Ultimate Engine Maintenance Guide: Triple Your Bike Engine's Lifespan

The most important thing you can do for any motorcycle before changing the oil is get the motor to running temperature and I'm going to explain exactly why after I finish this lap. Whoa she's greasy today. Now not everyone's got access to a motocross track in their backyard but the least you can do is go for a ride on the bike and not just get it up to running temperature. You want to be able to spin the bejesus out of the gearbox. You want to go through the gears and get the oil into every crevice of the motor. 102. Rightio. We're good. Straight down to business. Dash plate off. Obviously just get whatever tools you have that suit your bike and the components you're running. We get into it. Oh there we go. There's the signal. The oil's ready to come out. The turbo fan's just kicked in. She's hot. 106 degrees. Now don't kid yourself. That oil is at boiling temperature. Like imagine hot oil coming out of the kettle. That's what's about to drop out of the motor. Not to mention the exhaust. Be ready. You'll only get burnt once. And for the 4722 people that keep asking me what dash plate this is, it's a Terratech RallyForm. They're not one of my sponsors. They just supplied the dash plate for the Dark Horse build. Oh there we go. How's the titanium acro system? Best bolt-on upgrade for the T7 ever. Backing off a bolt you're going back in time. Anti-clockwise. Okay so many people that just get that wrong and they're like god it's so tight. So tight. Oh got it. No you haven't. You've just pulled the thread out of the casing because you were over tightening it. Okay anti-clockwise. Right got the kiddies bathtub. This is going to be boiling hot. So you can get away with it to a certain degree. Best thing to do is sort of extend. You know put some gloves on but put a socket on the sump. You can get it to the last thread. Tip it up and reveal. Okay hey presto. So while that's draining, the whole reason of getting the oil to operating temperature and spinning the hell out of the gearbox is when your bike's been sitting, if it's a thousand k's old, ten thousand k's old, a hundred thousand k's old, what you've got to understand is your oil and your motor is full of clutch particles, gearbox fragments, carbon from the combustion side of things. It's the reason your oil goes black because that blackness is foreign matter particles and that all sits in a sediment. If you rebuild a motor and you split the cases on an engine that's been sitting there for a week or a month, all of the sediment on every horizontal surface in the motor and most motors is black and that's because all those particles have settled out of the oil and they're sitting there. So if you're sitting there in your winter, your European or your American winter going, I'm gonna gonna get on the bike soon. I should go and change the oil before my first ride and it's been sitting for three months. All you're doing is changing the oil right and putting clean oil back over the top of all that sediment. So the purpose of getting it to running temperature, spinning up the gearbox is it dissolves that sediment back into the oil. So when you dump it, it flushes it all out with it. If I looked in this motor now, every aluminium surface would be squeaky clean because that oil has just carried all those foreign particles out with it. What people don't realize, oil filters in your engine are very temporary. They become redundant sooner than you would expect. Now every oil filter has a bypass valve. So what happens is, as the filter element collects all those gearbox fragments, the carbon particles, the clutch fibers, all that stuff fills up in there, the oil can no longer pass through the element. So instead of choking off the oil to vital engine components, the oil filter just goes, I'm out and engages a release valve and you're just circulating dirty oil through your whole motor. The oil filter is now redundant and majority of you are riding around now on bypassing oil filters, okay, because they have to. They cannot choke the oil out because they will restrict the oil flow to the vital parts of the engine. If for whatever reason, an oil filter doesn't have a bypass valve, there'll be a bypass gallery in the engine itself and it's not much. As soon as it puts up between 5 to 20 psi of resistance, the oil bypass engages and it's like, oil filter's done, we're just focusing on the motor now, and we're just circulating everything. Gearbox particles, clutch particles, carbon, all of it. It's all just in there circulating through your motor. So with that said, how many of you have had your oil changed and literally after the first ride, you look at your little oil window and it's already black. You know why that is? It's because the oil was changed cold. The oil was drained out, new oil was put in over the top of all that black sediment. You go for your first ride, get it to running temperature, spin up the gearbox, that was, yeah, got fresh oil in me bike, look at the window, oh my god, it's black already, but I didn't really ride it that hard. All you've done is froth up the oil, dissolve all that sediment and pull it, pull it all through your new oil and guess what? You've pretty much blocked and made your new oil filter redundant. This is the whole concept in a nutshell. Get your motor cooking, spin up the gearbox, go for a ride, hit a freeway, whatever, get a back road where you can get into top gear. The faster that oil gets spun and the gearbox is spinning and the hotter it is, the more crap you are going to dump and flush out of your motor. Now look, I've got friends that run dealerships and there are some top class mechanics in the back and they're good enough to go to work and work with any race team. These are the dealerships that you need to seek out and you need to make them take some accountability on your motorcycle. Okay, so try and book your bike in like it's a haircut. Right, I'm gonna be there, I've got an hour to ride, I'll be there on Wednesday at this time and I'll just hang around in the shop if you don't mind, probably buy a few things and then get the bike. You, that's how you want to do it. You want to bring it to them hot, book it in, little Johnny's out there dropping that hot fresh, you know, hot oil, new filter and oil's gone in, whatever else they're going to do and when the mechanic brings it back around the front of the shop, you want to look the guy in the eye and it's like, we're good, we're good. You know, that's the relationship if you're paying these dealerships to to do this vital work on your bike. That's the level you want to be operating at with these people and if they won't do it, find another dealership. You know, that could be a KTM dealership, take your T7 there or vice versa. If you've got a KTM and they're not playing the game, go to a Yamaha dealership or a Suzuki or Honda, whatever. Go to that dealership that is actually going to treat you like someone who respects their machine and, you know, wants it, wants them to handle it with that same amount of respect, especially if they're taking your money. Changing the filter. Wherever I can, I always use genuine oil filters for the simple reason that such a vital component is factored in to the entire function of this engine. The oil pressure, the galleries, everything is working towards the best outcome for that protection for that motor and no one knows it better than the manufacturer. Okay, handy little doodah, quite universal for pretty much all motorcycle oil filters. I actually got this for the Warhorse because it's in a bit of a tricky spot to get to. T7, piece of cake, sitting right here out in the open. Yeah, 17mm spanner, not too much, you know, with that amount of leverage, it's a piece of cake to get off because these things, they just need to be tight enough to put a bit of pressure on the big o-ring and that's it, done. So, a fair amount of oil capacity there. This is a good tester. When you can still see the actual color of the oil, like, I can see that's red, but it's dirty. It's got clutch particles in it. You only have to look back at, the only time I've ever ridden this bike is shooting videos, right? And if you look at the Dark Horse video, I was flogging it like a motocross bike in the sand, cooking it and, you know, it's just done the business. It's, um, high quality oil in a clean engine and that filter, I would say, is not yet redundant. I reckon it's still actually filtering particles. I could be wrong, I don't know, um, there's probably some method of testing that, but who cares? You just get a fresh, fresh oil, flush the motor properly, um, happy days. Go, go and ride hard. No real big secrets here, other than, I should probably go get a rag. I just want to wipe away that scunge around the, there we go, nice, fresh filter. Pop that off, look at that, how onto it are they? They've pre, pre-lubed the o-ring, so I don't even need to touch any oil or anything. Get the freshie, get that thread started nicely, nice spin on. You literally, I just do these by, oh, exhaust is nice and cool now, I've been talking crap for a bit. Even if you don't have that tool, like honestly, two hand grip, done. But if you've got the tool, like similar to a fork leg, just, it takes a bit longer to get tension because the o-ring is quite thick, so it feels like a, you know, an easy tension for a longer curve, and then it goes hard because you've crushed it and you're now putting extra pressure on, but that's it, done. Try not to drop it in the oil. Fresh filter, look, if you're the, if you really want to do it by the book, you can get a new, um, get a new crush washer for the sump, but you know, I think I've changed, I think this is my second oil change on the T7. I've been reusing sump bung washers forever, so I'm just going to put that sucker back on. I don't recommend it, but I'm doing it, and it'll be just fine. Now this is super careful, look at the size of my, look, look at the leverage, there's not much at all. I would 100% recommend doing this with a torque wrench, um, but again, you know, I might have stripped a sump bung on my little RM80 when I was 14, 15, but never again. It's just something you've got to get a feel of. I would recommend just manufacturer specs, torque wrench, absolutely, um, because that is a big steel bolt into aluminium thread, and the steel wins every time. The aluminium will just strip, uh, yeah, so do that. Okay, fresh oil. Rightio, the business end of the deal, the oil. Now, obviously, yes, I'm sponsored by Motul. Free stuff's no good unless it's good, you know, and I've, I've raced, flogged, and just pushed motorcycles to, to breaking point with this stuff, um, all over Australia, all over the world, never had any bike fail me under Motul. That's all I'm going to say about that. So the, the oil weighting, and while the, you know, W doesn't so much stand for weight, but more the viscosity, and what you have to understand is the W, put it in your head as winter. Winter means cold, so any number before the W is effectively the viscosity, which is the flow rate of oil on startup, or when it's cold. So 10 is on the, you know, the thinner side, allowing for low friction, easy start on a cold morning. After the W, the dash, after the dash, 50 is the resistance the oil puts up at high temperature. So it's the ability for the oil to prevent contact of metal parts, okay. The thicker the oil is, the more cushion it has between two metallic components. However, the more restriction of flow. So if you're chasing maximum horsepower, you want to go for those five-weight 30s. I think there's even a five-weight 20, but guess what? None of you need any more horsepower. If you're paying top dollar for these bikes, you're not racing them, go for the higher end. Go for the 40s and the 50s. I would call it at a 50. That's a good spectrum. It's gonna not, you know, overload your battery too much on startup. It's thin enough to get to every gallery possible and a good flow. The thicker the oil, if you go too thick, you're getting lower flow in the tiny, you know, around your cams and where it's furthest away from the oil pump and really needs good oil flow. Because with flow comes cooling and cleaning. It's everything I explained before, okay. Little plastic cap. So this is leftover of what I put in the Wallhorse. It's brand new oil, but it's what's left in the bottle. Probably not even going to have enough to fill it. There we go, look at that. 2,300 centimeter cube, 2.3 liters of oil. That's good. It's good to see, you know. Higher oil, you got to look for those engines with high oil volume. They run cooler, they last longer, um, because it's a greater reservoir, you know. Don't just put 2.3 liters in and call it. Do it, but check where it ends up on your window. But when you run the motor, you'll find that the oil filter will have taken a portion of that away. Okay, you see the oil coming into the window there? I like to have my oil sitting at the top of the line. See the two lines? That's your range. After you've run it with the new oil filter in there, you want that oil to sit at the top of the range. Such a sweet motor. Sweeter with the accro. I just love that they've put these, you know, proven street bike engines inside dirt bike frames. Made them, made the whole chassis work. Adventure bikes are pretty cool. Thanks for subscribing everyone. Next week, or next episode, I'm going to show you the next most important feature of protecting your engine, and that is air filters. Yeah, look, share the video, hit the notification bell, all that stuff, and yeah, if you've got a, you know, a few bucks extra a month, and you want access to my members section, hit the join button next to subscribe, and yeah, it'll help me pump out these videos more often.