in prep for winter

Hi

in prep for winter i wondered what i should be looking at purchasing for the cat to keep her safe over winter? i will still get out on her when the weather is bearable but when it comes to storage i.e snow, ice should i see any purchase as a must?

I have heard people saying battery charger? is this necessary can i not go and turn her over for a while warm her up etc?

all advice gratefully received.

Charger makes life easier and helps stop the battery freezing. Other than that, plenty of cleaning products for after every ride; salt will soon eat away at metal parts.

ACF 50 will protect the metal bits to a point, it's still best to hose / wash the crud and salt off after every ride though.

You may suffer from carb icing, Halfords sell DryFuel, I use isopropyl alcohol (99.9%) - it's much cheaper

If you can hook up a charger easy enough I'd recommend it, has prolonged the life of my battery

Possibly some items for yourself to make it more bearable a bit longer ( you may already have these) Heated Grips, Pinlock or Fog City visor insert, thermals, winter gloves or silk gloves with what you have,

as im trying to do things on the cheap (i.e keep her indoors happy)

What are the necessities for winter storage? i know people have said battery charger Aldi are doing one this week

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Is this ok and if the bike is going to be in a garage when winter really hits is it a must?

cheers

You don't want the battery going flat on you, as a flat battery is pretty much a dead one. You can start and run the bike every few weeks

Nothing really much to do if in the garage and you not going out, maybe get the tyres off the floor if you can.

Found this comment about the Aldi chargers which may be of help. Not bad for the price though.

You must use them on the "bike" setting though, as on the "car" setting, the charging current is about 5 times higher and will switch off prior to being fully charged. Bear in mind that the battery is not fully charged when it "says it is", but only about 85% charged - they do this partly for safety and you should leave on at least a further 4 hours once "full" has been reached. They are safe to leave on indefinitely.

if your not going to use the bike get both wheels off the deck
watch the brakes as they seize up if left i have a optima charger
so its on trickle charge don,t forget about the fuel if left over a period of time it goes off
pete

After having a batch of ordinary 95-octane fuel turn to gel in the pilot jets after leaving the bike for a few weeks, which meant removing the float chamber covers, taking the jets out and cleaning them with solvent, I now always fill up with Shell V-Power 97 or similar if I know I'm not going to use it for a while. So far, touch wood, it's always worked.

I guess the alternative would be to drain off the float chambers so there's no petrol in there to go off.

Another thing - if you're going to run the bike occasionally, make sure you get it thoroughly warm. The best bet is to run it until the fan has come on and gone off again. This will probably take about 10 minutes, which, if you run it at say 2,000 rpm, should also put back most of the charge into the battery that was used in starting the engine. You can tweak the idle adjuster up so you don't have to hold the throttle all the time.