I Didn't Ride My Motorcycles All Winter And Now They're Mad At Me

The weather here in the midwest is warm enough in February to be something that definitely keeps me up at night. In order to help keep some of those thoughts from overrunning my brain and sending me into a doom spiral, I opened the garage door, grabbed my gear, and swung a leg over my trusty BMW R1100 GS yesterday for the first time since late September. Pressing the start button was an instantly familiar sensation, but the expected thrum of flat twin exhaust pushing through an aftermarket Italian can never came. I’ve forsaken my good two-wheeled pal, let them down. In return, it is making me sit in my own thoughts.

Ride Along On The Trans Mass Trail

Well, we can’t have that!

Image: Bradley Brownell

I pride myself on being something of a dead battery whisperer. I’ve lived in the kinds of extreme temperature swing climates that run batteries ragged my entire life, and it seems the quality of batteries has declined over the last decade or so. When you have 10 cars and three motorcycles, something is bound to have a dead battery every now and again. So I brought out my trusty CTek charger that I’ve relied on for the better part of a decade and slapped the clamps on the terminals. There was just enough juice left in the Bimmer’s 12v system to get the charger to spring to life. I set it to the “recondition” mode and let it do its thing.

While getting the bike up on its center stand, I noticed the front tire was pretty low on air. After pumping it back up, it didn’t show any signs of leaking, so I’m not sure exactly where that air went over the winter, but that’s a mystery I fear I’ll never solve.

Okay, the BMW’s been sorted out. “Let’s just hop on the Livewire and get out to enjoy the day,” I foolishly said to myself. Gear on, key found, swing leg over, press start. Once more I was met with fuck-all from the two-wheeled machine under me. Like a stubborn cat being carried into the bath, it simply did not want to cooperate.

Image: Bradley Brownell

This situation reminded me that the Livewire was showing signs of an unhappy 12v battery last fall, occasionally showing a “low battery” symbol on the dash at the start of a ride. The small lithium 12v battery on these electric machines are known for giving up the ghost quickly, as they do little more than facilitate the bike’s lights and dash. They keep a charge through a DC-to-DC converter that steps down the big battery’s high voltage to a 12v level to maintain operations.

Well, I stored the big battery at 33 percent when I tucked it away last fall, as you should. Unfortunately, the 12v was dead, and the bike wouldn’t wake from its slumber. Using an old jumper box, I got the bike to wake up, but not run or accept a charge from the wall plug.

Image: Bradley Brownell

Thankfully after a long night on the CTek, the original Harley 12v is back in the green zone and should be ready to get this bike back up to snuff.

Image: Bradley Brownell

Unfortunately, after treating both bikes to a wipe down wash and cleaning all of last summer’s bugs from the radiators, and giving all the black plastic trim a healthy amount of Mothers Back To Black, the sun went down and it had started raining. Goddamn midwest weather.

The Livewire is currently a bit more of a naked bike than it usually is, because the factory black trim is off at the paint shop getting a beautiful shade of Porsche GTS Red applied to it. Here’s a blurry picture they sent me a while back. I can’t wait to see the bike with the pieces reinstalled.

Image: 2 Brothers

The moral of the story here is that when you park your bike for a while, even if it’s just a couple of weeks, put it on a battery tender. When I put these bikes in the garage last fall, I was really hoping to get a few more rides in before the riding season was over. I even bought heated gear with the intent of lengthening my riding season into November, but just never got around to it. It’s my own damn fault, and I have nobody to blame but myself. Ride your shit.