big surprise in the winter it's cold and that means traction is a whole new
game
whether you commute year-round you like to play in the winter or if you just end
up in winter conditions on at or traction is always one of the top
concerns and how we set up the bike and the techniques we use make all the
difference in maintaining that limited traction this is winter riding this
looks like a nice easy powdery snow but it turns out this is packed ice the
technique here is... and here's the thing... when you get on to solid ice whether
it's on pavement, gravel or here all bets are off. it's solid ice! there's no
traction so the goal here is to ride at a pace that allows you to see what's
coming up this is one we want to get up on those pegs the more challenging the
environment the more technical or riding gets so we can stand up so we can see
what's going on what makes this ride-able today is that I
have just enough churned up ice and snow above it and I can get some traction in
it and if you look at the tires back here you'll see a little bit of tread
and where I'm actually leaving a tread pattern up behind the tire that allows
me to have some forward momentum. the instinct for most riders when they get
into this situation is as the riding the front end may turn and slide or the back
may slip and immediately the clutch is off the riders throw the feet down and
try to stop but in this you need to keep the momentum once you get any kind of
uphill if you stop you're dead in the water you're starting all over again you
want to keep forward momentum to do that let me keep the RPMs up about five
hundred rpms above what I actually moving forward I'm gonna keep one to two
fingers on that quad you just slip that clutch just to keep the momentum going
because if I feel the back wheel spin I immediately need to buffer just enough
power from the back wheel that I reduced the spin but I keep moving forward
that's the goal that's what I'm after if I get into a situation where it's deeper
I may actually allow enough spin where I have to paddle out and that's why we
have knobbies or more aggressive tires in this kind of a riding environment what
makes this so challenging is you have an ice edge trap here this is solid and a
flat surface that the front tire can't crawl up and over when your front tire
comes in against that hard edge it ends up going parallel to the edge so it's
side by side and one the front tire and the back tire both come into it the bike
can't balance and it'll fall over so when that front tire comes up against
that edge trap what you need to do is turn the handlebars towards the actual
ledge here this frozen the little micro frozen cliff and that prize that front
tire backing away so the bike can continue to balance that front tire can
serpentine in situations like this where it's really frozen you may end up in a
situation where you're maybe three four or five even ten feet where that front
tire is pushing against the edge but you're not able to relaxing let it come
back out and you're pushing in and the bike is crawling sideways and that front
tire is pushing sideways against the edge that's perfectly okay if you lose
balance and throw your feet to the ground just don't lose momentum this is
fun this is a challenge but it's not necessarily what I'd recommend for a commute!
temperature really is the biggest difference between winter and the other
seasons when it's warm out going from dry pavement to wet pavement can have a
very small change in actual traction but as we get into colder temperatures when
we get to near freezing or freezing temperatures then it makes all the
difference this thin sheet of water can very quickly turn to ice but also the
dry pavement also loses a ton of traction the tires need to be warm they
need to flex and put heat into them to get maximum traction that means in the
winter even on dry pavement our traction can be significantly reduced
make sure you reduce your lean angles and reduce your speeds
compared to summers I prefer riding gravel roads in the
winter gravel is the one surface where my performance actually goes up in the
winter and there's a couple reasons for this one I don't have to worry about
dust the ground is more packed in because the is the rains come through
and other vehicles go over the gravel they they pack everything down nice and
tight and it's a lot easier to predict what the traction is the bonus to riding
on gravel in the winter is it's always a cooler temperature which means I get to
wear all of my safety gear without all the temperature concerns and the
overheating. my riding technique changes very little. I do however still have to
pay attention for black ice the moisture that gets into the gravel that helps it
pack down to become predictable can also freeze when we get near those freezing
or below freezing temperatures and they can catch you off-guard so do have to
pay attention for that this is fun it's one of the hidden treasures of writing
in the winter tread pattern and tire pressure are two primary concerns when
looking to maximize your traction in the winter when looking at tread pattern
you'll see I run a more aggressive tire in the winter if I'm only running on
pavement or hard gravel whether I have a street bias adventure tire or very
aggressive knobby it's not going to make a lot of difference but when I get into
conditions like snow or mud or other traction situations where I may end up
needing to paddle now I need that gap in those tires so a 50-50 like the time
running here or an aggressive knobby will give me that extra advantage if I
choose to run tire studs in a in a motorcycle tire I need to make sure that
that tread is as thick as possible so when I run the studs into the tread
it doesn't pierce all the way through the tire and give me a flat you will
need to have motorcycle specific studs to do
though attire needs to move and flex and the more it moves and flexes the more
heat goes into the tire that heat helps our tires have more traction this is one
of the reasons why knobby tires on the big bikes wear out so much faster than a
street bias adventure tire in the winter running an aggressive 50/50 or knobby
tire can be to our advantage it's hard to talk about tires without talking
about tire pressure tire pressure is critical on the motorcycles and as you
probably know watching the other videos I'm not a huge proponent of constantly
airing down and err enough for every situation every time I leave the
pavement but winter riding is the exception and the reason is most riders
believe that by airing down you increase the area that touches the ground contact
patch giving them more traction this isn't actually true it's about pounds
per square inch and the idea when we air down in the winter is not that we're
putting more surface area down but we're allowing the tire to flex more because
it's rolling over a larger traction patch it moves and flexes putting heat
into the tire because the roads are colder in the winter and the tires are
colder in the winter we need as much heat as possible to give us every
advantage when airing a tire up or down you want to start with the tire pressure
that's recommended for that tire on that motorcycle if you're running one of the
stock tires you can look in the owner's manual and you can air up 10% or down
10% without any adverse effect after that 10% you want to be careful and
experiment if you're running an entire that was not stock on that motorcycle
the best place to get that optimum starting pressure is from the tire
manufacturer the maximum air pressure that's printed on the sidewall the tire
is for maximum load it is not necessarily the ideal pressure for
maximum traction