Winter care.

Soon the winter is coming. It's one or two months left, then I'll put my Sprint ST -06 into my living room :-D . I just wonder, what do you guys and girls do when setting the bike up for the cold season? Pulling out the sparkingplugs and fill the cylinders with little oil, empty the fueltank etc. I've noticed that the sparkingplugs is very hard to pull out from the engine, how should I do that? Also, how do I empty the fueltank? Any good tips? I'm sitting here hoping that I don't need to take whole the bike apart just because I want to pull out the sparkingplugs.

[SaddleTramp]

Here in New England (in the colder climate) all I've done for the past 30 years is:

-Add fuel stabilizer to the gas tank (Sta-bil is one brand)
-Fill the tank (metal tanks)
-Fresh oil (can be inexpensive stuff, it's just to remove the chemically contaminated old oil to prevent corrosion)
-Run the engine to circulate oil and gas
-Connect battery to a trickle charger (or remove and bring indoors and connect to a trickle charger)
- Stuff steel wool or a tennis ball or whatever into the exhaust opening to keep mice out (really!)
-Cover with something (just to keep the dust off.

[ST]

I usually clean the bike top to toei n all nooks and crannys and then spray everything with scottoil fs365 which stops any corrossion. its similar to the transit wax spray the factory use.
Motorex fuel stabiliser in the fuel tank due to unleaded fuel going gloopy in time.
Park the bike on main stand with carpet under tyres to keep the cold off the rubber.
trickle charger or remove the battery and keep it somewhere warm.
make sure the chain is well lubed over to stop rust on the side plates.
Dust cover.

i have never bothered with filling the cylinders with oil as it causes big probs when starting up 1st time round.

[mercator]

I have a semi-heated (it is attached to the house central heat) garage, so I plan to just let it run a bit every 1-2 weeks. I did that with my old vstar and it worked out great. I kept the tank full, and it had a fresh oil change prior.

I do the sta-bil thing with the mower though and it seems to help. Keeping the tank full is, IMHO, important on any vehicles no matter how much you use it, once the weather gets cold.

[DaveM]

I hate to say this for you poor folks with snow and cold stuff.

But I just keep on ridin! :-D :razz:

davem