How cold have you rode?

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I just ride for pleasure, no urgency or commuting requirements at this stage of life so I use 50F or 10C as my guide for both moto riding and fishing. All kinds of problems with tire compounds at cold temps... and if one gets wet for any reason, such as rain, it can get awful pretty quickly. FWIW we had, ready for this? Minus 41.5 Celsius, or minus 42.7F yesterday. Farking cold Ladies and Gents! On some days my brother teases me that we should have bought snowmobiles instead of motorcycles...
 
R2K said:
The problem I have with riding in the cold is dressing like the Michelin Man. It’s so restrictive it takes away from the freedom of the ride.
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This is what heated gear helps with. I rode this morning up to north western Connecticut for BBQ lunch. It was 26F when I left my house. I have a warm n safe heated base layer shirt and heated socks plugged into the Powerlet plug on my R18 Classic. I had Zerofit fleece base layer pants & riding jeans. Revit Livingstone jacket with its own liner. Klim battery heated gloves. Very thin gear overall, nothing restricting me. Years ago I used the Gerbing heated jacket and those are quite bulky and had the feeling of a Michelin Man.

I‘ve found that good technical gear can be effective without the bulk. Absolutely worth getting it as in the cooler spring & fall, I can just do the thin base layers without any heated gear & I’m fine.

By the time I got back home after lunch the temp had climbed to 38F. But, it was a 150 mile round trip to lunch with temps between 26F & 38F.

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AV8OR said:
I just ride for pleasure, no urgency or commuting requirements at this stage of life so I use 50F or 10C as my guide for both moto riding and fishing. All kinds of problems with tire compounds at cold temps... and if one gets wet for any reason, such as rain, it can get awful pretty quickly. FWIW we had, ready for this? Minus 41.5 Celsius, or minus 42.7F yesterday. Farking cold Ladies and Gents! On some days my brother teases me that we should have bought snowmobiles instead of motorcycles...
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Do you live in the Arctic? I’ve seen -20 deg F and it broke one of the computer chips on my truck.
 
nielsm said:
This is what heated gear helps with. I rode this morning up to north western Connecticut for BBQ lunch. It was 26F when I left my house. I have a warm n safe heated base layer shirt and heated socks plugged into the Powerlet plug on my R18 Classic. I had Zerofit fleece base layer pants & riding jeans. Revit Livingstone jacket with its own liner. Klim battery heated gloves. Very thin gear overall, nothing restricting me. Years ago I used the Gerbing heated jacket and those are quite bulky and had the feeling of a Michelin Man.

I‘ve found that good technical gear can be effective without the bulk. Absolutely worth getting it as in the cooler spring & fall, I can just do the thin base layers without any heated gear & I’m fine.

By the time I got back home after lunch the temp had climbed to 38F. But, it was a 150 mile round trip to lunch with temps between 26F & 38F.

View attachment 8263
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This. If you really want to ride in sub 40F temps with any regularity, heated gear is a no brainer. Sure, a good plug in heated jacket (liner really), glove liners, and a remote you can mount on your bars will set you back $500, but they're nearly always under something else so should last for a long time (mine are 7-8 years old I think?). Put a good wind resistant riding jacket/gloves over them, and you should be good down to basically 0F depending on tolerance.

Some folks add pants/sock liners to that, but I find that every bike I've owned that has any business being out in freezing or below temps has enough lower wind protection to make long johns and wool socks just fine. Bonus, a boxer provides built in leg heat after about 20 minutes :p
 
R12C-R18TC said:
Do you live in the Arctic? I’ve seen -20 deg F and it broke one of the computer chips on my truck.
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I live in The High West of Alberta, Canada pretty close to a town named Banff. We usually only get this cold a few nights per year, and it happenned again last night. Supposed to warm up for Christmas Day, the cycle of extreme cold to not-so-bad is usually like this. Buddy, up in the real Arctic it never warms up till June!
 
49 ° F
Heated grips at 4 (too hot, 3 is probably the correct setting)
Heated seat at 5; I'm not so sure it's working, maybe I didn't plug it back together the last time I worked on the bike??
1/2 Helmet... Will wear my full face next time... Forehead was a little cold..
 
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