In this "Behind the Handlebars" video, Tony "Pan" Sanfelipo demonstrates the necessary steps to take to properly store your motorcycle over the winter months.
“Hi it’s Tony from Hupy & Abraham law firm talking to you about storing your cycle for the winter. A couple of options are available to you, you could take it to a dealer, spend about $300, they’ll have it secure for you in a nice warm spot. You can pick it up in the spring time and be ready to go. Or you could do it yourself and save a whole lot of money. It’s not that hard and we are going to give you a step by step procedure. And if you follow the directions next spring you’ll have a nice spring fresh motorcycle. The first thing you want to do before storing your motorcycle is make sure your gas tank is full. You want to fill it to the top but before you do that you want to get some stable. This is an amazon product, there are a bunch of different products on the market. Put the whole bottle in the gas tank and top that gas off. Gasoline will break down over the winter months and cause build up and sludge. Some of the deposits will from up on your carburetor and it clog it up. You want to put something in there to stabilize that gasoline so your gasoline doesn’t build up over the winter. When you get back from the gas station after toping off your gas tank. While your motor is still warm, change the oil. You always want to change the oil while your motor is still warm. Fill it up with fresh oil and put a filter on and you are good to go for the spring. Now that you have fresh oil in the motorcycle, and the motor is still trying to cool down, while it’s still warm we want to do one more thing. And that is to WD40 and pray it in our exhaust pipes. A couple of sprays in each pipe and cover with a baggie- plastic bag and rubber. That will keep rubber and condensation from going in and bursting your pipe out. We are going to continue storage techniques, if you have compressed air, you should blow around the spark plugs ports and make sure you get all the dirt out of there and take your spark plugs out. Check your spark plugs and see what they look like, see if they look good, if they need new plugs, go ahead and replace them otherwise you can clean these up if they look good. But before you put them back in, you want to take something call fogging, engine fogging oil. You are going to spray a generous amount of that in the spark plug port, it’s a good idea to raise it back in the motorcycle with a life of some kind and turn the rear wheel by hand while the motorcycle is in gear. I want it to have those sprays going up and down and then spray it again so I know I am covering all the internal parts with the fogging oil and then go ahead and replace the plugs. If you have a heated garage then it is okay to leave your battery in your bike. If you don’t and you live in an area where it gets cold pretty quickly in the winter, then take the battery out and bring it in the house and put it in the basement or someplace because we do not want that battery to freeze. Put a battery tenner on it. They are about $30 and they have a slow charge on your battery and it will keep it fresh and ready to go in the spring time. If you left your battery in your motorcycle over the winter you might be tempted to go out there once in a while and start it up. Don’t do it, it’s not a good idea. You don’t want to start the bike up for short periods of time in the winter time and turn it off again because you will get condensation up in the motor and pipes. So leave the bike alone and let the battery tenner do its job. The last thing you want to do is to give your bike a nice clean wash job and wax. So you preserve that nice clean finish and get a lot of dirt from the road. Clean it up and make sure it is completely dry and then use a nice quality bike cover that is breathable so there’s air in there. We don’t want to put something that will trap the air in there or the moisture and condensation like plastic. Alright good job, you got your bike all ready for the winter. Now before you go back inside the house and pat yourself on the back, there is one more thing you can consider doing and that is getting one of these floor jacks, if you don’t have one. You can slide it under your nice clean covered bike and jack it up just enough to take the weight off the tires, taking it slightly off the ground, It’s a good idea to do that and you’re good to go until the spring time. I hope we helped you out with some tips to help you store your bike for the winter, save yourself some money, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and to do some of this stuff on your own. Save some money and work on your bike by doing some of the simpler stuff at home and you’re going to enjoy your bike that much more. See you in the spring time.”