12301 Miles – all set

Over the past couple days I did the 12000-mile service on my bike.

Starting off with the valve adjust on Wednesday night, which went nice and east. The right-side intake was still spot on. The exhaust was a few thousandths too tight. The left-side valves were all uniformly a few thousandths too loose.

The next night I did the oil change. Out came the old Red Line 15w50 oil, and in when the new along with a new oil filter I got from Beemer Boneyard.

Yesterday I did the transmission oil and final drive. I needed a couple of crush washers for the fill and drain plugs on the transmission… so I headed over to the local shop BMW Motorcycles of Cleveland. Par for the course, they sold me a couple crush washers that weren’t the right ones. Of course I found this out after I had everything drained. Back to the shop with my car this time and swap them out for the right ones. The one good thing they sold me an extra O-ring for the final drive speed sensor.

So, after I had the right crush washers I filled her up with Heavy Shockproof gear oil. The stuff looks like Pepto-Bismol. I’ve heard much praise of this stuff from various Internet forums as “good stuff’. Check.

Finally, we’re in last real step: final drive oil change. You can tell the BMW designed this to be a lifetime fill. To change the oil here’s the routine:

• Remove the rear wheel
• Remove splash-guard
• Remove brake caliper
• Remove speed sensor (also the fill hole)
• Remove drain plug
• Drop the final drive by removing the one-time-use nut
• Drain oil
• Replace drain bolt
• Clean and relube the splines. I used some high-end Krytox 215 extreme pressure lubricant from DuPont which I got from McMaster-Carr.
• Mate the fucking splines together. Not easy. I saw the video from Jim Von Badden. He made it look easy. It’s not. I finally got it when I had En hold a bit of string to suspend the drive shaft. This only took an hour before I figured this out.
• Bolt up the final drive with the one-time-use bolt.
• Refill the final drive. Slowly. With 220ml of the same oil that went into the tranny.
• Replace speed sensor with the new O-ring
• Replace the brake caliper
• Replace the splash guard
• Replace the wheel

Oy! You can tell that BMW really didn’t design the process for this. On newer 2007s and all 2008s the final drive drain plug is on the bottom. How novel.

Finally, today I got the air cleaner. The easiest part. Just remove a couple body panels and swap it.

And I get to do all this in another two months! Sweet!