Your first oil change

The oil change is the best first job in mechanics: useful every season, hard to get wrong if you follow three rules, and very satisfying. It is also the one where you learn to work cleanly — and to know when to stop.

The rule: no value is ever invented. Quantity, grade, torque setting and interval belong to your machine, and they are in its manual.

1. Why start here

An oil change touches a circuit that is simple, visible and reversible: you drain, you replace, you fill, you check. No electronics, no fine adjustment. And it forces you to open your model’s manual — the habit that will serve you for the rest of your riding life.

2. What you need

The oil your manual calls for, in the grade and the quantity it states. A new filter, and its seal if your model has one you can get at. A new washer for the drain plug — a part costing a few francs that saves a lot of leaks.

A drain pan, a funnel, nitrile gloves, rags, and something to hold the bike upright and stable. And the right spanner for the plug: a spanner of the correct size, not an adjustable that rounds off the head.

3. The five beginner traps

Draining with a cold engine. Warm oil flows better and carries the debris out with it. Warm, not scalding: a few minutes of running, not a motorway run.

Reusing the old drain plug washer. That is the part doing the sealing. A new washer every time, no exceptions.

Doing it up “good and tight”. A sump strips its thread faster than you would think. The exact torque setting is in your manual; if you do not have it, have the first tightening done by someone who has the feel for it.

Forgetting to recheck the level after the first start. The new filter fills up, the level drops. Check with the bike upright, following your model’s procedure.

Pouring the used oil anywhere. It goes back to a recycling centre or to your dealer. Never down the drain, never on the garden: the new oil container, once empty, is your return container.

4. What you do not do alone the first time

If the drain bolt resists abnormally, if a bolt head starts to round off, if the filter cannot be reached without removing a full fairing, or if you find a leak that is not coming from the plug: you stop and you ask.

A workshop charges a modest amount for the job. A stripped sump, a great deal more.

5. Write down what you have just done

Date, mileage, oil used, filter changed or not. Four lines that are worth their weight in gold at resale and save you working the figures out again in six months.

Where to keep all this

A paper notebook does the job. The SOREN MOTO garage is built for the same thing: it keeps your machine’s record and what you have done to it, and your copilot pitches its explanations at your level, from the first “where is the drain plug?” to real diagnostic questions.

It will never give you a torque setting from memory. It will send you to your model’s manual — because that is the only place the figure is right.