Love Bug Warning for 2020 Riders

[bikerbillone]

Went out Saturday for a 4 hour ride, holy smokes, love bugs, miserable. I don't mind cleaning them off the machine, but they are up in the air filters, yuk. I gotta get me some temporary screens until there are some after market air scoop grills, until then, no riding this month, it just ain't worth it. :>(

[Grandpot]

I've always heard of them. Never had experience with them. Doesn't sound like fun.

[Peter Aawen]

We don't get annual Love Bug seasons here in Australia.... well, not unless you consider the annual VolksFest &/or VW Beetle Shows anyway! But I do have just a little appreciation for what it might be like for those of you suffering!!

Leaving aside the VW Bugfest, and talking only 'bout insect type bugs - out in our 'less settled' areas we do often get regular (but not necessarily annual) grasshopper swarms & locust plagues; and when they get really bad, usually about once every 4-5 years or so, they can pretty much stop any vehicle in its tracks within minutes of driving into the swarms, potentially either causing a prang &/or damaging the engine/cooling system if you try to continue moving!! Not only will they effectively & completely cover the windscreen with bug-guts, a sludgy mess that only smears into a thick opaque paste if you try using your wiper/washers to clear it, blocking all forward vision & blinding the driver; but they also very quickly block every forward facing opening & build up a thick layer on every leading edge surface &/or ridge with a thick gummy sludge of bug-guts, busted wings, & shattered hopper legs that solidifies rapidly into an extremely difficult to remove bug-based organic concrete!! And every single one of those bugs not only does exactly that over the entire frontal area of your motor-cycle or Spyder, but any personal surface area that's not protected by something solid like a windscreen or metal fairing will feel like it's been instantaneously hit by a coupla thousand BB Pellets travelling at high velocity!

As painful, dangerous, & messy as this can be for a rider (btw, that's not 'unless', it's 'especially' if you aren't fully ATGATT covered & wearing a full face helmet with the visor closed when you hit the swarm! ) it also means that pretty much ALL air-flow into & thru all forward facing air vents & any radiators/heat exchangers can be rapidly blocked, even if you've got protective screens; and if you don't have those protective screens, then if the bugs don't rip straight thru & tear open the coolant tubes/rad core immediately, the hard bits of these bugs will become jammed into the radiator/cooling fins & then very quickly become 'cemented in place' as the bug-guts slurry is quickly cooked dry by the now rapidly over-heating radiator/cooling system! Even if you've got a screen over the grille in the front of the car, unless it covers all forward facing openings into the 'behind the grille' area, the hoppers/locusts will come up, around, over, &/or just straight thru to pack solidly into any space where air would normally flow & circulate!! Picking all of this organic-concrete out of cylinder head cooling fins on an air cooled bike engine can literally take days!! And it's even more painful doing this when you feel like you've just been on the receiving end of a coupla thousand High Velocity BB Pellets!

If any of you have experienced how driving thru snow drifts in your cage can quickly pack the snow up into all the spaces behind the grille, between the air con condensor & the radiator, and even into the spaces between the radiator & any shrouding it may have &/or the under-bonnet space & around the engine, just imagine exactly that at it's worst, only instead of it being cleanish, whitish, non-smelly stuff that'll eventually melt, try to imagine it being a stinky, sticky, goopy, yellow & greenish mash of bug guts & busted wings & grasshopper legs that rapidly kiln dries by the now over-heating engine/cooling system into a solid mass of organic concrete that's almost impossible to remove with anything much short of a jack-hammer!!

Whenever/wherever these swarms & plagues hit, the Towies & Radiator repair places score big time business, cos once your radiator cooling fins are blocked like this, usually the only alternative to removing the rad & labouriously poking a cleaning wire thru each individual little air-flow gap in the core is to completely remove & replace the entire radiator.... and the air-con condensor suffers the same fate; plus, you still hafta chisel & scrape the organic concrete out of & off everything it's now solidly adhering to!! The only saving grace about it all that I can think of is that it's not quite as corrosive as Love Bug juice, but if you try to clean/lever it off the leading edges of your paintwork, it'll often pull up little divots of paint too, leaving millions of little chips that makes the front of the vehicle look like it's been poorly sand-blasted!!

So believe me, here Down Under, we do have just a little appreciation for how Love Bug season can be such a dampener on your ryding! But at least the season's not for too long!

Stay Healthy, Ryde Safe & Often!

[Gwolf]

Not as many as the love bugs, but these are big and have hard bodies. Hurt like hell when you hit them at 70 MPH......... and they can fly.

[PMK]

Steal a pair of your wifes nylons and place a section at the air intake.

[scarecrow]

Not as many as the love bugs, but these are big and have hard bodies. Hurt like hell when you hit them at 70 MPH......... and they can fly.

Oh! Baby they hurt.

[ARtraveler]

Those are BIG.

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

Not as many as the love bugs, but these are big and have hard bodies. Hurt like hell when you hit them at 70 MPH......... and they can fly.

Damn! That sure is a sharp clear picture!

[bikerbillone]

Hmmm, Interesting PMK, had not thought of that. If I go out again this month, I will do something for sure.

[PMK]

Hmmm, Interesting PMK, had not thought of that. If I go out again this month, I will do something for sure.

Keeps mud out of radiators on race bikes and they get enough airflow. Should work ok and having the means to easily swap it helps too.