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It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold, when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, we'll be looking at dusting off the cobwebs and rust from your and yourself as we spring into 2026's riding here in the Northern Hemisphere.
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We'll look at getting your bike ready to ride and ensuring that you are both mentally and physically ready to ride. And I'll share some tips on what to do in your first few rides to ease you into the riding season. Now, if you've had your bike in storage over the winter months, it's time to check it over and ensure that everything is ready to go. So first thing, you probably had a cover on your bike, so let's remove that cover and we're going to check the bike over.
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First thing we're going to do is we're going to look in the exhaust. Sometimes rodents like to climb in there, create a little bit of a nest. We want to make sure that there's just nothing in there because when you fire up the bike and start it, if there's any sort of fibrous material that they've put in, that could cause a fire.
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So first thing is just take a look into the exhaust. Now look underneath the bike. Take a look and make sure that there's no leaks. You're not seeing any oil leaking. You're not seeing any fluids leak. Nothing that's coming down and showing that there's something to be worried about for the Now look over the fasteners. Is there anything that's missing or loose? Next, take a look at your tires and any of the hoses that you have on your bike. See if there's any dry rot. When the bike's been sitting for a while, sometimes these materials can start to crack and no longer are going be fit for purpose. We need to look at them and make sure that they're going to be worthy to use for this upcoming riding season. Next, let' take a look at some of our fluid levels. We want to make sure that our brake fluid, our coolant and our oil levels are all in the appropriate range specified in our owner's manual for our particular motorcycle. And if you followed our tips for prepping your bike for the winter, you've probably already done this and your bike is already ready to go. But if not, we're going to want to do any delayed maintenance that we did not do at the tail end of the riding season last year. So you're going to change any fluids that are needed, be these brake, coolant, oil, transmission, gear oil, etc.
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Next thing you're going to do is you're going to clean and lube the chain on your bike if it's a chain driven bike. This is just good because the bike's been sitting still for a while. Some of the lubrication that you might have put onto the chain as you ended the riding season may have dried off. It may have gotten corroded with any sort of material that we're just sitting around and wherever you're storing your bike. So just clean and lube the chain, get it ready to go. Now if you didn't already have your bike's battery on a tender of some sort, you want to make sure that you charge that battery. So put it onto the tender. battery is the thing that's going to allow you to start your bike. So let's make sure that it's as set and ready to go. And while we already checked the tires for dry rot, now what we want to do is we want to check the tire tread. We want to make sure that it is within the legal spec to make sure that we're going to be able to use it. In addition to the tire tread, just look over the tire. Is there any cupping of any kind? Is there any weird wear patterns that might indicate that you do need to replace the tire? So now we've handled any delayed maintenance.
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Let's just confirm that the bike is ready to go. We're going to move the handlebar through the entire sweep. Check for any sticking, which could be an indication that maybe some of your head bearings are damaged or need replacement. We're going to check for smooth operation of the brake and the clutch levers.
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We're going to check for smooth operation of the foot brake and the gear shift lever. We're going to ensure that our mirrors are set correctly. Sometimes as you're moving the bike around in storage or you have a cover on, you might bang into the mirror and it's going to get jostled out of position. So let's just make sure that those mirrors are set appropriately. And the next thing we're going to do is set the preload for your current weight. Now this is something that a lot of riders neglect to do. Some of them have never set the preload on their And this will have a very negative impact on to how the bike performs and handles. The other thing to remember is sometimes we do change our weight over the course of the winter months. And so the weight that you had for your bike, if you had properly set the preload before, may not be correct anymore. And most bikes will have either a suggested number of clicks or turns based on your riding weight or they'll ask you to use a sag measurement for setting the preload. And both of these are completely legitimate. If anything, the sag measurement is usually a little bit more consistent because you're actually measuring the actual sag as opposed to oh, here should get you roughly into it.
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But if you don't have a sag measurement tool and you do have the turns or clicks recommended in the manual, it's certainly perfectly fine. And if you do have in your get into your full riding gear and then check your riding weight. So get onto a scale, see how much you weigh fully geared up. So you're wearing your boots, you're wearing your riding pants, your riding jacket, you've got your gloves, you've got your helmet, everything that you would do when you're riding on a bike.
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Let's see what your weight is.
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It is not the weight when you're just sitting and measuring yourself to see how much do I weigh. You're measuring how much you weigh with your riding gear in place and the Delta can be quite significant. It's not unusual for it to be 20 or 30 pounds more weight as you get everything on there. So you want to make sure you're measuring yourself in your full riding weight. Now once you've determined that, then you adjust the preload to match whatever your riding weight is. And every bike is going to be a little different, so look at your manual to see what is the appropriate way. Some will say to sort of release all of the preload to get you back to a starting point. And then you're going to turn in from there, so that might be the way to do it.
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Use whatever is appropriate on your particular owner's manual.
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Now, if you don't have a recommendation of number of turns or clicks for setting your preload, you're going to have to do what's called a sag measurement. in this case, bike will oftentimes give you a percentage recommendation for how much sag should have on your motorcycle. Now, sag is generally... The easiest way to think of it is when your bike is just sitting on its own, meaning it's perfectly vertically up straight. Both wheels are on the ground The bike is going to settle just from its natural weight of the bike to a certain position. When you get onto the bike, the suspension is going to go down a little bit, and this is just natural from your riding weight applying onto the bike.
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Most motorcycles will say that you want to have about 30 to 35% of your suspension travel used up for this static sag measurement. But look at your manual to see the requirements for your motorcycle. And what you're going to do is you're going to measure the distance from the wheel to a point on the motorcycle, usually in like maybe like the seat or the rear cowl. Let's say if you're doing the preload on the rear. as get onto the bike, you're going to probably need to have someone else with you. They're going to measure what it was originally, and now they're going to measure as you sit on the bike in your full riding gear. Really critical to make sure that you're doing it that way. by looking at that delta, you can see what percentage of your SAG has occurred, and then you can adjust the preload up or down this. Now, this is kind of a pain to do it in this way. It's a little bit less precise. Maybe you're using a ruler, you have to have someone else who's standing up next to you. I personally actually prefer to do this with one of the digital tools that are available. I use one called the Slacker SAG Measurement Tool, and what's really cool about this is it has a little magnet on it. You can click that onto the wheel, and now you can move a other sort of string that attaches to it, and you can attach that onto a position on the bike. And now you have a little remote display that you can just have on the handlebar. So, as you sit on the bike and settle it, you can actually see what your position is. Now, once you've figured out what your distance has been, you're going to adjust your preload either harder or softer to match what you need to do, and then you're going to retest this distance after each measurement until it matches the spec defined in your manual, which, as I said, it's usually around 30% to 35%. This is why I think the Slacker is the easier way to do Now, it is an investment that you're going to make for buying this device, but the beauty of it is you can use this across all of your bikes and any new bikes that you acquire in the future. So, it's a very useful tool to have, and setting your preload, most bikes will allow you to set the preload. They may not have other adjustments on the suspension, but most will allow you to set preload, at least on the rear of the bike. And if you don't have it set properly, you're going to have a different amount of sag that's going to exist as you're riding the bike, make the bike feel a little bit too wallowing as you're going through a turn.
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It could feel that it's too hard.
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So, setting this appropriately is really important. And as I mentioned, since your weight may have changed, maybe you have new gear, which has a different weight than what your old gear did. Making sure that you do this each spring is a good habit to get into of any time that you notice any sort of major change.
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So, if you even, in the riding season, get new gear, I'd actually say still go and reset that sag again, just to make sure that it isn't dramatically off. So, we have our preload set on the motorcycle. Now, the next thing we want to do is check your tire pressure. Don't assume that just because you set it when you put the bike in the storage, that it's the same.
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Tires often can change the pressure from small leaks, oftentimes by the valve stem, which aren't enough to really cause any harm. But if you've been sitting with the bike, sitting there for two or three months, you could get a little bit of leakage. The other thing is that there's going to be temperature changes. So, whatever temperature the garage or wherever you're storing the bike was, when you first set the pressure as you put it away, and the temperature now may not be the same, and therefore, the pressure will look different. So, just check the tire pressure.
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It's a good way to make sure the bike is ready to go. Now, we're going to check all of the lights.
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Confirm that your low and high beam work correctly. Check that the brake light activates from both the foot brake and from the brake lever. Check your turn indicators left and right from both the front and the rear. And if your bike is equipped with a license plate light, just confirm that that is working as expected. Now, in many the lights is pretty much the extent of any sort of state-based inspection that you may need to do. Certainly here in New York State, they essentially just make sure that the lights are working and the horn. So, I would also check your horn. This way, you've kind of done the inspection yourself, and you know that when you get your bike inspected that it's going to pass. Now, here in New York State, we have to get our bikes inspected every year, usually by April. So, as you're checking your bike, getting it ready to go for the spring, it never hurts to kind of just make sure everything is working. We're going to turn the ignition on...
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We're going to confirm that the sweep or any of the indicator lights that come onto the dash are working as expected. Want to make sure that nothing is giving any warning lights, anything going weird. Now we're going to start the engine. We're going to confirm that there is no issue with the engine. Did it stall?
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Was it hard to start? These could be indications of a problem with the motorcycle or at least with the battery or the starter. Or it could just be that the bike was cold. So just see what you can do with getting that engine at least started and making sure that there's nothing that's obvious problematic. Now with the engine running check for any exhaust leaks. Do you see exhaust coming out of some place that it's not supposed to be coming out of? Look along the make sure that where the various exhaust pipes fit together, that there's no leaking at any of those joints. Now with the engine running also look for any fluid leaks, sometimes while you may not have had weeping of oil while the bike was sitting still over its slumber over the winter, when it's running, you might start to see that. So let's take a look and make sure that everything looks right. All right. And if you usually let the bike run for about five minutes, that's enough time to be able to see anything that's obvious, at least as something that would keep us from wanting to bring the bike out and go for a ride.
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So our bike is now ready to go. We feel that the bike is ready to go. But what about us?
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Well, if you haven't ridden in several months, it's important to recognize that you are out of practice. And this is a little bit of an issue in just your mind and thinking about riding.
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We've spent a couple months not doing it, not even thinking about it, perhaps. a good way to sort of get yourself prepped, at least mentally for it, is start to visualize how you would operate the bike's controls.
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Imagine what would I do as I'm leaving from when I started the bike. I'm going to ease out that clutch. I'm going to give a little bit of throttle.
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Visualize that in your mind's eye. How would you be scanning for traffic as you're coming up to maybe a junction? What are you doing to kind of prepare yourself for getting out on the bike and interacting with the road's environment? And then probably a very good thing that I like to do when you start to think about your ride of the season is set a goal for yourself of what you would like to accomplish in that first ride.
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Is it literally just to kind of go out and pick up some new gas for the bike? Is it to go for a longer ride? Maybe you're going to go and get breakfast somewhere. Think about what you'd like to do of your goal for that first ride. And this just starts to mentally prepare yourself for doing that.
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Now, if you've only been driving a car for several months, your body position and muscles which are used in a car are very different when you get on the bike. So don't be surprised if you find that you're stiff or have some aches during your first few rides. Muscle memory will help as you go through manipulating the controls, but sometimes just sitting on the bike and doing the motions with the engine off can remind your body of what to do. So before your first rides, just make sure you take time to stretch.
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Exercise the muscles you typically would use when riding.
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Remember the core muscles that I was alluding to. help keep you upright while you're riding. Now, if you're sitting in a car seat all winter, those muscles might have weakened a little bit. So you need to build them back up in order to avoid aches and fatigue.
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So we've got our bike ready. We're mentally ready. And physically, we think we're pretty good, at least to get started with riding for the new spring. So for our first few make sure that there's a couple things that we're going to do.
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We're first off, we're going to keep it short for those first few rides. for me personally, this was the first winter in many years where I wasn't able to ride because of so much snow or ice on the roads. I don't mind if there's snow on the sides of the roads, so long as the road itself is clear. And I don't mind if it's cold because I have heated gear. But this winter, it was like snowing every couple of days. So there really was nothing to clear the roads over that whole time. So as a result, I had nearly two months where I didn't ride at all. Now, my first ride was a 35-mile round trip. I went out, I grabbed some coffee, I had a little bit of breakfast, and I got back. And it was enough time for me to get a feel for getting back out on the bike. But not so long that you start to get fatigued. Now, my next couple of rides were about 50 to 60 miles.
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Again, I'm slowly easing in to just getting the rides a little bit longer to break off that rust that we have of not having ridden for a couple of months.
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The next thing I'd say is mind the temperature. Now, we can all be anxious to get back out on the bike. But if all the snow or ice in your area hasn't fully melted, or it's recently rained, check the temperatures. My second ride after my break, all the snow had melted. But as it departed from my house, it was about 35 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius. Now, for the most part, the roads were dry.
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But as I turned onto one of my favorite twisty roads, there was some black ice in the turning lane and the bike got a little squirrely as I made that turn.
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Just the rear end started sliding out on me. Now, I do a lot of off-road riding, so I'm used to handling that and it didn't cause any real issues.
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But if I had not been prepared for that, if I had not had that practice with riding off-road, it could have been where I dumped the bike. So, we call this black ice because the reality is, you can't see it.
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It's sort of invisible. And it's usually a thin layer of water across the road surfaces that sits in the shade and thus, it's a little bit colder than the surrounding areas and thus, it freezes. Generally speaking, once it gets more than about 5 degrees Fahrenheit or 3 degrees Celsius above freezing, the chances of black ice drop dramatically. But I was less than that 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
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I was only at 35 degrees. So, just be mindful of the temperatures. So, if you're just getting going for your first ride of the spring, maybe wait for it to get into the 40s or even the 50s, and you'll have no issues whatsoever with black ice.
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The other thing I'd say is, if you are doing your first few rides, and if you have more than one motorcycle, rotate through the bikes. Ride one bike, and then the next time you go out, ride one of the other bikes. You want to reaquaint yourself with how each one of these bikes feels when you ride.
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They're gonna have different ergonomics, they are going to have different throttle position, different power levels, different engagement of the clutch, different feeling of how you switch gears. So, you want to get yourself reacquainted to all of those variations amongst each of the bikes that you may own. And take that same approach of keeping the first few rides short as you get familiar with the bike again.
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So, let's wrap up. We went through getting ready for spring riding. We started with making sure that your bike was ready to ride after its long winter slumber. Next, we made sure that your mind was ready.
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It's a quite literal different mindset when riding a motorcycle versus driving a car, and you need to be in that mindset to ride effectively. Next, we looked at getting your body ready. Remember, riding uses different muscles than driving, and they may be out of practice from the winter disuse.
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And finally we looked at some tips for your first few rides to get your riding season off to a good start. So, my question for you this week is, what are you most looking forward to this spring? Share your thoughts through the text show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleonroast.com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.
