How to Prepare Your Motorcycle for Winter Storage

Harley highway cruiser, Japanese crotch rocket, no matter what kind of motorcycle you ride. Preparing it properly for storage now will mean it's ready to go when the snow melts next spring. Any true Harley enthusiast will tell you the only place to store your pride and joy for the winter is in the living room. To be able to polish it, turn it over daily, to just run your hands over it's robust fuel tank and occasionally sit in the saddle. After all it is your precious baby.

Not many wives will go along with that idea, so as a second best alternative a list of common sense alternatives will have to do. Darn those sensible wives.

First determine where you are going to store your bike, as where it will be stored is going to affect how you prepare it. If at all possible store it in a heated garage, heated basement, semi-heated attached garage. As a last resort an unheated, uninsulated shed with no floor in the back yard. What your looking for is a stable temperature and dry environment. When something is warmed, then cooled, back and forth it may create condensation. Both on the bike and inside the fuel tank and engine of the cycle.

If you are able to store it in a dry stable place, go take that last ride and come home when the gas tank is down pretty low, but not on the reserve tank. If you are forced to store it in a tin shed out back, go take that ride, then fuel it up to the top and come home.

When you get home and the engine is still warm, its time to change the oil, and if equipped, the oil filter. A warm engine will keep particulates in suspension and they will drain out with the oil. Refill with new oil after you reinstall the plug and new filter.

Break out that bottle of Sta-bil, or similar gas stabilizing chemical and treat the gasoline as the directions indicate. Obviously the almost empty tank will take much less chemical. Now the reason for NOT being on the reserve tank is because it's real hard to pour sta-bil into the tank only getting it in the side that is the reserve side. If the fuel level is above reserve you can just dump it in and swish it around.