Stabilize Your Motorcycle's Fuel This Winter

Winter, that time of year when temperatures plummet to lows you never thought you'd experience, and you say.. "I don't remember it being this cold last time!" When you realize, oh.. It's actually only -4°C, but for some reason it feels more like -40!
Well modern gasoline contains Ethanol, especially up here in Canada, where it's actually the only fuel you can get, with Non-Ethanol Fuel basically Banned.  Sure, you can buy canned gas, but at $40/gallon I don't think so, not happening any time ... ever!
So instead, use a fuel stabilizer.  What this will do is help with water absorption from the air.  

What is recommended to do is to fill your fuel tank, then add the stabilizer to the fuel tank, and mix it around by rocking the bike, however, in the video I added it to a Gerry Can instead, mixed to the proportions of the amount of fuel I'm going to be stabilizing, which was a little under 30L of fuel, maybe closer to 25L of fuel.  That said, I still stabilized the full 30L, because why not. Better safe than sorry I say! 

After adding the fuel first to the Burgman 400, and shaking the bike around for a bit, I 

started it up, and let it run for a couple minutes, however because it was sitting outside, and would be good for it to run for a while, I let it run, oh probably closer to 10 or 15 minutes instead of just a few minutes to let the stabilizer circulate thru the fuel lines and into the injectors.  I was thinking of pulling the spark plug and putting some 2T oil into the cylinder to fog the cylinder, but I didn't, as it would require a bit of an extensive teardown of the body panels to do so, so instead I'll just let the bike sit.  Although come Spring it's going to get a tune-up, with a new Spark Plug, fresh Engine Oil, Fresh brake

fluid, coolant, the works!  Hopefully I won't need to replace the battery on the old girl.

Then, on to the 650 inside the Garage.  I poured in the rest of the fuel, and this is where things got a bit sketch, and I learned something for next season. 

One of the things you need to do is run the engine just for a minute or two so the fuel can circulate thru the fuel lines to prevent varnish build up, and ethanol gummies from forming and clogging injectors, but unless you get the fuel there by running the bike, you're stuck with the old fuel pre-winterization in those lines, which can gum up over the winter, and oh-boy! 

What a stinky.. Well because the bike was backed in, instead of fronted in, and I ran it, even with the garage door wide open, it got a bit overpowering, so next time it's facing exhaust out!  I did not stay in the garage while the bike was running, I had vacated for the few minutes that the bike was running, and shut it down.  When I went in, it was very
overpowering, and light headed making, especially when I noticed that the Burgman 650 might be burning oil, either out the tailpipe, or it's leaking onto the exhaust from somewhere. 

 Hopefully it's just a failed gasket, but I have a feeling that it's actually burning it out the tail pipe, which could mean either engine (piston rings) or valve seals, either way, engine out kinda job! 

That's going to be an interesting video, because if it's engine out, then it's being overhauled.  New timing chain, new valve seals, relapping the valves, new piston rings, new water pump, new oil pump since I'm going to be in there, and I'll inspect the CVT belt, maybe might as well replace that as well since I'll have the engine out, and it'll save having to do it later.  

Something for the future when the time comes.

The next important thing is the battery tender.  On the Burgman 400, that's as simple as opening the glove box, and connecting the tender to the plug wired directly to the battery, and closing the connection inside the glove box to prevent water from causing corrosion on the connections, where as on the Burgman 650, I haven't wired anything for a Tender on the battery, so instead, we have a gator clamp tender for that one, it does a really good job of charging batteries too!  I have used it to top off my son's E-Bike. Yes, i know, it's 48V, but I did the batteries one at a time.  4 batteries, 12v each, 48V total cell.

So the steps are;

1)  Fill Fuel
2) Add stabilizer and mix
3) Run for 1-3 minutes to allow stabilizer to run thru fuel lines and injectors
4) Put Battery On Tender, or Remove and Store on Tender



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Pretty simple steps!  If you're looking for a stabilizer, then you can try StaBil, such as thru the Affiliate Links at the bottom of the post.

Winterizing your motorcycle will help insure that it will start come the spring without needing any kind of fuel system cleaning, or a new battery because you let yours go completely flat..... again!

Anyway Guys, ride safe, and...

Stay Tuned....

Amazon Affiliate Links;

6v/12v Gator Clamp Battery Charger

800MAh Motorcycle Battery Tender

Sta-Bil Fuel Stabilizer