mpgmotors.com Blog

Winter Commuting

There have been a number of days that I continue to ride the bike that have not been at all unpleasant because of a couple of clothing items I am using.

First, I have a windproof, armoured coat from Fieldsheer. This coat has a double seam down the front and a raised collar with velcro strips placed up and down the zippered seam. A windproof coat (check the specs) makes a *huge* difference.

Next, I use Scott gauntlet gloves that prevents any exposed skin at the wrists. They are not heated. So far, after a half hour commute, only my finger tips have gotten cold on the Goldwing - which has to be the best bike in the world for warm winter motorcycling!

I have worn both rain pants that don’t breathe to keep the wind off of my legs as well as ski bib overalls. It’s easier for me to put the bibs on and they seem to work as well with the wind and also provide some more warmth.

On my head, I have a full face HJC helmet and I wear a head stocking that extends down onto my chest and back and under the collar of the coat. I end up looking like this (below) - ready for almost any beauty contest that is near the Artic Circle…

Final note. I am riding when it is less than 32 degrees, but I am really watching very carefully for any pooled water from cars, trucks and from drains.

Winterization

Folks,

If you are done riding for the year in the Greater Philadelphia area you just about *have to* do the following:

1. Treat the fuel. Get some Stabil or other brand of fuel stabilizer. We sell Stabil but so do many other places. One ounce of Stabil will treat 2.5 gallons of gas. Pour in the Stabil, fill up the gas tank and go ride it for 20 minutes. This will make sure that you have burned out the untreated gas in the carburetors. If it turns warm and you decide to ride, just replace the treated gas with more when you are done - Add more gas to top off and some Stabil. You want to have the gas tank full. The more air at the top of the tank allows that much more moist air that will result in surface rusting of the inside of your metal tanks.

The gasoline formulations in the Philadelphia area have apparently had fuel stabilizers removed or fundamentally changed some time ago and we are seeing low speed jet clogging in as few as four weeks. The low speed jets are the smallest and clog the easiest. “Running the bike hard” after clogging rarely clears them out. There isn’t enough vacuum to do it. This will be the traditional “it runs on the choke but won’t idle” scenario.

This does not appear to be a brand specific problem and we are seeing this on a number of manufacturer’s bikes. IOW, it seems to be the gas not the bikes. The ethanol (alcohol) is apparently also bringing in moisture from the ambient air and this is causing problems with some float needles. Some have corroded in place in the float seats and we had to pull some needles out with tools to free them. That is pretty serious for your average float needle! Stabil or some other stabilizer is the best action we can recommend.

2. Charge the battery once a month and don’t let it freeze. Consider purchasing a Battery Tender and use it. The Battery Tenders are “smart chargers” and do not constantly charge the battery. They are designed not to boil off the water and overcharge the battery. When connected they do, however, constantly monitor the state of the battery and top it off when needed. They then go back to monitor mode until the battery sinks down enough to require a light charge again. They charge at a very low amperage but they have nothing else but time so the rate of charge doesn’t really matter.

3. Starting the bike up every so often is ok, but run it long enough to warm up the oil throughly. If you are not using a battery tender starting,  but not running, will really take the battery down. Batteries will charge at idle on most bikes but starting will take quite a bit of energy out of the battery in the winter. If you do start your bike ride it if you can or run it for a while.

Please do these things at least (call us if you want to discuss other things to do) so we don’t have to see you right away in the spring!

The Blended Gas Mileage Spreadsheet

We get the full gamut of concerns or non-concerns about gas mileage with our products. MPG Motors, to some, stands for Miles Per Gallon Motors. To others, MPG Motors stands for Motorsports Performance Group where miles per gallon is their last concern. Honestly, both areas are interesting to me - fast and efficient.

Having said that, I’m also a big believer in doing both things (going quickly as possible as efficiently as possible) and not just talking about them. If you’re concerned about saving gas, save gas. If you want to go fast, go fast. If you want to do both you should at least consider a scooter or motorcycle - almost any scooter or motorcycle. Even large motorcyles average well above the cars most of us drive. The Honda GL1100 Goldwing I am using as a daily driver gets 41 mpg. The Hyosung GV and GT250’s can get up to 70 mpg in commuting service. Granted, the big fuel economy advantage of most scooters and motorcycles pale when you fill a five passenger car with five people when it can get 25 mpg. But (and this is a big BUT in my experience) almost no one drives with their cars full. Carpooling is not well supported even in areas where there are special incentives in an attempt to drive acceptance. Truth be told, I’ve never been able to work carpooling into my life. Hats off to the folks that can carpool, but I’ve never had a job in my life where rigid work hours would work for me.

No, most of us drive a car or truck all the time by ourselves and wish we had a better answer. Now, at MPG Motors we try to offer solutions that aren’t slow and do improve efficiency. I get just as excited when a customer walks in the door and tells me they live in a town, work nearby (but too far to walk) and the roads they travel support travel on a 50cc scooter. I get as fired up helping this customer as I do with a person that wants our biggest bikes. When their mission fits a 50cc profile, that means to me that the top average speed of the other traffic is somewhere in the 25-35 mph range without significant hills. We have a number of towns like these in the area - Doylestown, Quakertown, Dublin, Lansdale - yep fill in your town. Transportation requirements like these allow the smallest scooters to meet the requirement to move one person to their destination and preclude the speed difference that we see with bicycles on shared roads.

MPG Motors did the Great Doylestown Gas Mileage Test back in 2006 to show the folks in Doylestown and towns like Doylestown how small scooters work in our area. They work great but that may also not be your situation. So, one of my customers said I needed a spreadsheet to quantify the gas savings in dollars from using a scooter or motorcycle to *sorta* to *almost* replace their current vehicle. Some people use their bikes *a lot*. Jan Wieck used his TN’G Verona like that. We documented his usage last year here. Other folks are more summertime only riders. But, if you get even a little better mileage and you drive the scooter or motorcycle a little, you are still using less gas than you would have otherwise. And, this is a finer point, if your focus is just not using gas (as opposed to saving money) even driving a higher efficiency vehicle a little helps.

Now there are many articles (I read one tonight) talking negatively about the long payback period of higher efficiency vehicles due to the higher purchase prices of hybrid vehicles. While not free, scooters and motorcycles present a much less expensive form of high-efficiency vehicles than the current crop of hybrid cars. How much cheaper? I made a spreadsheet that you can get here.

You’ll need to know and change to your situation the following:

• The average price of gas (I set it to $3.00)
• The number of miles you drive in a year (I put in 12,500 - the accepted average)
• The gas mileage of your current vehicle and a motorcycle or scooter

Hammer those numbers over the ones there and see what your blended gas mileage cost would be and what you would save over continuing to use one vehicle for everything.

Welcome to the MPG Motors Blog!

We’ve started this MPG Motors blog to allow us to go into more depth on the various subjects that tend to get lightly covered and then later run over by new pages on the MPGmotors.com website. We are big believers in what we can do with our products in real settings that our customers encounter on our roads. We’ll use the blog to corral some of our thinking and use of the products we offer to you.