Servicing your bike yourself

Originally Posted by Baph

I personally tighten the oil filter with one hand as much as possible, then use the wrench to take it 1/4 turn further.

Last thing you want is the oil filter popping off as you're flying down the road, and dropping all the oil pronto, but whatever works to get it tight enough

Haynes or the owners manual, I forget which, tells to do the oil filter up finger tight and then quite a lot more. You can pick up a Haynes manual for Curvies quite cheaply, I would advise you to. If you are going to start maintaining your bike then have the knowledge at hand ) If you are a novice then you are going to need a torque wrench. I have one from a previous life.. and I kid myself that it is still wotking true. Agree about getting the oil and filter set from Hein Geyricke - seems a good deal. You DO NOT need totally synthetic oil. As the man said, semi synth is fine.

If your bike starts OK and the forks seems ok forget about the rest - just do the oil and filter for now. Don't overload yourself - it can be daunting ) For that mileage you dont really need a new air filter really.

I bought an oil filter spanner from Busters to change mine, but then I am a compulsive boys' toys buyer.

I do my own servicing because I know everything has been properly checked and changed.
When I've taken bikes into dealers (3 bikes and 3 dealers) they've always screwed up - lost or damaged bits, taken ages to get or fit parts, not fixed the problem.
Do your own servicing and you'll be looking your bike over more often, notice problem areas early and have a bike that's always running well. Plenty of people ride a bike when the throttle, brakes, etc. are poor/dangerous, simply because it's not due a service yet.
And it's fun!

serviceing a bike is time consuming, I'd rather be riding

my time is more valuable than that on my dealers mechanics, I can't afford not to have my bike dealer serviced

Originally Posted by RandyO

serviceing a bike is time consuming, I'd rather be riding

my time is more valuable than that on my dealers mechanics, I can't afford not to have my bike dealer serviced

That's just totally backwards!

Why can you not afford to have it dealer serviced when they charge a hell of a lot for labour? If you spent 2 hours doing a job then you could save upto £100 per time. Surely a worthwhile saving. And if you don't know how to service the basics, do what I did....learn it. Most jobs are dead easy, trust me if I can do it...... And as for it being time consuing well the dealer will still need to service it so you still won't be able to ride your bike! Get yer hands dirty man!

theres very little on the sv that you cant do yourself, with a little preparation, a little time and a little common sense, i generally dont trust garages to do stuff correctly, id rather do it myself, competance is something you can gain with practice, i wouldnt worry to much about screwing stuff up, as if you dont put stuff back together properly it wont go back on the bike.

top tip for doing anything out of the ordinary, take photos of stuff before you take them off, its amazing how leaving it in the pan for half an hour can rener you incapable of remembering just how it came off.

I think for me it is i don't really trust most other people working on it and i get some self satisfaction doing it and doing it right

[squirrel_hunter]

Do pretty much everything myself now.

Started out of necessity after lobing my TZR down the road again and again, I simply couldn't afford the repair bills. So I invested in a socket and spanner set and went from there.

I'm self taught (well with the help of Haynes) and will give anything a go. Its not just for the money any more, its for the giggles; at the moment I'm undertaking a ZXR front fork transplant to a CBR400.

The only thing I'm not good at is fault finding, but thats where you guys come in, I tell you the problem, you tell me the cause and I fix it, Thanks.

Im pretty much self taught too, learnt a bit from doing stuff with cars with an experienced aide when i was a teenager but now just working through it with the sv manual (on this site in pdf format i think).

Gave the bike its service a couple of weeks back stripping the thing down before putting it back together again. This time round changed brake lines and bled brakes, something which ive not done before on the bike and doing it by myself and knowing that its good to go, ive gained satisfaction from getting it right.

Next thing for me is valve clearances - the only thing putting me off was the fact that theres not a lot of room on the bike to do it.

Anything more than that and its off to the garage

I took my bike in for a 15000 mile service the other month, drove home and smelled burning oil. Pulled over to find that they had not torqued the stator cover, and i was leaking oil like crazy.

Originally Posted by Torn-Thorax

I took my bike in for a 15000 mile service the other month, drove home and smelled burning oil. Pulled over to find that they had not torqued the stator cover, and i was leaking oil like crazy.

a good reason why i do my own work