The roads are covered in salt at this time of year. Essential to ensure they remain ice free, but a nightmare for your bike. The salt aids waters ability to corrode metal, which is very bad news for your motorcycle. As you can see, my poor Fazer is covered. 🙁
The solution is regular cleaning to rinse off the salt. Use cold water (heat increases the rusting action too). A cold hose pipe is best, don’t use a pressure washer, this will force water into places where it wouldn’t normally get to and won’t dry, causing more rust… A job for the weekend for sure.
I doused the bike in ACF50 back in November, which I’m very glad off. This should have covered everything in a protective film preventing rust and halting any existing corrosion. Ideally, reapply more ACF50 after each wash.
4 replies on “Winter Salt Eating My Motorbike”
Salt was the death of my new ducati monster. I cant stress how much of a real pain it was to constantly clean the salt off everyday. I too had the entire bike ACF’ed and used FS365 but this still was not enough to prevent corrosion of engine bolts and eventually the exhaust manifold. I was later told that any naked motorcycle generally cannot stand up to the abuse of grit on the roads for 3 months.
This year I’ve opted to leave the bike in storage until the gritters are packed away. Just something to remember for the future to try and keep your baby looking fresh.
Eeek, that doesn’t bode well. 🙁 I shall definitely have to wash down the bike more often than I have been. My Fazer is a nice looking bike, though not as precious as a Ducati, but I was still a bit dismayed to see the Fazer listed in a recent Ride mag as a good winter hack option!
if we dont ride on nice winter days our bikeing year is very short i am in dismay that all these bike brands are not able with copeing with a british winter without falling to pieces i ride a victory and hear thats the same i do my best ride safe all
Cars survive winter salt, while bikes don’t. Oddly, many bikes are built by companies that also make cars (think BMW, Honda, Suzuki, and Ducati are owned by Audi). So it is about time the car guys told the bike guys how to do it. And while I am on my soapbox, all cars have shaft final drive – Imagine if aunt Ethel had to get under her car every 2 weeks to oil the chain(s)!! Let’s see more fully enclosed shaft drives on bikes,,,,,,