if the battery isn’t in there it can’t do nasty
things. Problem solved. Of course there are many other things you can
do as well be these are the basics that will make that first good riding day so
much better come spring time.
