Well folks it’s that time of year again…   The time when we all dream about the perfect winter project with all the right tools, parts and time we need to do it!

How many of us actually get there?   Most of us don’t have the luxury or the resources available like that of Jesse James, the Teutul’s or Jay Leno. I’m here to tell you with a plan of action, some elbow grease and follow-through we can make this work.  I confess even a person like myself (no excuse I have the parts at hand) can let real world responsibilities take the front seat.

For the New Year I want to cover a few tips about winter projects and what you can do to make them happen.   The obstacles to getting going are not insurmountable but do take action and persistence to over come. The two biggest mistakes people make when getting a winter project going are not following a few simple rules to making sure things happen.

Set up the task at hand as if it were a project at work, by that I mean mentally set deadlines and monitor progress. Luckily you’re the boss this time – Please Yourself.  

1. Make A Move! It’s easy set you goals and your budget, it’s the first step and it gets you past the daydreaming point. Far too often people don’t realize how cheap it can be to resurrect and old bike or update their daily driver.  

2. Plan Ahead. Some things that need to be considered: The parts you will need, the tools, and of course the space to do it in. Now I know this all sounds kind of no-brainer, but how often do we plan until spring and not get the project done. Set dates and deadlines, it’s truly amazing what you can do with only a few weekends work. 

3. Goal Setting. Think about what kind of project you’re planning. Is this a full restoration or what I like to call a resurrection? Older bikes don’t need a frame off rebuild to be good reliable riders. What they do need is some attention to detail.  

4. Always Have A Dedicated Area. Even if it’s very small, one too many bikes never see the road again because someone moved a box of parts and the wife or kids put it at the curb. Make it clear to people that you are working on something important to you and not to mess about in that part of the garage, basement, or living room (A special wife is required on that last one).  

5. The Project. Whether you are rebuilding or just going over your old steed,  there are a few major areas I like to consider during the colder months.  
              (A). Basic maintenance. People consistently over look the small stuff like oil changes, airfilters and plugs and wires. Too many of us head into winter with big plans and ideas and yet when spring comes we haven’t even ordered the parts or washed off the bike, and definitely never tuned it up or drained the carbs. I think the least any of us should do is store our bikes ready for spring! If you’re in a year-round riding climate any time is the right time for proper maintenance. 
             (B). The brakes. It may not be the sexiest project, but there’s nothing like a nice bike that can’t stop the remarkable thing is many riders concentrate elsewhere first. I learned this from experience as a young man so now brakes always come first, provided the bike is at least running, no point in doing brakes on a bike with a blown engine… What amazes me is brakes can be done at such a reasonable price, and in no time at all, yet all to often are while people ride with sub par brake performance. Caliper kits, Master cylinder kits, brake pads are a good place to start on any bike; It’s an important job and makes riding that much better when you have confidence in your brakes.  
           (C) Fuel systems are also a neglected area, yet so affordable to tackle. Now I know carbs can seem intimidating, but with patience, some basic shops skills and a manual most people can handle even a complete carb rebuild. Pace yourself and keep the parts very organized and you will be happy with the results. The only thing better than crisp smooth acceleration from rebuilt carbs in the springtime, is crisp smooth acceleration from carbs rebuilt by your own hands.  
          (D) Cosmetics. This one sounds like another no-brainer but what most forget is it’s the little details that make the overall package. Brake and clutch levers, new blinker lights, tail lenses and so on are the little details that make the over all package shine.
         (E) Comfort. Well I’m covering it last but it’s up there on the priority list! Things like changing your handle bars to better suit your riding style or selecting the right grips or seat can really go along way into how much you enjoy a bike.

 By no means have I covered it all but that’s some of my thoughts about winter projects. The most important part is don’t be caught planning until spring!   Take action start by identifying what you want to do, getting the parts, and making a plan. As usual, the Old Bike Barn team and I will be here with FREE advice and plenty of opinions.

Keep it between the ditches and the shiny side up!  Thanks for reading,  

Bear 
Founder, Old Bike Barn

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Triumph has issued a recall of its 2010 model Sprint ST and GT motorcycles after finding the length of the plug/dipstick to be incorrect. The improper length has led to the inability to determine proper fluid levels, and as a result engines may be compromised by having insufficient oil levels. This increases the risk for engine seizures and may lead to a loss of control while riding.
 
In order to rectify the situation Triumph asks that dealers replace the engine oil plug/dipstick. The service will be performed free of charge for Triumph owners, with the service beginning in December of 2010. Owners may contact Triumph Motorcycle at 678-539-8782 or The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153 ). For more information please go to www.safecar.gov

Written by Matt Davidson Assistant Editor Motorcycle-usa.com

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Motorcycle tires are one of the most important performance and safety aspects of your motorcycle. It’s this reason I’m absolutely religious when it comes to checking the condition of my tires including air pressure regardless if I’m riding on or off-road. The folks from Dunlop also understand this and have released these motorcycle tire tips. Check it out and if you’re looking for a new set of shoes for your street or sportbike make sure to peruse Motorcycle-USA’s comprehensive 2010 Street Motorcycle Tire Comparison and 2009 DOT Race Motorcycle Tire Shootout.

Courtesy of Dunlop:

1. On a regular basis, check your tires all the way around. Rotate both tires completely (if applicable) and make sure there are no nails, or other objects penetrating the tire. If you find anything, do not ride until you have your motorcycle dealer inspect the tire and replace it if necessary.
 
2. Check the tire sidewalls for signs of cracking and never use sidewall treatments or dressings, which can actually accelerate tire cracking.

3. Checking tire pressure is the most important tire maintenance function you can perform. Maintaining the correct air pressure is crucial to the tires’ rolling efficiency, steering, grip, wear and load-carrying capabilities—for every 4 psi a tire is underinflated, you could lose up to 80 pounds of load-carrying capacity.

4. You’re not only riding on your tires, you’re also riding on the air within them, so check cold air pressure as often as possible with a high-quality air-pressure gauge, and have it calibrated at least once a year. 

5. If you’re storing your motorcycle for the winter and/or if you’re storing spare tires, try to avoid frequent and varied extremes of temperature during storage. Do not keep tires next to radiators or sources of heat. Tires subjected to these conditions will age more quickly than those stored in a cool, constant environment.

6. Do not store tires where electric motors are present; the high concentration of ozone will accelerate tire cracking.

7. When buying new tires make sure you select tires that can carry your expected load, including the total weight of the motorcycle, the rider(s), luggage and any equipment. Always match front and rear tires.

8. After installation of new tires, check to make sure the arrows on the sidewall are pointing in the correct direction of rotation, and that the balance dot on the tire is lined up with the valve stem.

Written by:  Adam Waheed Road Test Editor Motorcycle USA

Check out our selection of Dunlop, Click Here

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Bear here, from Old Bike Barn

We make a point of reaching out to our customers with more than just ads, it’s you and your business that keep us being able to support the vast array of applications new and OLD on our site.

We appreciate your business and sincerely wish you and yours all the best this holiday season and for the New Year!

Bear, and the entire OBB Team.

www.oldbikebarn.com

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From our family to yours. Wishing you nothing but the Best durning this Holiday season.

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 It’s a rare region of the U.S. consumer market that doesn’t have at least a few agencies hard at work figuring out how to get their products on the consideration list of younger Hispanic and African-American consumers. But if that terra incognita exists, it’s probably somewhere in the world of motorcycle marketing. That’s partly because, for motorcycle makers, the culture is the bike: when you get a motorcycle you swing a leg over it and emigrate to a nation with its own culture, language, rules, passport.

Bike subcultures, from a market-activation perspective, are touchy ideas and very strongly defined by segment — especially the cruiser motorcycle segment, into which marketers inject just about all of their lifestyle and self-identity messaging. For categories like dirt bikes and sport bikes, it’s about the machine.

Consider sport bikes for a moment and one can see why motorcycle makers might be a bit, um, reticent about focusing on anything beyond the bike itself and how well it rides. These machines have become a lot closer to racing bikes over the years. Many are very high-performance machines with big displacement and ergonomics informed more by the necessities of track racing than street riding (the drop-bar positioning means the rider is prone for aerodynamics, not upright for awareness, etc.). And their combo of sexiness, testosterone, performance, and derring-do appeals to younger riders. You don’t have to be a genius to see where that road leads. Anyway, the bikes speak for themselves — why muck up the business with pop-culture activation. Leave that to cars, right?

Not for Suzuki Motorcycles. The company has been rethinking that notion when it comes to its sport bike lineup by pitching directly to the multicultural, urban market melting pot with an integrated marketing program around music and street culture that is more like the kind of marketing automakers have been doing for brands like Scion and Honda Civic than anything motorcycle makers have ever done.

The effort, Busa Beats (BusaBeats.com), via AOR San Francisco-based digital agency Questus, centers on a social media hub and virtual recording studio for would-be rappers to choose from an array of beats to use as backing tracks for their own rhymes. The point of it all is that the best rhyme-smith wins a Suzuki Hayabusa sport bike. The catch is that the rhymes have to be about the Hayabusa (thus “BusaBeats”).

The competition, which is heading into its third year, culminates in a virtual “MC Battle” with winners chosen by popular vote and a panel of MC (not “motorcycle club”) judges. The winner also appears at Suzuki events across the country, and in one case went on to sign a record deal.

Questus founding partner Jeff Rosenblum says the ultimate goal is to reach a discrete audience, “and communicate with them in way that’s more emotionally driven than any way spoken before by bike manufacturers. This is different in a lot of ways from how motorcycle manufacturers tend to treat audiences — namely in a monolithic way, by market segment,” he says.

Rosenblum says that next year, the focus of the campaign will be less on the Hayabusa and more on the GSX-R (“Jixer” in the parlance), which has, in recent years, replaced the Hayabusa as the sport bike icon of the brand.

“Thus in promoting the Hayabusa we are believers in immersion, going to events, studying social media — everything you can do. Second, always challenge what you hear from the client. Usually they are right, but not always. Bikes are not just about performance, but also about an emotional connection. It’s about how we make that connection,” says Rosenblum.

A customized version of the bike is the grand prize. But the win for Suzuki is the media play. Rosenblum says Busa Beats has racked up over 800 custom songs about the Hayabusa motorcycle with over 200,000 plays and an average of eight minutes on site listening to the songs and 21 minutes during the battle.

“All the guys who made songs generated earned media on the social Web, with people listening and being driven back to the main hub. We had this year over 200,000 plays of all the songs and over 21 minutes spent on site during the heat of battle,” he says, adding that since there is no cash reward — just the bike — there is a built-in demographic and psychographic filter: you have to be interested in sport bikes.

He says the campaign has paid off in buzz and opinion of the brand. “What we do is compare paid media to positive social sentiment,” says Rosenblum. “After this campaign there was a very high degree of positive sentiment about Suzuki in social-media spaces.”

Written by Karl Greenberg for mediapost.com

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For More Information of the Gold Wing Road Riders Association (GWRRA) of Clearwater Flordia, Click Here

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You may recall that Time Magazine selects a “Person of the Year”, and this person (formerly “Man” of the Year) is sometimes considered a saint, and sometimes a villan. Times Man of the Year for 1938? Adolf Hitlter.

Before any of you get too excited, I am certainly not suggesting that the Governor of California is a villian that belongs in the same league with Hitler. My point is this. The AMA has chosen Schwarzenegger as its Motorcyclist of the Year because it views Schwarzenegger as a villian, of sorts, for signing California Senate Bill 435 into law.

With this law, California will require “every new motorcycle or aftermarket exhaust system built starting in 2013 to carry a stamp on the exhaust certifying that it meets federal Environmental Protection Agency sound requirements.” The upshot? According to the AMA, those of us with older motorcycles that might need to replace an exhaust in the future may have no choice but to purchase an expensive OEM system (if one is even available). The AMA believes that, particularly for low-production models, the aftermarket simply cannot afford the federal certification process. The AMA also points out that the new California law might spawn similar legislation in other states, and, in any event, is not the best way to effect reasonable sound limits.

One interesting thing is that Governor Schwarzenegger is a motorcyclist himself who has gone out of his way to do some very positive things for motorcycling in the past (as the AMA notes).  Here is the press release from the AMA. 

For 2010, that distinction belongs to outgoing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose signature on a controversial law will have far-reaching and potentially harmful effects on the motorcycling community nationwide.

With no fanfare, Schwarzenegger signed a poorly crafted bill on Sept. 28 that fundamentally changes how California will regulate motorcycle exhaust systems. The new law also maps a path for the rest of the country, as other state and local lawmakers look for their own answers to address excessive motorcycle sound. The full story is in the January 2011 issue of American Motorcyclist magazine, the journal of the AMA.

“Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a piece of legislation that has rocked the motorcycling world, and will impact motorcyclists in other states as well for years to come,” said AMA President and CEO Rob Dingman. “This makes him the logical choice for the 2010 AMA Motorcyclist of the Year.”

The legislation, California Senate Bill 435, the Motorcycle Anti-Tampering Act, requires every new motorcycle or aftermarket exhaust system built starting in 2013 to carry a stamp on the exhaust certifying that it meets federal Environmental Protection Agency sound requirements. For most motorcycles, the law is a de-facto OEM (original equipment manufacturer) exhaust mandate because the federal standard was not designed for aftermarket manufacturers, and compliance for the scores of low-volume production models now on the market is extremely problematic.

The AMA has long advocated reasonable measures be adopted for the regulation of excessive motorcycle sound, and cites the Society of Automotive Engineers J2825 motorcycle sound testing procedure as the most fair, economical and practical solution to the problem vexing communities nationwide.

“The California law is a poorly crafted piece of legislation that’s discriminatory and does little to address the core problem of excessive sound from all sources, not just motorcycles,” Dingman said. “Rather than objectively regulate offensive noise, this law creates all sorts of problems for riders, law enforcement and aftermarket manufacturers.”

An EPA certification label is no guarantee of sound compliance, and the lack of a label is no guarantee that an exhaust is too loud. The only way to know if a motorcycle exhaust is compliant is to test its actual sound output, Dingman noted.

“As a motorcyclist, Gov. Schwarzenegger should have known better,” Dingman said. “Now California’s motorcyclists, as well as key segments of our industry, are going to be negatively impacted.”

Currently, only two aftermarket manufacturers offer EPA-sound-stamped exhaust systems for a handful of late-model Harley-Davidsons. The process of certification is complex and expensive. For the millions of owners whose motorcycle models were made in relatively small numbers, the requirement to replace an aging exhaust system with an expensive OEM system is onerous and discriminatory. Owners of automobiles and trucks don’t have to meet the same standard, and they can buy less expensive replacement exhaust systems at local muffler shops.

Schwarzenegger’s selection as AMA Motorcyclist of the Year was reinforced by California’s position as a role model for the rest of the country.

“In many cases, we’ve seen other states follow California’s legislative lead on a number of issues,” Dingman said. “There’s no reason to think that trend won’t continue with respect to S.B. 435. With the stroke of his pen, Gov. Schwarzenegger significantly altered the motorcycling landscape for motorcyclists everywhere, and this is the reason why his selection as AMA Motorcyclist of the Year is so impactful.”

The full story of Schwarzenegger’s involvement with motorcycling goes beyond S.B. 435, and is detailed in the January issue of American Motorcyclist. Schwarzenegger has, during his tenure, been an ally of motorcycling with key appointments to decision-making committees that deal with off-highway riding issues, as an example. In addition, as a known motorcyclist himself, Schwarzenegger has drawn attention to motorcycling and, after a high-profile crash in 2006, the need for proper motorcycle licensing.

“We will continue to work with municipal governments and state legislatures to implement reasonable measures, such as the SAE J2825 standard, to address excessive motorcycle sound,” said Dingman. “But we now have the added burden of showing how California’s new measure is not an effective solution, and we have Gov. Schwarzenegger to thank for that.”

Article written by Dick Edge of www.motorcycledaily.com

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