Winter Oil Change Recommendations: Before and After

When it’s time to put away your motorcycle, ATV or side-by-side for winter, you should drain out the old oil and put fresh engine oil in the machine, both before and after the storage period.

Partzilla’s powersports expert John Talley hosts live Q&A sessions on our YouTube channel every Friday at 3pm Eastern. In this session, John was asked for his recommendations on doing winter engine oil changes.

Motorcycle winter oil change recommendations

Winter Oil Change Recommendations Q&A

Thanks for the great videos. What are your recommendations for changing oil before and after winter?

John Talley: You’re very welcome. And definitely at the end of the season when you’re putting your ride into hibernation, you want to go ahead and do an oil change then. The reason being is that oil, once it’s been in the motor for a while, it starts to pick up contaminants. And especially when it just sits still, it starts to build up almost an acidic type pH inside of the cases, and that can end up doing damage to the clutch, different gears and various moving parts inside of it. So it’s always a good idea to warm the engine up, and put in fresh oil before you put her away for the year. Now if you haven’t done that yet and you were bad and let it sit in that old oil, well then you’re going to definitely need to change it when you bring her out of the shed and get her ready for the year.