Understanding Storage Requirements

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How To Prepare Your Motorcycle For Winter Storage

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Motorcycles simply aren't built for use during snowy and winter conditions, as ice and snow can greatly increase the risk of slipping and crashing. However, leaving your motorcycle in the garage can also take up a whole lot of space that you may need. Therefore, it may be in your best interest to rent a separate storage space for your motorcycle until the weather warms up again. However, before you put your motorcycle into storage, there are a few things that you should do to ensure that it stays in good condition while in personal storage.

Trickle Charger

The first and most important thing that you should do when considering placing your motorcycle in storage is to purchase a trickle charger for the battery. Like the name would suggest, a trickle charger will provide a small amount of power to your battery over the course of the winter. This prevents your battery from losing its charge and leaving your motorcycle dead once the summer rolls around, but won't overcharge or damage the capacity of your battery like a normal charter would.

Fuel Stabilizer

Another important maintenance task that you should complete before you place your motorcycle in storage (or right after you've moved it into the unit) is to add in a fuel stabilizer to the gas tank. This prevents the fuel within the tank from breaking down into various compounds, which can then cause rust to build up within the interior of the tank, eating away at the internal structure of your bike. Obviously, this is a serious problem that can progress fairly significantly over the course of the winter, so you want to make sure that fuel stabilizer is one of your priorities.

Raise it Up

Finally, in order to prevent any sort of damage occurring to your motorcycle's tires, like flat spots or deformities (or even just a slow leak over time due to the pressure of the bike's weight), you'll want to either hang or raise your bike up so that no weight is settled on the tires.

At the very least, you should make sure that there is something between your tires and the ground if you don't have the means to raise your bike up: cardboard, wooden pallets, or a similar buffer will help prevent the cold temperatures from affecting your tire's air pressure. In a related vein, this is also a good time to check your tire's air pressure and inflate them, if needed, before a long season of disuse.


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