Total Motorcycle Community Forums

its winter here and damn cold. 30 degrees. im going to be going away for a week and will be storing my bike in a friends garage. im in the process of moving so it will be staying in my friends place for about a month until my new landlord clears a spot in his own garage for it. my question is should i run the bike with the petcock off to drain the carbs and stabilize the tank? or should i not bother and just keep the tender on it and just cover. thanks for any advice

I think less then 4 months to be stored and it's not worth worrying about. More then that, and you might as well, because hey, it cannot hurt.

so then dont worry about the stabilizer as well, no?

I store my bike as little as possible throughout the non-riding season. Since that can backfire (like it snows several inches and it stays very cold for a few weeks) I put a dash of Stabil in each time I fill the tank in the winter. See, this way if it has to sit for a month the fuel will be protected. I've heard using lot of Stablil will help foul your plugs, but I think it would take running A LOT of it before this would cause a problem. I've done this the past two years without a problem. If I know there is a big drop in temp or a storm coming I'll pull the battery and stick it on the charger. Pre-cold season I check to make sure my anti-freeze is good for keeping my block from freezing.

scanevalexec wrote: If I know there is a big drop in temp or a storm coming I'll pull the battery and stick it on the charger. Pre-cold season I check to make sure my anti-freeze is good for keeping my block from freezing.

with that beind said is it ok to leave the battery tender on it while the battery is still in the bike? i mean i know the tender will do just fine to fully charge the battery while still in the bike and what not but what about say......... for a few weeks to a month? does the batery really need to be removed if the bike will be garaged?

I will leave this for someone else to answer specifically. Year before last I had a bike with wires running outside the gas tank that ran to the battery. It had a little connector that matched that one on my tender. That is how I trickle charged that year. On my current bike it is easy to pull the battery, so I just do that, but I am not sure of the implications of charging the battery on the bike still wired up. It didn't hurt my previous bike though. I guess you could pull the possitive and negative wire and leave the battery on the bike charging.

I leave my battery in the bike while on the tender. Have never had a problem.

If you're only talking about a month just let it be. My bike sat in the garage this winter for almost three months, with temps getting close to zero on a number of occasions in the evening, and when I went out there to see if it would crank it fired right up without hesitation. I did end up pulling the battery after running around the block a few times, but just ended up putting it back in a week later when we had a warm weekend.