Winter Storage for Motorcycles

Winter Storage for Motorcycles

Latest version available at: http://www.clarity.net/adam/winter-storage.html.

Copyright © 1998-2010 Adam Glass. All rights reserved.
Distribution and republication: please feel free to link to this document, bookmark it, tell all your friends about it, etc. (The correct link is shown above, under the title.) However, please respect my hard work and my "intellectual property" and do not copy this document and publish it on your own website. If you wish to republish portions of this document, or translate it into another language, please contact me at clarity.net@adam. (Well, flip that around, first -- it's anti-spam protection.)

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USAGE -- IMPORTANT INFORMATION
The information contained in this document is provided at no cost and without any warranty whatsoever.
The author and contributors are not responsible for any errors contained herein, and make no claims whatsoever as to the legality, safety, validity, or veracity of the information and advice contained in this document. Much of the information contained in this document could be incorrect and potentially dangerous depending on the specific situation involved. As a matter of safety, all riders should have a factory-trained, professional mechanic perform a complete tune-up immediately following extended storage. Furthermore, extended storage preparations should only be performed by mechanically competent individuals who are experienced in motorcycle maintenance and are well aware of the safety risks involved. Any use of the advice contained herein is done solely at your own risk. The information contained in this document is provided for entertainment purposes only, and is not in any way a guarantee that you or your vehicle will not be harmed by performing or failing to perform any of the procedures described herein. Reading beyond this point constitutes an implicit acceptance of these terms and conditions.

A major tip o' the hat to Paul Luevano, Bruce Leung, Crystal Trexel, Ole Holmblad and Joe Weenytoast for suggestions. If you have any questions or suggestions that might make this resource more complete or more accurate, please email them to me!

Checklist of things to do -- IN ORDER:

1) Find a place to store it, get the tools you'll need
- Sheltered from the elements, away from chemical fumes and ozone.
- Get the chemicals you need -- gas stabilizer, any cleaning supplies.
2) Run the bike, fill the tank, stabilize the gas
- Take the bike out for a ride, and swing by a gas station on your way home.
3) Change the oil
- Do this while the engine is still hot -- it gets more junk out.
4) Put bike on stands
- If you can, take the weight off the tires.
5) Spray fogging oil in cylinder(s)
- Used to keep the rings and cylinder walls from rusting.
6) Cover intake/exhaust with bags
- While the bike is warm, cover the air box snorkels and exhaust pipe.
7) Final fuel system checks
- If your bike has one, switch the petcock off.
8) Remove and charge the battery
- Take the battery out of the bike for charging.
9) Wash, dry, and wax dry the bike
- Wash and wax the bike. Get all the corrosive road salt and chemicals off it.
10) Protect the bike's exposed metal
- Spray the bike's exposed metal parts (but not the brakes!!) to prevent rust/corrosion.
11) Lock it up
- Lock it up so it doesn't get stolen!
12) Cover It
- Cover the bike with a breathable material that will keep dust off.
Stuff to do over the winter
- Miscellaneous things to do while you're not riding.
Taking the bike out of storage
- A mini-checklist of things to do when it's time to get back on the road.
For the curious...
- Why these steps are in the order they're in.

Important Note
These instructions are intended to be followed in order. The purpose of this order is to minimize the bike's exposure to corrosive agents and prolong its life & good looks as much as possible. This guide assumes that the vehicle is being stored for more than a month and less than a year. There may be other storage procedures you should follow if you plan to store the vehicle for longer. For storage of less than a month in temperatures that don't go below freezing, you don't really need to do anything to the bike. (Unless you have an alarm system that may drain the battery, in which case you need to charge the battery, disconnect the alarm, or prepare to deal with a dead battery.) If it's going to get below freezing, bring the battery indoors -- you don't want it to freeze.

You may have another way that you handle winter storage. That's fine. I'd love to hear any suggestions that you may have -- please mail them to me -- maybe I can use them to make this document better. No one says you have to follow this stuff to the letter, but a fair amount of thought has gone into the order of the steps and the specific things done at each stage. Do please read through this whole document before you start doing anything -- the suggestions in later steps might affect how you go about doing some of the earlier ones.

1) Find a place to store it, get the tools you'll need

Find a good place to store the motorcycle. Keep it away from extreme temperatures -- which pretty much means keep it inside, if possible. Chemical fumes can dry out and attack the bike's organic (rubber) parts, so don't put the bike in an area that will expose it to this stuff. Likewise, electric motors and heaters generate ozone, which is also bad for rubber, so keep the bike away from ozone sources too.
Don't put the bike somewhere where it'll get knocked over. Find a smooth, level place that's out of the way.
It's probably bad to store the bike on dirt, where moisture rising out of the soil could collect under a cover and cause your bike's tender metal bits some grief. So make sure it's stored on a dry surface.
Very important: go to the local auto-parts place and buy a can of fuel system stabilizer. Virtually any brand will do. It's not expensive.
Shopping list:
- gasoline stabilizer
- enough cheap oil to do an oil change
- a new oil filter (OEM preferred)
- any cleaning chemicals that you plan to use when washing & waxing the bike
You might also want to buy (if you don't already have) any tools that you will need to take the bike's gas tank, bodywork, windscreen, and spark plugs off.

2) Run the bike, fill the tank, stabilize the gas

wash the bike

Take the bike out for a spin, and on the way back, fill the tank up. You may want to add the gasoline stabilizer that you bought right before you fill the tank, as that'll mix things up better. You want to make sure the tank is full when you store the bike, so wait until the end of the ride to visit the local gas station.
You want to get the bike nice and hot, so make sure you're out for long enough to get the engine up to operating temperature for a while. Ride around for at least 20 minutes before visiting the gas station. Getting the engine nice 'n hot does two good things:
- a) It burns off any condensation that's formed in the engine.
- b) It gets the oil hot, which stirs up evil combustion by-products and makes it easier to remove them when you do the oil change.
If you haven't already, add the appropriate amount of gasoline stabilizer to the tank when you return to the storage location. You will need to run the bike for another 5 minutes or so to make sure that stabilized fuel has worked its way through the entire fuel system. Be careful about the build-up of poisonous carbon monoxide fumes if your bike is stored in an enclosed space.
- Warning for those of you with pretty/shiny/chromey pipes: running a stationary bike for an extended period of time may slightly discolor your shiny pipes due to a lack of cooling airflow. Keep this in mind.
Stabilizing the gas is probably the most important thing to do when storing your bike. Gasoline is a blend of dozens of different compounds. Over time, the more volatile compounds will evaporate, leaving a hard sludge that will gunk up your carburetors and prevent them from working. Gasoline stabilizer (largely) prevents this from happening. You must stabilize the gasoline in your fuel system before storing your bike! Even if your bike doesn't have carburetors.
Because I get so many questions about draining the float bowls, I wrote a little section on why I don't drain my bikes' float bowls at the end of this document.

3) Change the oil

Change the oil before you store the bike. Old oil contains combustion by-products and other nasty stuff. So do an oil and filter change now that the bike is still warm from being run. This is probably the second-most important step of storage, and possibly the only one that will cause permanent damage if skipped.
Make sure you dispose of the old oil properly -- many states have laws requiring auto-parts stores to accept old oil for recycling.
Some dangerously misguided guides suggest filling the engine cases with oil. Do not do this. Do a normal oil change and put the normal amount of oil in as listed in your owner's manual. Given the other things you'll be doing here, you're taking excellent care of your engine -- don't worry. Filling the cases is both wasteful and dangerous; if you start the engine with oil-filled cases, you stand a decent chance of seriously breaking the engine.
Also, you're probably going to get rid of this oil fairly early next season, so don't get the latest, greatest, $9/quart synthetic ambrosia. Get cheap-ass oil. If you're paying more than $1.25/qt, you're paying too much.
After you change the oil, move the bike to a well-ventilated area and start it. Running the engine for a minute or two will distribute the fresh oil throughout the engine, insuring that the remnants of the old oil are diluted. After a minute or two, kill the engine and, if applicable, move the bike back to the area where it will be stored.
- Only do this post-oil-change step if the engine is still warm from step 2. Don't do this step if the engine has cooled, as running the engine briefly will just form condensation in the engine. (This is the same reason why you don't want to run the engine during the winter.)

4) Put the bike on stands

If you have a centerstand, you're all set. Put the bike up on the centerstand and skip to section 5, below. If you don't have a centerstand, read on...
If you have a pair of bike stands (a swingarm stand and either a fork stand or a front-end stand that holds the bike from the steering stem), cool. Put the bike up on the stands and store it that way.
If you don't have stands, don't risk dropping the bike by trying to rig up something with boards, jack stands, milk crates, etc. It's not that critical. Just remember that you may want to take a little more care with tires over the course of the winter. (See below.)

5) Spray fogging oil in cylinder(s)

You may need to remove the gas tank to access the spark plugs. On some models (e.g., Yamaha FZR400) you may even need to loosen or remove the radiator or oil cooler. Or sacrifice small animals or hire a contortionist or something -- some spark plugs are very well hidden. BMW and Moto-Guzzi owners are laughing at the rest of us right now.
After clearing out dirt/grit from around the spark plug holes (compressed air is great for this), remove the spark plugs and spray some "fogging oil" (available at motorcycle or marine shops) into the cylinders. If you can't get some, try harder. But if you still can't get some, squirt in a little motor oil (or, failing that, some WD40) to lubricate the cylinder walls. (Not more than a teaspoon per cylinder!) If, for whatever reason, you can't get the spark plugs out -- and if you're feeling up to it -- pop the carburetors off and spray some oil in via the intakes. But make sure you spin the engine a bit using the rear wheel top gear trick (see next paragraph) to make sure closed intake valves don't prevent oil from getting into all cylinders.
If your bike has a centerstand, or you've raised it off the ground with other stands, put the bike in the top gear and (by hand) rotate the rear wheel to slowly spin the enigne. Make sure the ignition is switched off when you do this, and don't use the starter in lieu of spinning the rear wheel by hand. After ~10-15 revolutions, the cylinder walls will be well coated and you can move on.
- If you're not going to be able to get the rear wheel off the ground to spin it and spread the oil around, make sure you use fogging oil (preferred) or WD40. They'll distribute themselves a bit better than a little squirt of motor oil.
Don't bother buying "Marvel Mystery Oil." You no doubt have some motor oil left over from the oil change you just did -- if you don't have fogging oil, use some of the leftover motor oil. All you're trying to do is lube the cylinder walls and prevent the rings from sticking. Motor oil will do a marvelous job -- this is precisely what it's engineered to do. No mystery products required.
Reinstall the spark plugs, being careful not to cross-thread them. You may want to dab a little anti-sieze on them to protect the threads that they screw into.
If you were able to put the bike in top gear and rotate the rear wheel, put the bike back in neutral. You may need to spin the rear wheel a bit to help the transmission shift.
Briefly skip ahead to the next section for a quick note on covering the air box's intakes.
If you had to remove the gas tank or radiator, make sure they get reinstalled properly.

6) Cover intake/exhaust

After the exhaust pipes have cooled but preferably while the engine is still warm, squirt a little WD40 into each exhaust pipe and cover the tip(s) of them with a balloon or a plastic bag to prevent moisture from getting to the engine. Make sure it's airtight -- rubber bands work well for this.
Likewise, cover the air box's intake(s). If you need to remove the gas tank to spray fogging oil into the cylinders (previous step), you can cover the air box's intake(s) while you have it off. (Aren't you glad you followed my advice and read the whole document before starting?)
You may also want to cover the air box's drain hose.

7) Final fuel system checks

If you followed step 2 properly, stabilized gas has worked its way through the whole fuel system, and you do not need to drain the carburetors' float bowls. (See below for more info.)
If your fuel petcock has settings like ON/RES/PRI, leave the petcock set to "ON." If your petcock has settings like ON/RES/OFF, switch the petcock to "OFF."
If your bike doesn't have a fuel petcock, possibly because it's fuel injected, you're a lucky bastard. Skip to the next step.

8) Remove and charge the battery

The bike doesn't need its battery over the winter, and you want to prevent it from freezing. So take it out, take it inside, and keep it charged.
- Batteries contain a lot of water, and water expands slightly when it freezes. If it gets cold enough, the water/acid solution in your battery could freeze, cracking the battery when it expands slightly. (Then, when it warms up, the water/acid solution melts and runs all over your bike!) Freezing = bad.
If you're storing the bike in a place where it won't be exposed to freezing temperatures, you don't need to remove the battery from the bike except to do a routine annual cleaning of the battery and the bike's battery box (as explained below.) Don't neglect to keep the battery charged, however.
Keeping a lead-acid automotive battery happy means keeping it charged. The best method is to put it on a smart charger, like the "Battery Tender" (approx $50), that will only charge it as much as it needs to, and won't boil the battery dry with overcharging. Just put your battery on the smart charger and, with the exception of periodic fluid level checks and other maintenance mentioned below, you can pretty much forget about it all winter.
If you can't afford or don't want to buy a smart charger, buy a cheap 12v trickle-charger ($10 or so) and hook it up to an automatic timer, so the battery gets about 30 minutes of trickle-charging a day. You may also be able to rig the thing up to your garage door opener, giving the thing a few minutes of charge each time the garage door is opened. A few minutes of trickle-charging a day is probably sufficient to make sure the battery stays charged.
Unless you have a maintenance-free battery, check the battery's fluid levels regularly to make sure the charger isn't boiling away the electrolyte. If the levels are low, add distilled water only to bring the levels back up.
Charge the battery in a well-ventilated area, particularly if your battery isn't "maintenance free." Batteries can emit hydrogen gas while charging, which is fairly explosive. (This is why wires get hooked up in a specific order when jump-starting.)
You'd be pretty grungy if you never took a bath, and the same is true of your battery. "Maintenance free" batteries don't need any cleaning (except for the terminals, as noted below) unless it looks like battery acid has leaked out of them, in which case you should follow the suggested maintenance for regular batteries. That being: clean the outside with a baking soda/water solution to neutralize any acid that's gotten out -- unless you're certain that no acid has escaped. Likewise for the inside of the battery box. Then clean the outside of the battery and the inside of the battery box with a warm soapy water solution -- even those of you with "maintenance free" batteries and those of you who skipped the baking soda step. Make sure to dry things very thoroughly afterwards!
All batteries: clean the terminals with a wire brush and lube them with a dielectric grease before returning the battery to service.
There's an old wives' tale about putting batteries on cement floors. As long as the outside of the battery is clean and dry, you have nothing to worry about. Pay no attention to electrical superstitions. Just prevent the battery from freezing, and make sure it stays charged.

9) Wash, dry, and wax the bike

hours

Around wintertime, there's often a lot of salt on the roads. Clean this stuff off before you store your bike! Mild soap and water is fine, or use a bike-specific cleaning chemical if you want. Make sure you wash the whole underside of the bike, the wheels, suspension components, etc.
And don't forget to dry the bike. The engine (which should still be hot from your ride) may be able to evaporate the water off, but you'll still want to get the water off the wheels, frame, etc. Drying the bike is really important; do a good job.
Wax the bike's painted parts; it'll prevent the paint from oxidizing over the winter.
Standard warning that everyone who owns a pressure-washer should be able to recite by heart: the overwhelming pressure that pressure-washers generate can do bad things to motorcycles. Take care not to point the powerful stream of water at bearings, seals, etc. Water under such high pressure can force its way past seals, displacing grease, corroding bearings, etc. Be careful.

10) Protect the bike's exposed metal

Do not apply chemicals or lubricants to brake pads, brake rotors, or tires.

Don't mess with the brakes.

To protect metal parts, spray the exposed metal parts of the bike (particularly the underside) with a rust inhibitor like WD40, cosmoline, or Maxima's Chain Wax shoul. (Believe it or not, Chain Wax works very well for this purpose!) These chemicals will prevent rust and corrosion from making any progress while the bike is in storage. You will want to do a good job of removing them come spring.
PJ1 makes a rubber-protecting chemical that seems to keep rubber from dry rotting. Although you shouldn't spray any chemical on your tires, other rubber parts of your bike might benefit from some of this stuff.
Rusty spots (except on the brake rotors) should probably be attended to over the winter. See the section on stuff to do over the winter, below.
If you get any ChainWax/WD40/cosmoline/whatever on the bike's pretty parts, do a little touch-up washing to prevent these chemicals from staining the bike's finish over the winter. Diluted "Simple Green" (an organic degreaser) followed by either Honda Pro Oils "Spray Cleaner & Polish" or Meguire's "Quick Detailer" should work well.

11) Lock it up

Depending on where you store your bike, you may want to put a big-ass lock on it to make sure it stays put. Keep in mind that determined thieves can cut through just about anything, and the best protection against theft is probably insurance.
On that note, you may not be able to insure the bike against theft ("comprehensive") if you cancel the registration or stop carrying collision/liability coverage over the winter. Check with your insurance agent to make sure you're receiving the coverage that you want.
Buy a big, heavy chain (Cobra-Links or Kryptonite's Barbed Wire come to mind), and lock the frame of the bike to something relatively immovable. And cover the thing (see below) -- covers are probably better theft protection than any lock.

12) Cover the bike

Print out the section on "Taking the bike out of storage" and tape it to the top triple-clamp with a removable tape like 3M's Scotch "Magic Tape."
Make sure the bike has been well-dried after the washing it got in step nine.
Use a breathable cloth cover. You don't want to trap moisture under the cover, as it'll cause rust. Likewise, you want to keep water out, particularly if you're storing the bike outside, where it'll be subjected to precipitation. Purpose-made bike covers work well, as does anything made of Gore-Tex.
- Cycle Shield

Stuff to do over the winter

Do not run the engine over the winter! You'll just create condensation in the engine and combustion byproducts (acids, etc) in the oil. Resist the temptation.
Winter is an excellent time to do other routine maintenance -- you'll miss riding, and it's a good way to spend time with your bike(s) as you pine away for next season. Plus, you've probably been dragging your feet about performing some of the scheduled maintenance, haven't you? That's OK; we all have. Now's the perfect the time to get it out of the way.
Read through your owner's manual, and perform any service that gets done once a year or more frequently, even if it isn't quite time yet. At the very least:
- lubricate control cables and periodically operate all controls
- check (and, if necessary, adjust) chain/belt tension
- lubricate chain, or lube driveshaft
- check brake pads and rotors
- change fluids (brake, clutch, etc)
- inspect/replace/clean air filter
- check all bolts to make sure nothing is loosening
- inspect tires (for cuts, uneven wear, dry-rot, tread depth, images of the Virgin Mary, etc)
- inspect swingarm and steering head bearings
- lube suspension, pivot points, grease fittings, etc
Extra credit assignments:
- Change fork oil
- Change coolant (except for you air-cooled types)
- Valve adjustment (except for you two-stroke types)
- Disassemble/clean/reassemble carburetors (except for you fuel-injected-types)
- Mount new tires (if it's time)
A lot of this maintenance will seem intimidating to people who haven't done much work on their bikes. That's fine. Start with simple stuff and tackle the more involved tasks when you feel up to it. Or find friends who are more experienced with bike maintenance and bribe them to help you.
If you didn't have stands to get the tires off the ground, make sure you check the tires every month or so to make sure they're at normal operating pressure. You may also wish to move the bike slightly every few weeks to prevent flat spots. (Or maybe this is another old wives' tale. "Your Mileage May Vary.")
Clean up any rust spots with some very fine grit sand paper (until you get down to bare metal) and repaint the area with a matching color. (This does not apply to the brake system, of course -- as previously noted, leave the brakes alone.) Paint will not cure properly when it's really cold out, so if you aren't storing the bike somewhere warm, you might as well skip this step until the ambient temperature is over 65 degrees or so.
- To paint the exhaust system, make sure you sand down to bare metal and use an extremely high temperature paint such as fireplace/stove paint (available at many hardware stores or specialty fireplace stores.) If you can track down a high-temperature etching primer, that'd be a good thing to use between the sanding and the first coat of paint. (The exhaust system gets so hot that conventional paints will be destroyed.)
- Color-matched paint may be available through your local dealership. Color-Rite seems to make much of the OEM paint for motorcycles.
Order new spark plugs for your bike's return to use. (Optional, but usually inexpensive -- follow the maintenance schedule set by your bike's manufacturer.)
Sign up for an early-season Motorcycle Safety Foundation Experienced Ridercourse.

Taking the bike out of storage

Remove the cover.
Remove any large locks you might have used to secure the bike.
Make sure the tire pressures are set properly for normal use.
If the bike is up on stands, carefully lower the bike off the stands.
Wash the bike to remove any metal-protecting cosmoline/WD40/Chain Wax.
Install the clean, well-charged battery.
If your bike has a fuel petcock, turn the fuel system on. If your fuel petcock has settings like ON/RES/PRI, set it to "PRI" for about 20 seconds, then switch it to "ON." If your petcock has settings like ON/RES/OFF, set it to "ON." If your bike has a fuel pump, make sure the kill switch is set to "RUN."
Remove any plastic/rubber covers that you put on the air box intakes, exhaust pipes, and air box drain.
Move the bike to a well-ventilated area and start it... let it run it for 20 minutes, or long enough for the fan to come on twice. (Be careful about the build-up of poisonous carbon monoxide fumes in enclosed spaces.)
If applicable, turn the fuel system off.
Have factory trained mechanic perform a full tune-up.
Before burning that full tank that you stored your bike with...
- If you stored the bike for more than two months, do an oil change. "What, again?!" you say? Yeah, it's probably a good idea. The cheap oil you stored the bike with probably absorbed a bunch of icky combustion byproducts that the pre-storage oil change didn't remove. Hey, that's why you used cheap stuff -- you're getting rid of it. Feel free to use $9/qt synthetic ambrosia this time, or whatever motor oil makes you feel best. You do not need to change the filter this time, but do make sure you recycle the old oil properly.
After burning that full tank that you stored your bike with...
- use fuel system cleaner additive (e.g., Techron) for a couple of tanks
- change spark plugs
Take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course that you signed up for.
Enjoy the start of another season of riding!

For the curious...

Why Things Are In The Order They're In

Step one is basic preparation. Get the tools for the job.
Step two is critical because the engine needs to be up to temperature for the oil change, the fuel system needs to be stabilized and the tank filled (to prevent rust inside the tank), and a hot engine will burn off any residual condensation or water in the engine/oil. These steps were combined because they can all be done together, as long as they're done in the proper order.
Steps three is done before step four only because the post-oil-change engine running needs to be done in a well-ventilated area. That means moving the bike. Putting the bike up on stands before the oil change would make the oil change easier, but then you'd just need to take it off the stands when you moved it.
Steps four through eight don't need to be done in any particular order, but they need to be done after the engine is run and while it's still fairly hot.
Step nine is where it is because some of the earlier steps may get oil on the bike, and, besides, it's nice to give the bike a chance to cool down (a little) before you wash it, since otherwise you could burn yourself.
You could make a good argument that step ten should go before step nine, since there's a good chance that overspray will get oil on the bike's pretty parts. I put ten after step nine because step nine will wash off salt and corrosion, which is precisely what you want to do before you spray metal-protecting chemicals on the bike's tender metal bits. Otherwise you run the risk of sealing the corrosive agents in.
If you think of a good reason that the order should be different, please send me email and I'll try to work your suggestion(s) in.
And finally, why I don't drain my bikes' float bowls:
The gas stabilizer will prevent the gas from turning solid. I mean, there are no guarantees in life, but in my experience, the stuff works as advertised. Since you're stabilizing the gas, do you also need to drain the float bowls? I dunno. I don't bother, some friends do, and none of us have had problems -- provided we stabilize the gas first. If you're not going to stabilize the gas, yes, absolutely, you must get all of the gas out of the carbs. The problem with only draining the float bowls is that you haven't removed all of the gas from the carburetor -- capillary action can hold fuel in the small passages inside the carburetor. And that's the stuff that's going to clog the carb's operation, even if you turn the engine over a bit afterwards. Here are a couple of pictures of what can happen if you don't stabilize the gas: 1 / 2 / 3. As you can see, the inside of the carb is covered in a jelly-like ooze that has completely blocked the jets. This carb is completely useless as shown ... complete disassembly and extended soaking in solvents was required to get it working again. Anyway... your carbs would continue to work fine with this sludgy jelly at the bottom of the float bowls as long as the sludge didn't interfere with movement of the floats or clog any jets. The float bowls are just little puddles of gas; they still work just fine as puddles of gas if there's a little sludge stuck to the bottom of the puddle. But if the tiny passages get clogged... it's all over. And there's no good way to get them completely clean short of removing the carbs and cleaning them with carb cleaner and compressed air. (Which is easy and a good idea though time-consuming -- if you know how to do it, but intimidating if you're not used to working on your bike.) Thus the most important step, by far, is to stabilize the gas. After that, I don't think it makes much difference whether or not you drain the float bowls, since stabilized gas won't turn into sludge. Even the stuff being held in the jets by capillary action. I think.