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378 Posts
I went to do an oil change today while I was getting ready to store my bike for winter and ran into a rather horrific incident. Drained the oil for about 10 min (until it stopped dripping), removed the filter cover, tossed the old filter and gasket, put the drain plug back in with new washer, put in new oil filter, spring and gasket and put the cover back on.... then things went to hell. Before adding my oil i decided to torque up all the bolts to manual spec. Drain plug to 18 ft-lbs and filter cover to 9 ft-lbs.... as specified.... again... by the manual. This was a mistake.... but not on my part. The drain plug torque was perfect.... but I cant say the same for the filter cover torque. Apon applying the specified torque to the cover bolts a bolt snapped off in the hole. My blood went cold.... so my first instinct was to remove the other bolts. So now I have 1 snapped off bolt and 3 others that had stretched out and were ready to snap (thankfully they did not). Point of this thread.... 9 ft-lbs is way too much! I did as the manual said and it failed me. So i had to run out and buy a bolt extractor... drill out the snapped bolt, tap in the extractor and slowly work the snapped bolt out of the crankcase cover. Also had to buy 4 new bolts. Tried again but this time only tighten by hand with a handle driver. No leaks, no problems. If your going to do your own oil... DO NOT TORQUE TO 9 FT-LBS. Hand tight is plenty!