Why you need to moth-ball your bike during storage.
As most of you know I just bought an 01' Triumph Tiger 955 that had been stored since it was broken in... 8 years.
God knows who or what came and went in that time but there were some very nice little gifts left for me to clean up... What I removed from that bike and where it was stuffed, I can't believe the bike even started. Oddly enough, the bike drove amazing with all the crap kicking around in it! I can't wait to see how it rides all cleaned out!
So this is what I removed... 1 HUGE NEST in the airbox. Acorns, feces, urine, batting, hair, remnants of the air filter, and charred remains of any bedding that made it onto the throttle body side of things.
1 HUGE nest under the tail plastic on top of the rear fender. Not only was there feces, batting, and urine all over EVERYTHING, but there was feces caked into the factory car alarm... that was fun to clean out. *yuck*
1 good-sized nest on top of the radiator reservoir packed behind the headlights and up under the gauges. Mainly dirt, leaves, and urine.
In addition to the actual nests, there was urine all over most of the electrical connections, on the cam cover, coil packs, and on top of the transmission well behind the cylinders.
So, I've spent the past 2 nights with a can of engine de-greaser, rags, q-tips, rubbing alcohol, soap and water I've been able to restore most of the plastic, connections, wires, clips, and 'high-traffic' areas to their original glory.
All that's left to do is slap a little grease on all the electrical connections and button everything up...
I will say this though... the car alarm is about 10x louder without the crap in it... literally.
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