How to Change the Oil in a Motorcycle

Video Transcript

"Hi, in this clip we're going to talk about how to change motorcycle oil. It's pretty simple. If you've changed car oil before, the procedure is basically the same; but the parts are in different locations. If you haven't; I'm going to walk you through it. So, the first thing you want to do is make sure that you follow the maintenance schedule on your, on your motorcycle. For this particular bike and most sports bike it's every four thousand miles or six months; but once again, check with your maintenance schedule and make sure that you stick to it because that's going to be your best bet in making sure your motorcycle will function properly. So the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you research out and found the correct oil filter for your motorcycle and also good oil. Some, some good oil that you can get is; there's many kind if you can look online; one of them is Chevron W-40 and that's a petroleum oil, that is synthetic. But anyway, the very first thing you're going to want to do is you're going to need to drain the oil and down here, the, the oil drain on most motorcycles and most bikes is located at the bottom just like the car; it's going to be kind of down in this area right here and you're going to need a monkey wrench to loosen the bolt and make sure you have a drip pan so that the oil falls into it. I'm going to show you how this is done in a second. The other thing is there is an oil filter which is about right there and you'll need an oil filter wrench to remove it or if you're strong enough, you can use your bare hands. Alright, so what we're going to do now is we're going to go ahead and drain the oil out of the engine. What you want to make sure is that the engine's been running for a little bit; maybe five, ten minutes; just get it up to normal temperature because what you want to have is the oil that's not so viscous. If you drain it with a cold engine, you're not going to get all the oil out; when the engine is hot, it'll all drain into the pan. So I'm going to go ahead and loosen the knot now and you may want to watch your fingers because the oil's hot when it comes out of the engine and make sure you have a drainage pan to catch the oil. Alright, to make that all the oil drains out, you're going to want to open up this hole; this is where you're pouring all the oil. You're going to want to make sure this is out so that air can get in, so that all of the oil actually drains out of the engine. Alright, so now that we've got all the oil drained out here; something else that you can do with each oil change is you can change the oil filter which is right here. The filter usually just unscrew this and it's easier to do it with a oil filter wrench. You'll just take this off and then a little bit of oil will drain out of there; let that drain out and then put your new filter on and you don't want to, you only want to do about two turns past when the oil ring makes contact with the engine. But now we're going to go ahead and put the knot back in and then we're going to put some new oil in this engine. Okay, so next step is to put oil into the motorcycle. So you're going to want to consult your motorcycle owner manual to know how much oil to put into your motorcycle. There's also, on this motorcycle a little window over here which indicates whether your oil level is low or full; we'll show you that in just a minute. But it's easiest to do it with a funnel, so we'll put a funnel in here and take your oil and just start putting oil into the bike. So now that we've got the oil in the motorcycle, I'm going to go ahead and put the cap back on the engine so we don't end up with oil all over the place. Alright, when you check the level; most motorcycles have a window here; some have dip stick; but has a little window here which is low or full and looks okay right now. So we're going to start the bike up and the reason we're going to do this is because then you let the oil run through the bike because it's going to actually change the level of the oil on the meter. So you usually let it cycle for a couple of times through, I'm going to check the oil again. So now it indicates it's low. So you're going to jack it as back and forth, putting oil in; just a little bit more inch; checking the level; starting the bike; checking the level again until it says full and it stables out full after having run the engine. So we're going to pull up more oil in this bike now. Alright, so now that we've put in oil; started the engine; check the level; we're going to check the final level now. This is where you check and you never check when the bike is sitting on its kick stand. You want to always make sure the bike pull it up to level if you've got a sidekick stand or if you've got a center stand, that's fine, let it stay on the center stand. So as you can see that the bike level now; our oil is right up on the full mark so we have successfully changed the oil on this bike. Now, something else to make sure is, don't touch the muffler when you're digging up the oil filter 'cause you might burn your hand. But other than that, that's how you change oil on a motorcycle."