Don’t Just Park Your Bike
Many motorcyclists can’t ride all year. This means riders need to put their bike away in storage for at least a few months. As much as you may want to keep riding, once the snow flies, you’d better get off of two wheels and start driving your car. You can’t just park your bike, though. You’ll need to winterize your motorcycle.
Winterization encompasses everything from the chain and tires to the front fork of your motorcycle and the battery. Jim wrote a detailed piece on our sister site Best Beginner Motorcycles a while back. It goes over everything you need to do to your motorcycle before putting it away for the season. One of the most important things you can do is stabilize your fuel.
How Fuel Additives Help Your Gas Tank and Engine
Fuel stabilizers are additives you add to your gas tank to help keep the gas from going bad while your motorcycle sits. How does the gas go bad? Well, a lot of that has to do with moisture. When gas sits for a long time, moisture can build up and cause corrosion inside your gas tank and engine. This can cause all kinds of issues such as blocked-up carburetors or injectors, internal gas tank rust, and more.
The true culprit is ethanol. Roughly 98 percent of the gas you get at the pump contains up to 10 percent ethanol. While this isn’t a huge deal for cars, motorcycles, ATVs, and other vehicles with smaller engines aren’t designed to cope with the effects of ethanol very well. Also, these types of vehicles don’t usually operate all year long.
The big problem with ethanol is that it attracts water. When water sits inside your gas tank and fuel system it either causes corrosion or breaks down the gasoline and causes varnish to develop. Ever look inside a gas tank of a bike that’s sat for a few years? Yep. It’s pretty gross.
Fuel additives, like Techron’s Powersports and Small Engine Fuel System Treatment, will stabilize your fuel and help prevent excessive levels of moisture.
Adding a Fuel Additive to Your Gas Tank
There are tons of products out there that claim to stabilize your fuel and keep your fuel system clean. They’re not all created equal. You need to go with a well-known and trusted brand name and a product that you can equally trust.
When you add a fuel additive to your engine, make sure to do so when you fill up your gas tank. This way you’re getting fresh gas and the additive added to your machine at the same time. Ideally, you’d add the additive to your tank when it’s almost empty, fill up your tank nearly to the top with just a little room for expansion, and then run your engine for several minutes to ensure the fuel additive makes its way to all areas of the fuel system.
Tehcron’s Powersports and Small Engine Fuel System Treatment is a product that’s designed to outperform the others on the market. Techron’s product will protect your bike’s fuel for up to 24 months. Just one ounce will treat up to four gallons, and Techron claims its product does better at fighting corrosion and varnish than other products on the market. For more info, check out the video below.