most of us use bikes less during the winter and topically during the several lockdowns these past 12 months. lets start by saying i dont need my bikes (3) for anything other than pleasure , however even during the long winter , I pick a dry day and will give them a 30min ride to maintain usage year round during dec to march maybe once every 4 weeks until spring and from April - November use them all regularly anyway.
however there might be times , like now where you just cannot use them , unless it genuinely is your only form of transport, its feasible as we have seen before now than a lockdown can be 3 months or even more.
so how to maintain them for a period of lay off , where as in this instance , its pretty much illegal, apart from if it was your only form of transport.
do you just lay them up accept the situation and wait it out, or do you start them up every now and then ? I heard that running them up for short periods like 5-10 mins can cause condensation in the header pipes etc. is it ok to run them stationary for longer amounts of time until the cooling fan comes on , apart from the I.C.E nothing else moves and the oil pump and charging system are on a limited variance of rpm, and ideally you'd want the oil temp to get fully up to temp. then there's the brake calipers that need movement etc , how to achieve maintenance during a dormant period of time where the bike can not be ridden as designed to be used ?
a lot of bikes in showrooms get unridden until sold for many months sometimes a year , i think newish bikes cope better with that situation but older bikes i believe need to be ridden at least once a months to keep everything in shape.
what do you guys do , particularly in this lockdown when we cannot ride .
however there might be times , like now where you just cannot use them , unless it genuinely is your only form of transport, its feasible as we have seen before now than a lockdown can be 3 months or even more.
so how to maintain them for a period of lay off , where as in this instance , its pretty much illegal, apart from if it was your only form of transport.
do you just lay them up accept the situation and wait it out, or do you start them up every now and then ? I heard that running them up for short periods like 5-10 mins can cause condensation in the header pipes etc. is it ok to run them stationary for longer amounts of time until the cooling fan comes on , apart from the I.C.E nothing else moves and the oil pump and charging system are on a limited variance of rpm, and ideally you'd want the oil temp to get fully up to temp. then there's the brake calipers that need movement etc , how to achieve maintenance during a dormant period of time where the bike can not be ridden as designed to be used ?
a lot of bikes in showrooms get unridden until sold for many months sometimes a year , i think newish bikes cope better with that situation but older bikes i believe need to be ridden at least once a months to keep everything in shape.
what do you guys do , particularly in this lockdown when we cannot ride .