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Cold weather riding tip

For Bikers who haven't experienced much cold weather riding, a motorcycle crash that I recently observed reminded me of lessons in riding or let's say crashing that I've learned over the years.. Tires react much differently in cold/cool weather and the biker that layed down his bike the other night was apparently not aware of this! Cold weather afffects the rubber in tires making the side walls stiffer and the inside rolling surface much warmer and will heat up the surface differently and give more traction. In aggressive cornering like I observed before this unfortunate biker went down the rear end washed out and I'm pretty sure the rider wasn't thinking of his tires and there performance in cold weather. We stopped to offer help and to check out if he was hurt or not and luckily, except some expected scrapes and bruises, fine! The rider mentioned he had torn up this corner plenty of times in the summer at even higher speeds with great success. Cold tires against cold pavement can cause a bike to perform similiar to riding on wet pavement so when riding when its cold outside treat it like its wet weather. I learned this many years ago and had to learn the hard way too! Hope nobody else has to learn the hard way, Road rash hurts!!
 
That is a very excellent reminder. I'd like to add one more thing into the equation. At the same time those cold tires are trying to hold onto that cold pavement, they also might have to deal with left over sand residue from winter sanding. That stuff can be like ball bearings. Cagers should be keeping this stuff in mind as well. Thanks again for the reminder.
 
I never considered that, thanks for the tip! And like someone else said "watch out for the sand! One time last summer I was coming around a blind corner. The sand had long been removed from the road in the early Spring but unbeknownst to me we had a heavy rain the night before and it had washed sand and gravel in the road right on the curve. I didn't see it until I was upon it! Fortunately it turned out alright for me.
 
Another thing to consider is road repairs. In some areas they use tar to repair cracks in the pavement. The tar has different adhesive properties to pavement. When it's a nice summer day, sticks like glue to your tires. When it's cold and/or rainy, the cold tar tends to become slick and, when it's raining out, will be a bit greasy. If you catch some in a corner, you could feel your front tire slip which could turn into a lay-down.
 
Tires take longer to warm up in the cold, but never get as warm as in summer weather.
 
Very good tips by all. In my part of the country we have an unusually large amount of pot holes this spring, left over from wet, frozen roads. Trecherous!
Ride safe everyone.
 
Excellent tips! Because most of us don't push our tires to the point of loosing traction, we forget that tires need to come up to operating temperature before they will work like they are supposed to. You see this all of the time in NASCAR, when the cars are going around the track in a pace lap and everyone is weaving back and forth. They aren't playing chicken or being wise guys, they are just trying to get their tires hot....
 
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