Winter Riding

For those who care to inquire, the answer is yes: Winter in Northern Illinois is cold. Very cold. After moving back home to Illinois in 2005, for three months of the year I did little but try to stay warm. The racing season would begin each March, and my first race was usually my first ride of the year.

That all changed in 2009, with my transition to country life. With a few acres as my backyard, I could warm up in the garage, open the door and start riding. All I needed were a few accessories.

I bought a pair of studded Maxxis IT tires from Kyle DeFauw, a local individual who for a time tried his hand at the studding game. Every knob gets a stud, so each tire ends up with over 200 of those sharp pointy things. It's a tedious process, which is probably why the tires cost over $200 each (in 2010 dollars). A good set of Carhartt gear and an even better pair of gloves make the mounting process a little safer and less painful.

The studs have carbide tips to dig into the icy underbelly of packed snow. These are not for ice - up here in the Great White North, we leave that to ice screws. The studs allow me to go pretty much anywhere I'd normally ride the other 9 months of the year.

The grip warmers shown above were made by Symtec. They have designated clutch and throttle sides, due to the heat characteristics of the handlebars (clutch side) versus the throttle tube (throttle side, obviously). The plastic throttle tube heats up quickly and transfers a great deal of heat through the grips. The clutch side sucks away heat through the aluminum handlebars (aluminum makes a great heat sink), and the grips are thicker on that side. Other brands compensate for this by sending full power to the clutch side and reducing power to the throttle side with a resistor. Symtech, on the other hand, uses different heating elements. You can see the difference in the side-by-side photo above.

I screwed up and ordered grip warmers designed for ATV's. Both heating elements were the same as the clutch side element in the motorcycle-only version. Unfortunately, this doesn't work well. When set on the high position, the throttle side gets so hot that the tube just might start to melt if you let it heat up too long (and it will nearly burn your hand off). Once I got the correct throttle side heating element, it worked much better.

Between the headlight, LED handlebar-mounted light (for night riding) and the grip warmers, this was the most wiring I'd ever had to stuff in between the triple clamps. It all fit, though. The Symtec instructions did a pretty good job showing how to wire the grip warmers. All I had to do was figure out how I wanted to tap into the power. The stator pumps out AC, which is fine for the grip warmers. At 100 watts, I needed all of it. The halogen headlight was about 65 watts on the High setting. The grip warmers were about 35 watts on the High setting. However, with my LED lighting system, the headlight wasn't really necessary when I rode at night (which was mostly when I rode). So most of the time I turned it off and let the LED's do all the work.

One of the key advantages of snow machines over dirt bikes is their wind screens. In the sitting position, a snowmobile rider can tuck in behind the screen, feel the warmth of the heated grips and a comfortable warm breeze of engine heat on boots. Dirt bikers have to improvise a bit. I knew I'd need some help keeping my face warm, so I did a little research on what the crazy bicyclists in Chicago used to wear when I'd see them riding to work in single digit temperatures. The Psolar balaclava (above photo) was the answer.

The final piece of cold weather gear focuses on the toes. Off-road riding boots are poorly designed for warmth, so a little heat down there is necessary. If you want to spend some serious money, go with Hotronics foot warmers. They will set you back a couple hundred bucks, but supposedly it's a pretty awesome product.

The cheaper alternative is to buy some air-activated toe warmers from your local sporting goods store. They work pretty well. The only downside is you can't control them once they start producing heat - it's all or nothing. But that's ok. There's no wires or batteries to deal with, and I'll go through about 100 of these for the same cost as the fancy Hotronics product.

So, you say...in the end, all I have is a dirt bike that can ride moderately well in snow. But not as well as the snow machines, though. Can't go through deep snow. Hard to stay warm in single-digit temperatures. Well, there's no arguing that logic, but building a snow machine was not the point of this exercise. Staying on the bike during winter was my intention, and that I accomplished. And, thanks to my lights, I can do this any time I want. In fact, I prefer night riding. It's just flat-out cool to bust through snow drifts at night. If you ever want to know what complete seclusion and silence feels like, shut off the engine in the middle of a harvested cornfield on a still night. Look up into a clear sky with a full moon and thank the Man upstairs. Then go ride some more.

I'd have to say winter riding is pretty awesome. Once you're properly prepared and the snow is suitable, it's a joy to ride. Generally, temperatures above 20 degrees were just about right. Anything less and some of my fingers would get cold. The coolest night I rode, at 13 degrees, was a little below my tolerance level. The studs work pretty well until the snow accumulation reaches 8-10 inches. Any more than that is still ridable, but the rear tire does a lot of spinning. In 4-5 inches of snow, conditions were perfect. I was able to ride about 70 miles in mostly open corn fields before hitting reserve on the 250XC. Fuel consumption increases quite a bit with higher snow accumulations, as the RPM's tend to rise while the rear tire searches for traction.

True ice conditions aren't completely ideal for the studs. The tires will still dance around on totally frozen water. For riding on lakes and ponds (which I haven't done), ice screw would be a better choice. The studs really start to work well with a few inches of snow. Handling is definitely affected by the studs, as they do add some unsprung weight to the wheels.

Snowmobiles are still a more comfortable choice for spending a day on the trails, and around here you can ride as far as you want. The snowmobile routes are linked up by the many local clubs who work with landowners and mark the trails with endless arrows, stop signs, orange diamonds, and many "danger" signs. The trails all pass through the local towns (with special attention given to the bars in those towns) and allow a snowmobile rider to fill up with gas and keep on riding. If you know where you're going, you can pick up the trail behind the Casey's store in Dakota, Illinois and ride all the way to Canada.

One of the dangers of riding a motorcycle across harvested cornfields that have been tilled in some fashion is the frozen dirt clods left behind. Any other season, the motorcycle's front suspension will handle these with ease. In the winter, however, the dirt clods are solid as rocks. Snow conceals many of these, and there were a few times when I was glad for my Scotts steering damper (and wondering if I'd find a flat spot on my rim).

One thing I would not recommend is riding a dirt bike on snowmobile trails. Some neighborly advice I received about this turned out to be wrong - we are generally not welcome. Even though the impact to the trails seems pretty marginal (compared to ATV's which are clearly prohibited, per trail signs), the snowmobile guys do all the work, and the trails are theirs. Visions of a snowbike conversion have crept into my head at various times, but a true snow machine is the way to go, if the intent is to ride the vast trail network that crisscrosses Northern Illinois and Wisconsin.

After selling the 250XC in the summer of 2018, I decided to embrace winter once again and set up the 350XC-F for cold weather riding. Before the ground froze, I staked out a track in my pasture and began riding when the snow came. This time, though, I did it a little differently. Changing tires in the winter is bad enough changing studded tires is even worse. So I decided to find a second wheel set, to be used just for my studded tires. As luck would have it, I found a used set of KTM wheels already mounted with something I'd never seen before: Canadian Ice Screw tires.

These are actually just used tires with the ice screws, but they look seriously badass. I could probably saw off a man's leg with these weapons. I had already mounted my original Maxxis studded rear tire onto my original wheel, at great effort, blood and swearing (as usual). I had no interest in mounting the front Maxxis onto my original front wheel, so I dropped in the new (used) front wheel with the Canadian ice screws. My first ride in 2019 was with the stud/ice screw combo. Let's just say it was more than effective in about 5 inches of snow.

I must also mention that both the studs and the screws attacked the bike in various ways. Like I said, these things are weapons. When I first took an easy ride around the pasture, twice I heard what seemed like the wheels breaking through thin ice. Nothing unusual about that, as we had some rains leading up to our first real snow. Turns out I wasn't hearing ice breaking...my Canadian ice screws were ripping out chunks of my fork guards.

Not a great picture, but above is a supermoto chain guide. I bought the guide from a KTM SMR450 supermoto bike, which keeps the chain from slapping against the fat street tires the supermoto guys run. It also works well for guys who stuff wide studded tires into a space not designed for wide studded tires.

The chain guide fits onto stock KTM chain sliders going back many model years, and requires just one screw (the same kind that secures the radiator shrouds to the fuel tank). The only downside is that the chain must come off to install it. Also, I would imagine this will be a mud magnet when the ground thaws out. In this picture is a tire with the standard AMA-legal screws used in ice racing in the United States. It's not as critical to use this guide with this tire, as these screws don't make the tire very much wider.

The Fredette ice tires came from a friend who moved to a warmer place. They are one of the common tires used for ice racing, because they do well on flat surfaces and dig into the ice well. The tire compound is stiff and hard, which makes them not much fun to mount, but the screws stay in place pretty well. They're less effective in snow and frozen ground that has any amount of ground cover (grass or other). The first time I tried these out was in my pasture after an ice storm. A few areas still had some snow, and they just couldn't cut through it as well as studs or the Canadian ice screws.

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eMBRACING wINTER

BECOMING A FULL SEASON DIRT BIKER

January 2010

Elephant Ears

Shields hands from wind.

Grip Warmers

Grip warmers have been around for many years. These are adhesive-backed heating elements that stick to the handlebars and throttle tube. The grips slide over them, and the wires are hooked into the bike's electrical system.

Stick-on heating element

Throttle side

Tricky throttle

A little extra slack had to be included in the grip warmer wiring.

The Switch

Sometimes grip warmers are a little too much.

What up ninjas

Psolar had what I needed - an under-the-helmet mask that covers covers everything but my eyes. Perfect. It also has something they call a heat exchanger, which is designed to warm up cold air before you breathe it. Some call this a balaclava I call it cool.

The last bits

ready to ride

update

February 2010

Making another bike snow-ready

2016 KTM 350XC-F

Above: Studs versus muffler. I tried to use
spacers to position the muffler away
from the studs a bit. Didn't work.

From left to right: 1) Maxxis IT tire with studs 2) Kenda K-335 dual sport tires with AMA-legal ice screws (built by Jeff Fredette) and 3)
Canadian ice screws.

Fredette ice tire on the back Canadian ice screws on the
front.

Above: I splurged a little and bought a Rabaconda tire changer. It's designed more to help with foam insert tires, but helped quite a bit mounting this tire. One way in which the Rabaconda does not help is protecting your hands from the screws. Gloves, folks...trust me.