Yamaha 1300 Tourer - The Yamaha 1300 Tourer Fansite

Those of you who are like me and are a bit mechanically challenged might appreciate my experience last night as I was preparing for my upcoming road trip. Even though I only had 1400 miles on the oil, I'm planning on riding 3000 miles next week and don't want to stop on the road for an oil change. I wanted to follow the advice of some of this forum's members and switch to synthetic oil.

After work last night I headed over to the local auto parts store for the supplies. The store clerk found the Purolator filter without a problem, but when we were looking at oil he asked "How many quarts do you need?" I was a bit embarrassed to tell him that I had no idea, I hadn't looked at the owners manual since I bought the bike last fall and never changed my own oil before. Figuring that too much was better than not enough, I opted for five quarts. (For others that aren't much for reading manuals, it holds 3.6 quarts, slightly more with the oversized Purolator filter.)

Back home at my garage I glanced at the manual and took their advice on starting the engine to warm the oil before changing it. With nothing to do while it was warming up, I went out in the yard to talk to my neighbor. After a few minutes I decided to check the tire pressures and found I needed to add air. Those of you with saddlebags understand that adding air to the rear tire isn't the easiest thing to do. After the second time I burned my wrist on the (recently heated) muffler, it finally dawned on me that you should do tire maintenance BEFORE you heat up the exhaust.

Now I was ready to drain the oil. I found out that my drain pan would not fit under the bike. I didn't have a lift so I did the next best thing. I snuck into the kitchen and liberated one of my wife's pans. Armed with the pan, I went to the RIGHT SIDE of the bike and found the drain plug. After removing the bolt, only a small dribble of oil came out. I figured it must need air, so I removed the filler cap. More dripping, but not much oil came out. I then removed the oil filter. Other than the oil in the filter, only a few more drops came out. Now I was worried. Could I have run the thing out of oil?? How much engine damage had I done? Should I cancel the trip?

I called my wife to check the oil sight glass while I held the bike level. "It's about halfway up the glass" she said. OK, there's oil in there, but how the heck do you get it out? I finally swallowed my pride and called my neighbor, a retired aircraft mechanic. He got under from the LEFT SIDE of the bike and found another drain plug on that side. He pulled that plug and got maybe a quarter of a cup to come out. We checked the sight glass again and still had a lot of oil inside. While we were scratching our heads his wife did something we never thought of. She picked up the owners manual and said, "you know, I think the drain plug is the big one in the back". We looked under from the LEFT SIDE and sure enough, behind a shield, there was the REAL drain plug. We pulled that and the oil came out without further problem. The moral of the story is, when all else fails, call your neighbor's wife!

Mike

Not all who wander are lost.