[98ninja98]

So I thought to myself this morning...I think I'll go change the oil, haven't done it since I bought the bike, its probably about time.



Shouldn't be a problem, I've done thousands of oil changes in my day, what's one more?

First surprise comes before I even start. Walk in to buy the stuff...they charge me 12 bucks for the oil filter! Wth? For 12 bucks it better wipe my butt too! But then again this is the same place that tried to rip me off on a tire so I probably shouldn't be too surprised.



Ok, so 12 bucks is 12 bucks, another 23.97 for a gallon of oil and I head home. I pop open my manual, its got a little picture with a nice arrow pointing to the drain plug.

Ok, I can see that myself, but where's that 12 dollar filter?

"If the filter is to be removed during the service please visit an authorized Kawasaki dealer".



Yeah screw that. Remove the lower right fairing, pretty straight forward process, except I though one part snapped off but there were two more screws, good thing I found them before I started pulling. And lo and behold, there it is. Way in there in the birds nest of header pipe, that little black 12 dollar filter.



Ok, time to drain the oil. Crack the plug loose, screw it about halfway out, and here comes surprise number 2. That nice aftermarket exhaust passes underneath the drain plug, and its actually so close that theres not enough room to take out the plug. Ok, time to get some pliers, take off that little spring holding the two parts of the exhaust together, push down a little and out it comes, followed shortly by a rush of hot dirty black oil.



Now my new problem is the drain pan I have is too tall to fit under the bike so I shove it under there and "most" of the oil makes it inside.



Oh and I notice there's a drain plug gasket I didn't know about, so of course I didn't have a replacement, but its a metal one so screw it, I put it back in. I didn't change the gasket on my car for 2 and half years and it didn't leak, lets hope my luck keeps up.



Now back to my best friend the 12 dollar filter, and with him surprise number 3. My strap wrench doesn't fit on it, the filter is too small. Crap. I could stab it with a screwdriver and twist it off that way, but thats gonna make a pretty big mess, and I usually try to avoid that. So I head over to the Yaslinskiys house to borrow some filter pliers. Can't get the garage open because Yaro's truck is to close and the door garage door hits the bumper when we lift up on it. Orest goes inside to get the the keys, turns out Yaro took them with him. So we grab a piece of wood, break into Yaro's truck, roll it back a little and open the garage. After searching through a pile of tools a tornado could have put there, we find the filter pliers.



Sweet, I'm almost done. Except I get another surprise. The pliers are broken, and wont stay locked on the setting I need. By this time I'm slightly ticked off so I take a screwdriver and stab the filter anyways. The pan isn't even close to being short enough to fit under where the filter is, so the contents spill out onto the floor. I took a brand new roll of paper towels and used up about half of it cleaning up the mess. I was gonna funnel the oil into the pan, but that plan died when I had to impale the filter with a screwdriver to get it off.



Ok, finally, almost done! Fill it with oil, fire it up, nothings leaking, nothing clanging around, no oil spewing from the filter, cool. Go to put the plastic back on and it decides to give me some trouble, stupid bracket wouldn't snap on and I ended up with an extra screw somehow, but oh well, hope it holds and doesn't fall off on the freeway like Brian's did.



So I'm done, a 30 minute job took me about 2 hours, and now the stupid tool kit somehow grew in size and doesn't fit under my seat anymore...how that happened I don't know