Winter Blues ! (2016)

Keeping a motorcycle in a roadworthy condition and without it corroding into a rusty heap during winter conditions when you are having to use it daily to get to and from work and at weekends as well has always been a problem - at least it has been for me. This was especially so when I was still living at my parent's house and the bike was being kept outside. I didn't have the time or, to tell the truth inclination, to wash the thing down every evening when I got home cold and often wet, all I wanted was a hot drink and my dinner. As a young and inexperienced motorcyclist in the mid 1960s only too willing to believe advertising claims at first, for the winter I tried covering all the exposed chrome parts, wheel rims, handlebars, headlight rims, etc with the brightly coloured (usually purple or gold but you could get clear as well) varnish type "jollop" that I saw a lot of car owners using on their bumpers and which was regularly promoted in magazines. To my great annoyance, once I had cleared off all the encrusted road filth which had accumulated over that winter, I found that not only had it failed to stop rusting (where it had cracked on the surface and let moisture in) but that it was extremely difficult to get the remains of it off with methylated spirit as advised on the tin - In fact there are still traces of it on the rear wheel of the bike to this day. Obviously this was not going to be a solution to my problem for subsequent years and I would have to think of something else.

The father of a friend had a D1 BSA Bantam, which he had owned from new in 1952 and used daily for work all year round. Although far from pristine it was not tatty either and throughout out its working life it had never been treated to any other cleaning agent than paraffin, which was brushed on liberally and then wiped off, along with all the “road filth” with a rag. This bike did not exactly conform with mine because it had no chrome plating at all except for the exhaust pipe and silencer but it seemed a fairly easy way to keep the mechanicals clean at least. At that time though I still liked to keep my most visible paintwork polished, so resorted to painting my chrome wheel rims, handlebars and headlamp rim with thick gear oil during winter. This kept the rust off the chrome and every few weeks or so, if the weather allowed, I would then just wipe off the accumulated muck from the chrome parts, brush down the engine and frame parts in proximity with “Gunk” or “Jizer” grease solvents and then wash it all down and polish the paintwork before re-oiling the chrome parts. Just as some people like the smell from the exhaust of an engine running on vegetable racing oil, I just loved the smell given off by a hot engine which had been cleaned down with “Gunk” or “Jizer” degreaser and thought it worth the extra cost over paraffin. It also seemed to clean the muck off better than paraffin, which of course is what those products were intended for.

Used daily from 1952 and cleaned with nothing more than paraffin and an oily rag it still looks reasonable in 1965

This approach worked well for a few years and kept the rust at bay, more or less. However, once I got married and moved into my own home I had more things to deal with during weekends and I no longer wanted to spend so much time looking after my bike during winter, a situation which was not exactly helped by me acquiring more bikes to look after as well. Periods between “clean-ups” gradually got extended and this was particularly a problem with the exhaust chrome which, of course could not be kept oil coated – or not once the engine had been started on the first trip after a clean. Over subsequent years the periods between cleans gradually got extended as I found that the thick oil on the chrome parts, although looking terrible after a month or so, still protected the plating very well and although I needed to work harder with the solvents it all came right in the end.

Eventually though the periods between clean-ups reached the stage that with the particular bike I had chosen for winter use I gave it a thorough oiling of all visible working parts, covered the chrome plating with the thick oil and then just used the bike throughout the winter without any clean-ups until the spring. I then changed over to another bike for work use and set about the not inconsiderable task of trying to de-clag the winter bike and get it back into a decent state again. This usually took a whole weekend and the solvents were hard pressed to shift a whole winter’s deposits of road filth, corrosion due to road salt on some alloy parts and general oiliness but eventually, with persistence, I got there and the thick oil, although it had more or less dried to an encrusted coating of muck, had still protected the chrome surprisingly well and with an overall wax polish afterwards the bike still looked fine again afterwards. The only thing which really suffered was the exhaust pipe and over the years I had several of them rusted through on the part that got hottest, nearest the cylinder. This became a big problem with those of my bikes where spares were not readily available, which was most of them, but I eventually managed to find, or get made those which I needed, but realised that this was going to become a bigger problem as years went by. Also I found that it was getting more difficult to buy the solvents in decent sizes any more .Gunk seemed to have disappeared from the market and most shops by then only sold Jizer in tiny containers if at all. New products were appearing on the market which only seemed available in hand sprays like household cleaners. At an elevated price they promised much but were not very effective on the sort of encrustations that I expected them to deal with. I tried the much cheaper household cleaners to see if they were any better, but only succeeded in putting a permanent dull bloom on the paint of one bike that I experimented on, while having very little effect on removing the muck – no-one but myself to blame for that one, the products were never intended for use on painted motorcycles.

While chatting to an MOT tester, on one visit, about my disappointment with the cleaning products on the market he told me about Scotoiler’s FS365 water based product, which he used with satisfactory results on his bikes. You just spray it on the engine and associated parts and it combines with what is already there to protect it against further attack. I tried the product and with a hand spray just sprayed the engine lightly every time I used the bike in winter after I got home and with the chrome “oiled up” as usual I just left the bike until spring again. Although the deposit burnt off the exhaust each time the bike was used it always got renewed again when I got home – and it didn’t matter if the bike was wet when I got home as it was a water based product according to the manufacturer. Although, come the spring, the bike looked absolutely terrible, it did indeed seem to protect the engine’s alloy from the by now much increased amounts of salt now being used on the roads and although it took a long time to clean it all off in the spring the bike came up well again in the end. The only problem I had was that it never managed to prevent the salt building up a corrosion between the engine case screw heads and the casing itself in a position where it was exposed to all the blast of water from the front tyre. This resulted in my having to drill out one particular screw, but then again it was an extreme test for any protecting fluid in that position and in future on that bike, should I use it in winter, I will fill those exposed screw positions with a silicone sealant which can be “plucked” out when needed.

Now I have retired though and don’t need to use a bike every day regardless of the weather so complete long term protection over a whole winter is now not quite so important. I still like to use a bike all year round though when it suits me so I still need to have some form of protection for it against the greater ravages of the larger amounts of road salt which we get now. For winter use now, as before, I try to select just one bike for most use during this period, if possible one which is the easiest for me to keep clean. I then just clean it generally, but not too thoroughly, when I get home. Although the Scotoiler FS365 worked quite well I was no longer leaving the bike all winter before giving it a clean as I didn’t want to get the chosen bike in such a state for a long period after relatively small amounts of use at a time during a whole winter. Also, having got fed up with painting thick oil on the chrome each time and also having long lost the enthusiasm for polishing, when a friend mentioned a new product he was using (and was pleased with) I thought I would give it a try. This product was ACF50, which was apparently developed for the prevention of corrosion on aircraft. This friend’s bike was always absolutely immaculate and although he never rode in winter conditions I thought that if he thought it good then it must be OK. So, although it is quite expensive as such products go at that year’s Stafford show I bought a container and used it on my chosen “winter bike” over the subsequent winter period. Although it did the job it was supposed to do in that it kept corrosion away provided that I gave the bike a quick wipe over with it after each use I was a bit disappointed that having used it to preserve the vulnerable parts of my other bikes which were not being used over the winter and were kept in my rather dampish garage I found that it never stopped a lot of surface corrosion appearing over the worst four months weather – at least not to the degree that I was led to believe it could do.

Nevertheless, I was pleased enough that at the next Stafford classic show I bought the larger version of ACF50 and continued to use this on all my bikes for the following year of so. However, as the container was getting towards its end I started thinking back to what my old friend’s father used to do with his old BSA Bantam and wondered if what I was doing with the ACF50 was really any different from his oily rag and paraffin approach and so decided to try a mix of 50/50 engine oil and white spirit and just rub that on in the same way as I did with the ACF50. I have been doing that for a year or so now and although it might not be quite as protective as ACF50 and might not wipe to a reasonable shine on paintwork it has protected the vulnerable parts of the bike in a satisfactory way as long as I don’t leave it too long between re-applications. As for a bit of shine on the paintwork, then one of the Sparkle or Mr Sheen furniture sprays bought from a supermarket works just fine for me and the whole lot is a lot cheaper than all those specialist items provided that I am not too lazy to give it little attention most of the times when I get home, the exceptions being when it is raining, getting dark, or we have visitors. There is quite a lot to be said in favour of the good old “oily rag” when it comes to looking after a bike. It might not be any good for concours standard bikes but I find it plenty good enough for bikes that are intended to be ridden in the poorer weather conditions.

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