30,000 mile service

One of these days I’ll remember to change bulbs before putting bike on the lift. Since I use a front wheel chock to hold the bike I can’t turn the handlebars which makes bulb access more difficult than it has to be. No matter. A new bulb is in the bike and it works.

The bike is dirty. I can tell I’m going to be spending more time cleaning than doing service items. So it goes. I removed (and cleaned) the bash plate and pulled the drain plug. The engine was close to operating temps – I let it warm up while reading the fault codes. Not much spooge on the magnetic drain plug. Good.

While the oil was draining I did some more cleaning. I pulled the filter and cleaned up where the filter attaches.

Four quarts of 5W-40 makes the bike happy. I add about 3 1/2 quarts then start the bike to check for leaks around the filter and the drain plug. No leaks. I turned off the engine and removed the side pannel to check the coolant level. It wasn’t down much, but as long as I was there I topped the reservoir off. I also added the remaining 1/2 quart of oil. That brought the level to the top of the red ring on the sight glass.

I’ll change the rear tire tomorrow. I checked the other items on the service check list. My rear brake rotor is at 4.66 mm. It is not going to make it to 50 K miles. The front rotors are barely worn. The front brake pads are OK. I’ll check the rear pads when I pull the wheel. Brake fluid levels front and rear are OK. So is the clutch fluid level. The battery went on the charger. The charger soon indicated that the battery was fully charged. That’s all for now.

Some things are easier with power tools. Removing wheel screws can be one of those things. It took the rattle gun a bit of time to loosen some of the screws. That surprised me. They were torqued to the specified 60 N-m when the tire was last changed about a year ago.

While the wheel and mud guard were off the bike I checked out the brake pads. They are OK for now. The originals were replaced at 18K miles. I’m guessing I’ll get the same life out of these meaning I’ll replace them next service even though they’ll have a little life left.

It took much less time to remove the old tire from the wheel than it did to get the wheel (mostly) clean. I used my head this service and moved the wheel to the garage sink. That made for easier cleaning. I used to use rags while the wheel was on the stand, going back and forth between stand and sink to rince the rags. Dumb.

After changing and balancing the front wheel it dawned on me that I should balance the wheel less tire. Many tires are close enough to not need extra weights. I did that with the rear wheel this go around. I removed two ounces of weights that were at two different positions and replaced them with 3/4 oz. That was almost enough to perfectly balance the wheel. Another 1/4 oz was too much.

The bike is back together. The fault codes have been cleared with the GS-911 and the service indicator has been reset to 36,000 miles. I’ll take a test ride tomorrow then call the job done.