These Things That I Do: Regular Maintenance: Serious Business.

With it being unseasonably warm the last few days, I took the opportunity to get some bike based housekeeping (bike-keeping?) done. Namely replacing the air filter, which I checked about 5000 miles ago and decided that there was about 2000 miles worth of life left in it, and changing the oil. Not the most glamorous of jobs, but they needed doing, and given the weather I needed to do something other than jobseeking (boo), sitting on my arse writing, or sitting on said arse doing/watching/playing something to write about later. Oh irony!

I’m still trying to get into the habit of taking pictures of jobs as I go along, so even with this being an easy job, I got a bit snap-happy. Brandishing a digital camera was a bit at odds with the Fred Dibnah Business Suit™ (a must for any serious work), but I still got a little too into it, taking far too many pictures for such a simple task. Many of these pictures will be interspersed into this just so I wasn’t wasting my time.

While the bike was running to warm and thin the oil, I got busy with the first challenge to be overcome: constructing my oil tray. Some people will buy a purpose made drain tray for upwards of £20, these people are decadent bourgeois fools. Others will use some sort of scummy old bowl, paint tray, or the like. This is also a stupid idea, but for practical reasons: you want a clean drip tray so you can see if there’s anything floating in the oil you’re draining. Things like bits of metal can tell you a lot about the health of the inside of your bike’s engine. Protip: bits of metal in your oil aren’t a good thing.

Anyway, crafting the tray was a doddle with my amazing craftsman skills. Yeah... yeah. It is a just 6 pint milk carton with a hole in it. Still, even if I can’t claim that it was my idea, it is ingenious. Empty cartons always available and the screw cap lets you drain it out into a suitable container for storage with ease (more on that later).

Oil tray reporting for duty!

One more step it’s a good idea to take before removing the drain plug is to remove the oil filler. So I did (it lets atmospheric pressure act to help drain the oil quicker). This done, I finally got down to business and removed the sump plug. Remembering to put the drain pan in place under the engine first, I didn’t want the garage floor looking like the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez.


Here we go.

As I left the oil to drain, I cleaned up the sump plug and replaced the crush washer ready for reinstallation. As the name hints, the washer crushes down as the plug is tightened up, providing a good oil seal. For this reason, you’re meant to change the crush washer each time you change the oil. Few people do though.

After this, since the oil was still going to be draining for a while, I got on with replacing the air filter: efficiency and all that. Changing the air filter was a simple enough job. Just three bolts retaining bolts and the cover was off. The old filter itself was even easier: it just pulled straight out. The aperture was clean so it was just case of pushing the new filter in and replacing the cover. All too easy for someone of my mechanical skill :P .

As a side point, since the threads for the cover were metal set into plastic, I decided to apply copper grease to the retaining bolts before replacing them. Copper grease in general is used to help prevent corrosion from fusing the bolt into the nut or thread around it. This helps to stop bolts seizing and then shearing when you attempt to remove them. In this case, I envisioned the bolts fusing into the embedded threads of the air box and these metal threads then ripping free of the plastic next time I had to remove the bolts.

The old air filter, check out the dirt.

Additionally, a little copper grease on bolts was apparently a sign of a well looked after bike in the old days and old bikers now get annoyed by people like me who use it where it may not be strictly necessary. Honestly this just amuses me. So long as it isn’t going to cause contamination, like using it on any bolt that goes into the innards of the engine itself, I don’t see the problem. Even if a bolt was never going to seize anyway, putting a little copper grease on it isn’t going to hurt.

The new, much better.

With that over with, the oil had about fully drained. I waited until the final drops finished and replaced the sump plug. Doing this involved breaking out the 'mighty' torque wrench. Some see the torque wrench as the physical manifestation of OCD. This has a little truth to it, some things can be safely tightened by feel and using the torque wrench just slows things down. However, I personally find the torque wrench to be invaluable for giving peace of mind by ensuring that vital bolts, such as the yoke clamps for the fork legs, are as tight as they were when they left the factory. In the case of the sump plug, using a torque wrench is important as aluminium sumps are vulnerable to cracking if the plug is overtightened. Overtightening is a real possibility too, as the sump plug is often very tight before removal. This is because the endless heating and cooling cycles of the engine make for constant expansion and contraction of the metal threads, which over time leads to them becoming more tightly interlocked than they started out. The torque setting for my plug is 35nm which equates to about 25 ftlb (my torque wrench doesn’t do metric) which barely feels like anything at all; hence the danger of overtightening from the more nervous home mechanic.

Behold, the magnificence that is the torque wrench.

This done, it was finally time to refill my bike with beautiful golden nectar. Just take a look at the colour difference between the new oil and the old (see the bottom). It’s a misconception that engine oil is/should be black. As per the figure listed in Haynes, I measured out, using a measuring jug and filling one litre at a time, 2.9L of (only the best) Halfords motorcycle oil. This hurdle overcome, I replaced the filler cap and ran the engine back to temperature. A quick check of the dipstick told me that the oil level was... just over the minimum mark. This isn’t totally uncommon. Even if you measure out the correct amount, engine oil has a reasonably high viscosity; you never get it all into the engine. Some always remains in the measuring jug or inside the funnel, and that’s not taking into account spillage. Four more cycles of topping up by 100ml, running the engine, then checking the level were needed before the oil level was right.

With all the fun over, all that remained was getting the oil from the master-crafted drip tray into an appropriate receptacle ready for transport to an approved disposal site. As I stated before, this was a simple job thanks to the screw cap. All I had to do was place the tray on the workbench, put the masterwork funnel into an empty oil container then remove the screw top. This let the oil flow out into the appropriate receptacle. The appropriate receptacle will now be responsibly dealt with by leaving it in the garage for a few months until nobody can remember where said appropriate receptacle full of used oil has gone. ~~The tray just went in the bin.~~

Feeling satisfied of a job ~~well~~ done. I indulged in a dinner (lunch for devious foreigns) of champions. There is no better way to finish a job.

So there it is. A small job written long. As always, it felt good to finish something and be able to see the fruits of my labours. Someday I hope to get paid to have that feeling. Until then I’ll just keep writing to get it, and pursuing projects... which I can then write about.

Addendum: Since I couldn't get it to read well with all the pictures interspersed with the text. Here are further reference pics: