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Tire Pressure More temperature sensitive than you might think
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As we are now into the colder months of the year I thought it appropriate to post a reminder about tire pressures and the effect of temperature on same.
Stamped on the outside of many of your tires is a recommended tire pressure range. (At least an upper limit.) For longest tire life it is my recommendation that you strive to keep them at the higher limit of those recommendations (regardless of what your motorcycle owner's manual might say to the contrary.) Further, this pressure should be determined while the tires are cold - meaning, have not been used for a couple of hours.
Time and outside temperature effect the pressure within your tires. It is NORMAL for a tire to lose about 1 pound per square inch (psi) per month. Outside temperatures affect your tire pressure far more profoundly, however. A tire's pressure can change by 1 psi for every 10 degrees Fahrenheit of temperature change. As temperature goes, so goes pressure.
For example, if a tire is found to have 38 psi on an 80-degree mid-summer day, it could lose enough air to have an inflation pressure of 26 psi on a 20-degree day six months later. This represents a loss of 6 psi over six months and an additional loss of 6 psi due to the 60 degree temperature reduction.
At 26 psi, your tire is severely under inflated and dangerous!
There is nothing wrong with your tire if it behaves like this, of course. What is being illustrated here is that you MUST check your tire pressure on a regular basis (about once a week is reasonable) and to be particularly aware of it on cold days.
As we are now into the colder months of the year I thought it appropriate to post a reminder about tire pressures and the effect of temperature on same.
Stamped on the outside of many of your tires is a recommended tire pressure range. (At least an upper limit.) For longest tire life it is my recommendation that you strive to keep them at the higher limit of those recommendations (regardless of what your motorcycle owner's manual might say to the contrary.) Further, this pressure should be determined while the tires are cold - meaning, have not been used for a couple of hours.
Time and outside temperature effect the pressure within your tires. It is NORMAL for a tire to lose about 1 pound per square inch (psi) per month. Outside temperatures affect your tire pressure far more profoundly, however. A tire's pressure can change by 1 psi for every 10 degrees Fahrenheit of temperature change. As temperature goes, so goes pressure.
For example, if a tire is found to have 38 psi on an 80-degree mid-summer day, it could lose enough air to have an inflation pressure of 26 psi on a 20-degree day six months later. This represents a loss of 6 psi over six months and an additional loss of 6 psi due to the 60 degree temperature reduction.
At 26 psi, your tire is severely under inflated and dangerous!
There is nothing wrong with your tire if it behaves like this, of course. What is being illustrated here is that you MUST check your tire pressure on a regular basis (about once a week is reasonable) and to be particularly aware of it on cold days.
Maintenance - Long Before Your Tour Even the best 'wrench' makes mistakes
A couple of years ago a friend of ours joined us on a 1,200 mile tour. She is a conscientious lady and wanted to make sure her motorcycle was ready and safe before we left, so she took her Wing to a dealer and had them do some work on it for her. Among other things, she had her rear brakes worked on because they seemed to 'stick a little'. She picked up the bike just before our trip. That nearly cost her her life.
In the case of our friend, they charged her for the brake work, but later investigation shows that it was never done at all. Even if it had been, it makes no sense at all to depend on recent mechanical work while out on a tour. Far better, test the bike for several hundred miles before taking that tour.
Our friend's rear brakes locked up 1,100 miles into the tour with us and she did a high-side at 50 MPH.
So, this time a few hundred miles of testing would not have discovered the problem. But what about the next time?
It seems to me that the above does not quite put this message in perspective. So, try this one...
Yesterday Elaine picked up her bike from the dealer after they had done some major work on it for her. She had the cams and lifters replaced on the right side of the block. She road the bike home and commented to me that the bike had never felt so good and smooth to her. She was thrilled with the work.
Today we took the bikes out for a couple hundred miles in order to lay out and pre-ride a poker run we are responsible for in a couple of weeks. We got a total of 12 miles under our belts before the engine blew.
Elaine was going 70 MPH and was in the fast lane of a four lane wide freeway. She heard a metallic grind, then the left side of her engine housing disappeared. The bolt holding the flywheel backed out and ripped the metal casing apart in the process. Oil sprayed out to the left and saturated her chaps and boot. About two quarts were lost in a matter of seconds.
Elaine signaled that she was going to pull off the freeway by going left into the center median. I saw from behind her what had happened and insisted that she move RIGHT instead. Secured each lane and we did just that - moved right across four lanes and off the side of the road. I am greatly impressed with Elaine's calmness during this experience. She did not freeze. She did not panic. She did not 'hit her brakes'. Instead, she smoothly eased her bike to the right and got it off the freeway without losing control.
[Lest any reader doubt the wisdom of moving four lanes to the right instead of one lane to the left, I remind you that the oil was gushing out on the left side. If she had gone left to exit the freeway she would have risked riding over that oil with her back tire. When we stopped and got off the bikes it was still dripping major amounts of oil beneath her bike.]
The mechanic who did the work on her bike is world class! He insisted after seeing what had happened, and turning white as a sheet, that they had not been anywhere near that part of the engine to replace the cams and lifters. Nevertheless, he promised to fix the bike at his cost because 'it looks bad for us.'
Elaine asked me if I believe the guy. I do. I put my life into his hands whenever I give him my bike for work. By definition I believe this man. He will not eat the whole job, I assure you. (It was later determined that he had used a wrench on the flywheel bolt to crank the engine in order to set the timing of the cam he installed. He told us, not some other wrench, that he may have loosened the bolt without realizing it.)
But the message should be crystal clear now: Do your maintenance long before you do your tour. Use your newly maintained bike for at least 100 miles before you leave home.
Even the best 'wrench' makes mistakes. Those that are not the best make more of them.
Helmets Lethal or Life saving? - A 'Cause' or 'extremism'?
So that there are no misunderstandings, here are a few of the things that I believe to be true relative to motorcycle helmets:
• More lives have been saved than lost because of wearing helmets.
• More injuries have been minimized than exaggerated because of wearing helmets.
• More injuries have been totally avoided than caused because of wearing helmets.
• Wearing helmets (as opposed to laws that require you to do so) is NOT a civil rights issue - it is a safety issue, period!
• Motorcyclists that join lobbying efforts (adopting a 'cause') to ban helmet laws tend to smear the image of motorcyclists in general with the public, tend to preach from an extremist's pulpit, and tend never to have had a family member survive unhurt (or un-dead) from a motorcycle accident because of wearing a helmet.
• Whether it is a law or not, you always have the ability to decide to ride without one. The consequences can include having a safe and uneventful ride, getting a ticket, getting a bump on the head, losing your jaw or nose or ear or eye, getting a neck injury, or death. If you ride with a helmet the consequences can range just as wide with the exception that your ODDS of getting a ticket, getting a bump on your head, losing part of your face, getting a neck injury, or dying are diminished. You have that choice, law or not.
• There are valid concerns about helmets such as:
o If you are injured while wearing one it is likely to be cervical in nature - meaning that there is the possibility that helmets tend to shift injuries away from the skull and towards the neck (or that the helmets are doing their jobs which does NOT include protecting the neck.).
o They are not as effective in injury/death protection as they could be (but who would/could wear a deep-sea 'bucket' weighing 40 pounds?)
o Some people believe they are so safe while wearing them that they take larger risks than without - thus inviting trouble.
So I'll bet you know my reaction to the latest newsletter I received from A.I.M. (Aid to Injured Motorcyclists) whose motto appears to be "Know Your Rights" and which featured an article entitled: "FEDERAL HELMET LAW REPEALED".
This is a group of attorneys that claim to be an international voice for all motorcyclists. (Though they use the word 'all', I can personally demonstrate that to be false.) The work they do on individual cases is NOT AT ISSUE HERE! I believe they do professional and often pro-bono work for injured motorcyclists on a regular basis. But when they ADVERTISE that they have won $12 million in a settlement of a defective helmet case, then use that as in some way supporting the argument that there should not be any helmet laws (for example, of non-defective helmets) I am more than suspicious of their objectives. (Let's see, a person is severely injured, in part, because he was wearing a defective helmet, and the attorney gets a $12 million settlement (meaning it did not get resolved by a judge or jury - ie, FAR LESS WORK FOR THE ATTORNEY) and then gets to keep probably $4 million (or more) of that settlement even though he suffered no injury himself - sounds like lots of motivation to get more cases just like it to me.)
Or how about ADVERTISING that they have filed a class action claim on behalf of harassed bikers for ONE-HUNDRED-MILLION-DOLLARS!!!!! Seems some law enforcement officers are alleged to have engaged in discriminatory law enforcement (paying more attention to Harley riders than those on any other brand, among other things). Sounds like just the thing to possibly earn (for themselves) another $33 MILLION. No pain and suffering, this time, for anyone.
Let them win that one and imagine what the non-motorcycling public will think of motorcyclists in general.
Well, this is not about A.I.M., but about helmets.
• More lives have been saved than lost because of wearing helmets.
• More injuries have been minimized than exaggerated because of wearing helmets.
• More injuries have been totally avoided than caused because of wearing helmets.
• Wearing helmets (as opposed to laws that require you to do so) is NOT a civil rights issue - it is a safety issue, period!
• Motorcyclists that join lobbying efforts (adopting a 'cause') to ban helmet laws tend to smear the image of motorcyclists in general with the public, tend to preach from an extremist's pulpit, and tend never to have had a family member survive unhurt (or un-dead) from a motorcycle accident because of wearing a helmet.
• Whether it is a law or not, you always have the ability to decide to ride without one. The consequences can include having a safe and uneventful ride, getting a ticket, getting a bump on the head, losing your jaw or nose or ear or eye, getting a neck injury, or death. If you ride with a helmet the consequences can range just as wide with the exception that your ODDS of getting a ticket, getting a bump on your head, losing part of your face, getting a neck injury, or dying are diminished. You have that choice, law or not.
• There are valid concerns about helmets such as:
o If you are injured while wearing one it is likely to be cervical in nature - meaning that there is the possibility that helmets tend to shift injuries away from the skull and towards the neck (or that the helmets are doing their jobs which does NOT include protecting the neck.).
o They are not as effective in injury/death protection as they could be (but who would/could wear a deep-sea 'bucket' weighing 40 pounds?)
o Some people believe they are so safe while wearing them that they take larger risks than without - thus inviting trouble.
So I'll bet you know my reaction to the latest newsletter I received from A.I.M. (Aid to Injured Motorcyclists) whose motto appears to be "Know Your Rights" and which featured an article entitled: "FEDERAL HELMET LAW REPEALED".
This is a group of attorneys that claim to be an international voice for all motorcyclists. (Though they use the word 'all', I can personally demonstrate that to be false.) The work they do on individual cases is NOT AT ISSUE HERE! I believe they do professional and often pro-bono work for injured motorcyclists on a regular basis. But when they ADVERTISE that they have won $12 million in a settlement of a defective helmet case, then use that as in some way supporting the argument that there should not be any helmet laws (for example, of non-defective helmets) I am more than suspicious of their objectives. (Let's see, a person is severely injured, in part, because he was wearing a defective helmet, and the attorney gets a $12 million settlement (meaning it did not get resolved by a judge or jury - ie, FAR LESS WORK FOR THE ATTORNEY) and then gets to keep probably $4 million (or more) of that settlement even though he suffered no injury himself - sounds like lots of motivation to get more cases just like it to me.)
Or how about ADVERTISING that they have filed a class action claim on behalf of harassed bikers for ONE-HUNDRED-MILLION-DOLLARS!!!!! Seems some law enforcement officers are alleged to have engaged in discriminatory law enforcement (paying more attention to Harley riders than those on any other brand, among other things). Sounds like just the thing to possibly earn (for themselves) another $33 MILLION. No pain and suffering, this time, for anyone.
Let them win that one and imagine what the non-motorcycling public will think of motorcyclists in general.
Well, this is not about A.I.M., but about helmets.
The warm up mistake
There is absolutely NO reason to rev the engine like this, except during the race.
Reason & Cure:
1.If you're trying to "clear it out" – Tune the carburetor so the engine is clean at idle.
2. If you're trying to "put some heat in the engine" – Don't waste your time, heat comes from load and there is no load in neutral or park.
3. If you just enjoy revving the engine – Fine, I respect that, it's the only reason you should be doing it because there are no benefits. If you still want to do it… be my guest
Other potential warm up mistakes:
- Wrong oil – Still running straight 50w oil? You may want to spend some time on the Bob is the Oil Guy website
- Cold oil – It's near impossible to get engine oil hot without extended periods of heavy load idling in the pits will never do it. If you're serious about keeping your engine together, you need an oil heater – attached to either the oil pan or oil tank. - .No thermostat – The object is to get the engine to operating temperature as fast as possible without having to beat the crap out of it. A Thermostat will dramatically shorten coolant warm up times.
So, the next time someone asks you why you're revving the engine in the
pits, give them the only honest answer – you just enjoy it.
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