{"id":13502,"date":"2021-06-30T06:11:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T13:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=13502"},"modified":"2021-06-30T06:11:33","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T13:11:33","slug":"an-enfield-oil-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/06\/30\/an-enfield-oil-change\/","title":{"rendered":"An Enfield Oil Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog is a maintenance tutorial on changing the Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor’s oil.\u00a0 The Interceptor requires a motorcycle-specific 10W-50 synthetic oil.\u00a0 Motorcycle-specific means that no friction reduction additives are in the oil.\u00a0 If you use an automotive oil with friction reducers, the Enfield’s wet clutch will slip.<\/p>\n

I bought Maxima<\/a> oil online for this oil change (you can get it from CSC Motorcycles or from Amazon.com).\u00a0 It’s the synthetic oil CSC uses in their motorcycles and it served me well in my RX3 and TT 250 (both of which are wet clutch motorcycles).<\/p>\n

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I changed the Enfield’s oil in my garage.\u00a0 I usually leave the Enfield on its sidestand, but I put it on the centerstand for the oil change.<\/p>\n

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The bike should be straight and level for the oil change.\u00a0 This will let the oil drain more completely and make the oil site glass reading more accurate.<\/p>\n

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I have an oil drain pan<\/a> I’ve used for years, and it was put into service again for this Enfield oil change.\u00a0 You can see the oil filter in the photo below; it mounts on the front center of the engine.<\/p>\n

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Removing the oil filter for the first oil change was a challenge.\u00a0 It was put on way too tight at the factory.\u00a0 I have an accumulation of oddball tools in my rollaround tool cabinet, and I found this oil filter wrench<\/a>.\u00a0 I have no idea when I bought it or where.\u00a0 It’s been with me for decades.<\/p>\n

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Even with the oil filter wrench, getting the oil filter to unscrew was not easy.<\/p>\n

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The oil filter finally came off, and I allowed the oil to drain into the pan.<\/p>\n

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The oil drain plug is just to the right and below the oil filter mount (as you face the engine from the front).<\/p>\n

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I guessed it was a 13mm, and I guessed right.\u00a0 It, too, had been installed way too tight.<\/p>\n

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When the plug comes out, you’ll notice it has a crush washer (which doesn’t really look like a crush washer) and a magnetic pickup that sits in the oil bath.\u00a0 The intent of that oil pickup is to grab any bits of loose steel that float around in the oil during the break in process (and after that, too).<\/p>\n

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As mentioned above, the oil drain plug is way too tight from the factory.\u00a0 Be careful not to screw it up taking it off.\u00a0 And remember when you reinstall the oil drain plug, it’s a steel part threading into an aluminum engine case.\u00a0 Don’t overtighten the drain plug when reinstalling it.<\/p>\n

Next up is removing the oil fill cap.\u00a0 Mine was installed way too tight and if you’re taking it off for the first time you probably won’t be able to remove it by hand.\u00a0 I grabbed a rag to protect the plug and persuaded it a bit with an adjustable wrench to get it started.\u00a0 Once it was loose, it unscrewed easily.<\/p>\n

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After the fill plug was out, I let the oil continue to drain.\u00a0 Note that there is no dipstick on these bikes.<\/p>\n

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I let the oil drain about 20 minutes so it would drain completely.<\/p>\n

After the oil drained, I installed the new oil filter.\u00a0 \u00a0You can order the Royal Enfield oil filter if you want to wait months for the official Royal Enfield filter or you can hit Amazon.com and get a Mobil 1 M1-104A oil filter<\/a>.\u00a0 You can guess the path I took.<\/p>\n

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When installing the new oil filter, hand tightening (as tight as you can go by hand) is good enough.\u00a0 Tighten it more and you’re just making life miserable for yourself at the next oil change.<\/p>\n

So, here we are.\u00a0 Oil drained.\u00a0 Oil plug reinstalled.\u00a0 New oil filter installed.\u00a0 It’s time to add the new oil.\u00a0 You’ll need a funnel<\/a> at this step.\u00a0 My advice is to use a plastic funnel<\/a> that will deform when you flex it.<\/p>\n

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Wedge the funnel<\/a> outlet into the oil fill port as shown below, and it will stay in place when you add oil to the engine.<\/p>\n

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There’s an oil sight glass on the engine’s right side.\u00a0 The idea is to add enough oil (about 3.2 liters) so that the oil is approximately halfway between the lower and the upper fill marks.<\/p>\n

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After you see the oil level between the sight glass upper and lower level marks, reinstall the fill port cap and then start the engine and allow it to run for a minute.\u00a0 The level will go down.\u00a0 Add a bit more oil to get the level where it is supposed to be.<\/p>\n

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After adding a bit more oil, install the fill port cap, hand tighten it, and you are good to go.\u00a0 Take the bike for a short ride and check for leaks.\u00a0 And that’s it.<\/p>\n

In case you were wondering, I called the nearest Royal Enfield dealer and asked how much they would charge for parts and labor to do what I described in this maintenance tutorial.\u00a0 There’s no rocket science here, folks, and changing the oil is one of the simpler things you can do to maintain your motorcycle.\u00a0 The dealer’s price for an oil change was a cool $170.\u00a0 My cost to do what you see in this blog was about $50.<\/p>\n

Our next tutorial will be on valve adjustment.\u00a0 Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog is a maintenance tutorial on changing the Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor’s oil.\u00a0 The Interceptor requires a motorcycle-specific 10W-50 synthetic oil.\u00a0 Motorcycle-specific means that no friction reduction additives are in the oil.\u00a0 If you use an automotive oil with friction reducers, the Enfield’s wet clutch will slip. I bought Maxima oil online for this … Continue reading “An Enfield Oil Change”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[64,610],"tags":[2136,2137,2135,2138,2139],"class_list":["post-13502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gear","category-royal-enfield","tag-oil-change","tag-oil-change-tools","tag-royal-enfield-interceptor-650","tag-royal-enfield-maintenance-tutorial","tag-royal-enfield-oil-filter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/20210612_0020-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13502"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13646,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13502\/revisions\/13646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}