shrouds
this time of year in deeper fluff, cooler riding days, I like running an engine shroud to keep the snow off that big aluminum motor. Even with thermostat, radiators covered, there are morning when snow flowing over the motor just sucks the heat out of the motor.
Like many I run a pretty tight shroud on the left side of my yamaha, hole cut for my transmission fill port ( waste of time you can't get in to screw the cap off ), holes for air screw and idle screw on the carb , hole for remote pull choke, and cut low around my petcock.
Right side nothing. What we found by riding powder on the road and observing a bike that wanted to freeze/ice the carb all the time was, powder was hitting the hot pipe turning to slush and blowing back onto his Keihin carb, the melted snow/slush was super freezing from the 40mph speed and carb icing was happening. The cure was simple, we wrapped the pipe and sparyed it down with 10 coats of silicone paint, no more carb icing. So should you wrap the pipe or not, there was one time on KTM where pipe wrap was great. No carb heater on that bike, three years of handlbar powder, no icing/and no extra plumbing. Also found that on KTM with Desert tank, so much of engine and carb was covered, no carb icing after big tank was installed, however still a left side cover on those big powder days. Picture is cover I made 4 years ago on the first bike I built, still running same setup on yamaha engine...........nothing has changed.
