Thursday, November 29, 2012

Changing the Oil in Salt....!

Remember last spring when I was graveling and grousing about having paid $285 for an oil change on the black scooter over at the Suzuki dealership?  That oil change was one of the works type changes...

By the works, I mean they changed all three cases that have oil in them...  The engine holds about three quarts and has a filter that is a spin on type..  The clutch housing holds 360 ml which is about 13 oz.  And the rear end gear holds about 300 ml.. or 10 oz..

That don't seem like much but I found out again today why it costs so much to change so small of a quantity of oil...  The whole bike is covered in plastic shrouds that riders lovingly call tupperware...  It has a variety of  screws bolts and snap in keepers that hold it all together...

After about 45 minutes I managed to get the right side cover off of the bike and the center cover in front of the seat...  What a pain....  But really that wasn't the bad part...

The engine which I change regularly on the other bike drained right out and the filter came off with only some minor cursing as the former mechanic had put it on about three times too tight...  A sign of things to come.....

I managed to get the plug out of the clutch case, but it took a longer breaker bar on a 8 mm stud to get it out....  But filling the case with its 13 oz of oil was slooooow..  In order to put this oil back in you have to use a squeeze bottle and two feet of plastic tubing...  I had to drive over to Home Depot to purchase this and it only came in 20 foot pieces..  Anyone need 18 feet of tubing..?

It took about a half an hour to get this pop bottle size amount of oil back in the case...

But the real problem became that the plugs on the final gear case were stuck shut..  Again they took the 8mm stud and a breaker bar... But I couldn't pull hard enough to break them open....  I was afraid I would round out the stud socket in the aluminum plug..

Then I dawned on the idea of putting a 12 inch crescent wrench on the breaker bar handle..  I popped it by yanking all at once and it snapped loudly as it gave away free..  The drain was even more frozen than the top hole...

It took most of the rest of the afternoon by the time I had that last gear case filled with 80-90W.  Of course then it had to be all put back together and cleaned up......

Now I know why they charged me $285 to change all three chambers... Its a royal pain in the A$$...

Retired Rod


8 comments:

  1. maybe well worth the $285.00...and let them do the cursing :) Glad you got it done tho...

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  2. Hi Rod..an old trick I used to use to free up stuck plugs & nuts ( especially aluminum ). Get an impactor ( not air driven, a manual one.) Usually 1 tap of the hammer breaks them free. Keep up the great blog work. I read it every morning.

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    1. I'll give this a try... Thought I was going to have to drill the plug out and use an easy out.........

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  3. Hi: Is that disturbed gravel in the front yard from Javelinas messing around, or is it a by-product of your attack on the spurge? By the way, most local nurserymen recommend that the wires from the stakes to the trees not be too tight. You want them a little loose so that the trunks can sway some and get stronger in the wind. Otherwise, when you remove the stakes, the trunks will snap.

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    1. The disturbed gravel is me with that weed whip hoe thing. We had a lot of unwanted ground cover when we came back..

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  4. Oh well good thing you are "Retired Rod", just think when was the last time you made $285.00 for a days work! But nevertheless I feel you pain!

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  5. As I've said before, Rod, you are definitely the king of oil changes in all of Blogland. As I was reading this, I couldn't help but feel that if I'd put a crescent wrench on the breaker bar handle and gave it a quick tug, the plug head would have just snapped off leaving me with a total disaster!

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