MUD - it can be a real Bee-Eye-Tea-Sea-Aych at times and it sure as heck doesn’t do your bike any favours. It can get in all those nitty-gritty places, wear out your running gear and make the bike a heavy monster of a thing. There are quite a number of tricks you can do to prevent mud from being the aforementioned - so here is a hand full of ideas from us to you.

Game of Thrones coined it best, that no matter where you live (in the southern hemisphere), winter is coming. And with it a whole host of awesome riding around our great nation. But unlike the stellar-summer we have had thus far, the chances of getting out on your bike and ripping through some mud have increased exponentially. So for a quick read on a day ending in ‘Y’ here are three tips on dealing with mud from the Dirt Garage.

Drive Chain

Your drive chain does exactly what you think it does - uses a chain to drive you forward and through the mud. But these pesky things are pretty good at grabbing mud by the molecules and flicking it up onto your swing arm and into your front sprocket area. If you’re running your standard front sprocket guard, chances are it’s going to pack with mud really fast. And it’s that packed in mud that will wear out your chain and sprockets faster than usual. So what to do? Get those side cutters out and clippy-clippy my friend.

Mud will pack into that small space between the front sprocket and front sprocket cover, so get those side cutters out and snip off the outward facing section of the cover, leaving the front facing edge in place, which helps stop damage and mud flicking forward. Yes, this will forever ruin your sprocket cover, but check out all the top riders from NZ and around the world and you will see they do the same thing. Your boots wont get stuck in there either so don’t worry about that. Opening up this space will help mud dissipate and keep chain and sprocket wear to a minimum.

Also don’t ride with jandals now - not that you should have before.

Skid Plate Foam

This is where you can save yourself some weight issues when the going gets muddy - but only if you are running a skid plate on your bike. Because between the engine and the skid plate, there is a whole heap of space just waiting to be filled up with whatever is looming on the track. And that is usually mud. Only God knows how it gets in there but it does and it can add kilograms to your bike in minutes. The trick is to fill those spaces first, before mud even gets a look-in and using skid plate foam is the best way to do that.

Skid plate foam doesn’t really hold water so it drains well. It is also very light and packs in really easy, meaning you can put it just about anywhere. And you can also cut it to shape which is very handy for those awkward spots. And it is pretty heat resistant when pressed up against your engine casing. Just keep it away from the header pipe on your 4-Stroke.

Weighs less than mud and is cheaper than clean fill. You can get some for yourself by clicking HERE.

Rim Lock

Remember when your bike was new and you could crack the rim lock and wind it undone with your fingers? But these days you have to swing off the thing with the ring spanner and hope you don’t cross thread it or round off the nut. That is because mud paid more attention to your rim lock than you did. Shame on you.

The poor old rim lock is consistently overlooked and sees more mud that most of your bike. It’s that unappreciated part of your wheel that you take for granted and always just expect it to perform no matter what. But the rim lock is deep in the trenches and deserves your love and care. Without it, it will seize up and make changing your tyre that much more difficult.

Swap out your standard rim lock nut with something like we have here pictured. When done up, it covers the full length of the thread, keeping it away from that treacherous mud and all of it’s corrosiveness.

Preventative maintenance is always the best course of action and with these three tips you should be well on your way to trouble free mud slinging at your local track or trail ride.

And when you’re done riding, we suggest you CLICK HERE to find out the best way to clean that mud off your bike.

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