So - bikers - laid up your bike for the winter?

roundthebend

@Sporky I genuinely thought you'd selected the wing bit of my text as your quote.

I think, even if a driver has a genuine need to hurry, they can't know why cyclists are riding in the way they are. It's fine to be concerned for sometimes safety, but to be angry and intolerant is not reasonable.

If I'm to ride my bike in such a way that I don't inconvenience an unknown person at an unknown time and place, who happens to have an unknown threshold of patience, then I may as well just never ride.

I think this thread has an unfair angle against cyclists. All I'm suggesting is that we have to be considerate, and without being able to communicate easily then we ought to respect the decisions that other road users are making for their own safety reasons. The unfair aspect of this thread is expecting cyclists to know what individual drivers want them to do and to act accordingly.

Anyway, it was about motorbikes originally. What happened there!?

Sporky

roundthebend said:

Anyway, it was about motorbikes originally. What happened there!?

Someone mentioned dogs, and then it was a bit of a free-for-all airing of grievances.  

roundthebend

I tell you what annoys me... People who queue jump. And a general ignorance of environmental issues.

Blaendulais

Managed to ride a lot this summer.  All my bikes are from the 90s therefore very unhappy with the Low Emissions zone that extends inside the South circular from 2021.

It will mean 12.50 a day to ride anywhere.  Time to move I think

manicguitarist

Yeah for sure! No intention of ever visiting London again. #northernCountryLad

Emp_Fab

I doubt I'll ride again.  I miss the adrenaline rush of chucking it around country lanes pretending I'm Joey Dunlop, but I think the roads are more dangerous nowadays.  The traffic was bad enough in the 80's & 90's.

Anyway after watching a documentary about the biker-medics at the TT, two words sent a shiver down my spine that has pretty much put me off returning.  The two words ?


Degloved Testicles.

boogieman

Blaendulais said:

Managed to ride a lot this summer.  All my bikes are from the 90s therefore very unhappy with the Low Emissions zone that extends inside the South circular from 2021.

It will mean 12.50 a day to ride anywhere.  Time to move I think

Oh jeez, I hadn’t considered it applied to bikes as well. That’s going to absolutely kill the value of older bikes in London. 

manicguitarist

boogieman said:

Blaendulais said:

Managed to ride a lot this summer.  All my bikes are from the 90s therefore very unhappy with the Low Emissions zone that extends inside the South circular from 2021.

It will mean 12.50 a day to ride anywhere.  Time to move I think

Oh jeez, I hadn’t considered it applied to bikes as well. That’s going to absolutely kill the value of older bikes in London. 

It is crazy. My 25yr old 400cc bike does 50mpg if I am wringing its neck at 15,000rpm....yet my Euro3 modern bike (made much heavier by the need for a catalytic converter and all the fuel containment vapour crap) struggles tohit 40mpg if I take it very easy.

The phrase “virtue signalling BS from a virtue signalling marxist mayor” comes to mind

Blaendulais

Emp_Fab said:

I doubt I'll ride again.  I miss the adrenaline rush of chucking it around country lanes pretending I'm Joey Dunlop, but I think the roads are more dangerous nowadays.  The traffic was bad enough in the 80's & 90's.

Anyway after watching a documentary about the biker-medics at the TT, two words sent a shiver down my spine that has pretty much put me off returning.  The two words ?


Degloved Testicles.

Emp you should always ride with gloves on you should know that

rsvmark

Bike is wrapped up in a warm garage. Too wet, slippy, poor vis, cold, and wankers in metal boxes trying to kill me. It's a hobby and supposed to be fun, not taking your life in your hands..... Oh and Italian bikes dissolve in this weather anyway!

manicguitarist

^^true story re dissolving in winter! Mine are on their paddock stands...fuel additive added...carbs on the old one drained...polished and cleaned and greased and left hooked up to chargers till late Feb.

rsvmark

manicguitarist said:

^^true story re dissolving in winter! Mine are on their paddock stands...fuel additive added...carbs on the old one drained...polished and cleaned and greased and left hooked up to chargers till late Feb.

I have an ape so not quite as bad as other brands but last winter did for the fork seals, the winter before the clutch master cylinder shat itself so it's has had a bath in ac50 and is sorn. And hooked up to a trickle charger as I have done 3 batteries over its life! 

manicguitarist

My MV’s battery is so tiny the bike actually ships with a trickle charger...did the math...with alarm & tracker you get about 8days of non riding before battery borked!

boogieman

I’ve only heard this secondhand on a bike forum so it could well be internet bullshit, but trickle chargers are supposedly not good for the battery if left on full time. Even the smart charging ones can allegedly knacker the battery over time. There is a way round it: plug the charger into a timer and only have it running for a couple of hours, two or three times a day. Enough to keep the battery fully charged but it won’t get fried.  Could be total nonsense, but I’ve got mine set up that way and everything has been fine over the last couple of winters. 

manicguitarist

boogieman said:

I’ve only heard this secondhand on a bike forum so it could well be internet bullshit, but trickle chargers are supposedly not good for the battery if left on full time. Even the smart charging ones can allegedly knacker the battery over time. There is a way round it: plug the charger into a timer and only have it running for a couple of hours, two or three times a day. Enough to keep the battery fully charged but it won’t get fried.  Could be total nonsense, but I’ve got mine set up that way and everything has been fine over the last couple of winters. 

Lead acid batteries don't have a limited charge cycle. Keeping them on charge is essentially the same as keeping the engine running. All the charger is doing is replacing the alternator and reg/rec in the absence of the engine.

Here something I wrote about batteries for other forums....
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Batteries.

There has been a fair amount of discussion on various pages about batteries and them failing. And blaming this bike or that bike or whatever.

So anyways here's a bit of science. I'll be using the battery from my MV F3 as an example. This is an 8.6Ah battery. Your battery is probably bigger (physically) than this.

What does this mean? Well, it means it can deliver power equivilent to 8.6Amps for 1 hour, or any combination thereof. 1A for 8.6hrs for example. This is a huge simplification as the temperature of the battery (there is less available charge when cold), and the actual current draw (it becomes less efficient the higher the current draw) all affect things...but it'll do as a start.

Now - unless there is a fault on your charging system (see the end for how to diagnose) if the battery fails it *is not* the fault of your bike. No matter what the make of the bike.

If an automotive battery drops below 10V it is probably toast. How could this happen? Well, lets say you have an alarm - say the alarm that was on my old R1 - a Ross Meta 351A.

This draws 10mA when armed.

So, this tells me that in 860hrs the battery will be completely drained if there is no charging going on. However, the battery will be completely killed long before that - if a battery gives up around 3/4 its charge without recharging...it'll probably be good for nothing soon after.

So...in 645hrs of not riding the battery is knackered. Just over 3 weeks. Less if the weather is cold. Like winter. When we don't ride.

You might be able to recharge the battery and "recover" it - however it won't hold as much charge as it used to.

On older bikes this wasn't such a massive problem - as you switched them off, and then they were off - any alarms aside. But modern bikes have ECUs that are "smart". They hold custom maps and a clock and trip counters and all that - that is stored in RAM and needs power even when you switch the bike off.

So, put an alarm on a modern bike - and hey, lets have a tracker too and you're probably looking at 45mA drain...on my F3 that means just under 8 days before the battery needs replacing.

This is why my MV came with a battery trickle charger.

But but, you shout, I keep my bike on a trickle charger and the battery still died after 18mnths....WTAF?!

Well, consider this - at the dealer where you bought your bike. Were all the bikes on trickle chargers? Didn't think so. A good dealer will uncrate a bike, fully charge the battery before connecting it, do the PDI and then disconnect the battery - and fully charging the battery before storing it.

And only reconnect the battery when the bike is about to be driven away sold. And when they get a second hand bike in...they'll do the same. If your bike was sitting on the shop floor for a couple of weeks with the battery connected....yeah...you will need a new battery.

How to test your battery (see attached image).

And to test your charging system - start the bike and rev the engine to about double idle speed (I was going to say 5000RPM, but that'd screw with big v twins etc)..the voltage across the terminals should read above 14V and below 15.5V

If it is below 14V it might be that your battery is quite flat and is drawing all the charge it can take - but if the battery is fully charged then it shows that either your generator is knackered or (like in my 20yr old RVF) the original wiring loom is rubbish and taking too much power. Get someone to look it at and check it out, your battery will keep going flat if you don't.

If you're reading above 15.5V chances are your reg/rec is on the way out - get this fixed ASAP as it will boil your battery (cheap to replace)and possibly burn out your ECU (not cheap to replace).

Oh, yeah. Even if all the above is perfect, absolutely perfect - batteries die with age anyways after around 3 or 4 years. They are a consumable item.

=================================================================================

p90fool

My ride to work was a lot easier this morning than it was a year ago today...

http://i63.tinypic.com/i1cp4l.jpg

manicguitarist

^^ #hardcore

roundthebend

p90fool said:

My ride to work was a lot easier this morning than it was a year ago today...

http://i63.tinypic.com/i1cp4l.jpg

What bike is that? It's pretty

Snap

I more or less packed in two wheels 20 years ago after a bad fall off. My fault, but was nasty, and with a  couple of kids and my own lack of speed control and enjoyment of risk, I made the sensible decision to pack it up.

I live in the Peaks, you have to get used to cyclists as they are everywhere at the weekend. Not an issue for me tbh.

Cyclists - my only real problem is those who go through red lights and those who use the pavement. the pavement riders wind me right up, that's really inconsiderate.

Jason

p90fool said:

My ride to work was a lot easier this morning than it was a year ago today...

http://i63.tinypic.com/i1cp4l.jpg

That is gorgeous and you are a far braver man than I, mine is stored in the garage until the spring now