Wanting to do an Oil Change

I have a 1996 Suzuki 600 Katana and I want to change its oil, I have
the clymer maintenance repair manual for it and I have ordered the Oil
Filter wrench like it said I should. Problem is I have no idea what oil
filter to replace it with. I dont know if they are one size fits all
and I really cant find much information online, any of yall able to
help?

 

This is a really avant garde idea, I know, and it's a little bit on the
wacky, crazy side.

It could be fraught with danger.

Mountains could crumble. We could be upsetting the balance of the
universe.

Even Heisenberg would feel uncertain about this one.

But...

....have you tried asking a fucking Suzuki dealer?

 

This is one situation where I recommend using the original equipment
oil filter that you find at your local Suzuki $tealer$hip, even if they
do charge $12.00 for it.

Aftermarket filters from Fram have gained a bad reputation for poor
workmanship and materials and your life is at stake when you install a
poor quality spin-on filter. One guy found this out the hard way when
his oil filter blew off on a racetrack and oiled his rear tire.

 

How are those different from the garden variety Suzuki dealers? Do they
carry special gear suitable for "fucking" on one's Suzuki? If not, how
is this germane to the discussion?

 

Cite please. I am seriously doubting the veracity of this one...

 

Oh, I'm so impressed by your skepticism, as if I'd never seen *that*
attitude before.

Go ahead and doubt all you want, especially while you're sliding around
in your own oil.

This has been on the web for ten years now.

Fram had a bunch of filters made in Korea, I think it was, and the
filters had buggered threads.

The stock Yamaha 6017 filter had about six threads to secure the filter
onto the oil spigot.

Fram's version only had *two* threads, and the brand new 6017A was
supposed to solve the thread problem.

So, I bought a couple of "improved" 6017A's and stored them on the
shelf. By the time I got around to using them, I noticed that the
threads were *still* buggered, and it was far too late to return them
so I threw them away and bought OEM filters.

My life is worth more than the $6.00 I would have saved by buying
aftermarket filters.

 

http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/

 

Why didn't you say so in the first place. If it's been on the web for 10
years, it must be so. That said, $12 for an OEM doesn't sound unreasonable
either.

 

What? Your Suzuki has never tried to **** you? Mine sure has. A lot.

-gc

 

Haaaa... Ha haah. Thanks. Bookmarked

 

Last Suzi I had was a '75 TM125 and it never tried such. It spit me on
my head a few times but I'm inclined to beleive that was more my own
doing...

 

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~rblander/FRAM_recall.html

Crap. That places it in 1995, and I've tossed all my old large format
Roadracing World issues. My friend Mark was a CCS racer back then and he
still has the alert. I AIMed him and got him to look it up.

And of course there's not much still on the 'net from 1995.

The deal was that "some filters blew off and dumped oil" causing
crashes. It was 16 incidents during WERA races, qualifying sessions, and
sanctioned track days. When WERA investigated, they determined that all
the incidents involved FRAM oil filters, and that the threads were so
shitty that the filter blew off when the oil pressure rose as the engine
reached racing RPM.

So they weren't banned because they don't filter oil well, but rather
because of shitty manufacturing.

And if they can't get a simple thread right, do you trust YOUR engine to
them? I sure as hell don't!

You get what you pay for.

For instance I buy OEM Suzuki pads. They're twice as expensive as EBC
pads, but they last three times as long and don't score my rotors like
EBC pads do.

-gc

 

My engine is worth more than the $6.00 I would have saved by buying
aftermarket filters.

I think my life is worth about $2.85 according to an informal poll of my
co-worker.

-gc

 

Hrm. Any reports on Fram's cartridge element filters? That's what I've
been using on my CB900F, just 'cause that's what the local parts shop
carries.

-Scott

 

Sigh. I can't type... especially when my mind is really elsewhere
remembering some very unpleasant experiences.

s/Your Suzuki has/Your Suzuki dealer has/** in the above.

How do I love my dealership, let me count the ways...

* They wanted to charge me full-to-the-brim price for a valve check &
adjust. They were double-dipping as they wanted to charge me for
radiator removal & coolant system work even though that's part of the
valve work and part of the book estimate. No break if the valves
didn't need adjusting, which they didn't.

* They fired all the good techs that actually took their time, enjoyed
their job, and did things the right way. As well as the shop manager.

* The two parts guys that actually knew a piston from a wheel bearing
quit, probably because the new management sucked so bad.

* The Suzuki dealer, Yamaha dealer, Kawasaki dealer, etc. all stock the
same half-dozen crap bits from the same page of the same Tucker-Rocky
aftermarket catalog.

* They stock maybe 6 models of helmets and nothing in any human size
such as medium, large or extra large. No modular flip-ups of course,
which is what I want because I wear glasses.

* They had a bike on a Pit Bull front stand, and I wanted to buy one.
Nope, sorry, we don't stock or sell those.

* They don't even stock such staples as aftermarket mirrors and levers,
which I thought was about as "staple" as it got.

* When I asked for an oil filter, they brought out a FRAM instead of a
Suzuki part. Not only are those filters so crap they're banned by the
local racing groups, but the Suzuki filter fits the Burgman, Bandit,
Katana, Hayabusa, GSXR-600/750/1000/1100, SV-650, TL-1000, and the
Intruder line, so it's not like it's a rare part. He then looked at me
like I was a space alien when I asked for the OEM part.

* I buy the OEM brake pads because while they're twice as expensive,
they last three times as long and don't score my rotors. Of course
they didn't have any. "EBC is just as good!" "Sure. Do you have the
GOOD EBC compound, and will you warranty my rotors?"

* The woman selling me my DL did the "Sign this. AndTHISAndTHISAnd
THISAndTHISAndTHIS" treatment. I asked her twice to slow down, and the
third time I stood up and said "I either get to read this, or I walk
out and go to Spaceport Suzuki." She tried to slip in their "high
security package" for $700 which was a couple of stickers with my VIN
number on them. Yes, that's seven hundred dollars. For stickers.

* The brand-new DL was missing the toolkit, the helmet lock strap, and
had an owner's manual for a GSXR-600. I refused to take it until I had
all the proper pieces. When they brought me the toolkit, I stopped and
verified that all the cheap stamped factory tools were indeed there,
including the all-important special tool for getting the sparkplugs
out.

* They've mounted tires backwards on the rims twice. This is in spite of
a large arrow molded on the side of the tire saying "MOUNT THIS WAY"
and a large arrow cast into the rim saying "ROTATION" - all you have
to do is match the arrows up, guys! They then flipped the tire over
and tried to give it back to me without rebalancing it.

* They can't deal with a tire that happens to be perfectly balanced w/o
any weight, so they stuck a 1/2oz weight in a random spot. Not a 1/4oz
weight, but a full 1/2oz one.

* They couldn't put the DL's fairing back together properly the time I
had it in for the 600 mile oil change & check. That's the ONLY time it
will ever see their shop.

* They charge you $35 for a mount & balance, even if you're stupid
enough to pay their 150% markup and buy a tire from them. They then
get pissy and whiny if you bring in a tire you bought over the 'net
that they don't even stock anyway, at which point I told them to
SDASTFUN. Harbor Freight sells a not-too-bad tire changer on sale for
$70 and I already have a balancer. Guess what I bought myself for
Christmas?

* They were stupid enough to send me a "Congrats on your new bike, how
may we improve our service?" at which I sent a "Do you REALLY want to
know?" letter and CCed it to Suzuki USA. Still waiting to hear back
from that one.

* The Honda dealership that refused to order an $8 clutch lever for my
NT650GT, at which point I bought it for $16 from the dealership on the
other side of town which actually had it in stock. This is the week
after I bought $350 in cold-weather clothes from them. Shortly
thereafter they went out of business. I did get the pleasure of
stopping by and showing the manager the receipt for the clutch
lever... "you know, the one you refused to sell me?"

So I do all my own work and buy everything online, and drive to Daytona
for helmets, gloves, jackets, etc.

Oh yeah, almost forgot to name names. This is Cycle Riders of Longwood
(AKA RideNow Powersports), T&D Yamaha (now Orlando Yamaha), and Honda of
Orlando, you can all suck my eight inch non-dairy creamer.

-gc

 

<Snip utterly awesome list>

Incredible. While there are a few crap dealers on this side of the pond,
I reckon the US has them beat.

I've never heard anything like that litany of woe.

 

It's not.

Brake pads, as GC says, are another minefield. The previous owner of my
K1100 fitted EBCs. The (very, very, very good) technician who gave mine
a once-over recently tut-tutted, said that they were indeed cheaper, and
then produced packets of genuine BMW pads and a couple of discs and
explained exactly why he recommended OE.

When you think of the actual price difference between OE and lower
quality pattern, and divide that by.... 6000 miles in the case of an oil
filter, and maybe twice that for brake pads? you see that pattern is
often a false economy.

Another example. My 1977 Honda 400 Four. When it needed new stanchions,
I investigated getting the old ones re-chromed for about £45 ($90) a
side. Used ones are generally not worth buying.

Then I rang Dave Silver, the Honda spares specialist. How much were new
stanchions? Answer: £35 each, OE, off the shelf, because they were the
same items as fitted to the CB250 and CB360, and Honda made a helluva
lot of them.

 

Gene Cash wrote:

Nor do I. I agree that they (Fram filters) are crap. I only doubted
the part about them shooting off the threads. I still think it is a bit
unlikely, I mean how much oil pressure is there on the filter really?

Well, sometimes. But not always. Some of the best are not the most
expensive. And some of the most expensive are not the best. But
clearly the Frams are crap.

As in most things, ya pays ya money and ya takes yer chances... ;-)

 

How can you tell? I mean, I always want to buy a new bike. ;-)

I'm not. ;-)

--
-Fred W

'98 Honda VFR800Fi SPORTtourer
'01 Kawi Concours sportTOURER
'05 Yammi FJR1300 SPORTTOURER

 

Depends on whether the crankshaft is a rolling element design or a
plain bearing type.

My GS-1100 has a roller crank. Normal oil pressure is greater than 1.42
psi, and less than 7.11 psi at 3000 RPM. (1)

My FZR has plain bearings and there's a pressure relief valve that
opens between 56 and 67 psi to bypass excess oil pressure around the
filter.

The valve on my GSXR relieves at 43 to 85 psi when the oil is 140
degrees F.

So, I have no problem believing that a crappy Fram filter with two
factory-buggered threads could blow off the filter spigot during a warm
up lap on a cold day.

(1) I installed a set of Vance & Hines oil pump drive gears that
increased the GS-1100's pressure to about 15 to 30 psi to protect the
camshafts and sliding rocker arms.

The GS-1100 uses a paper cartridge filter inside a cavity in the
engine, there's no danger of that filter blowing off, but a poor
quality paper filter could come apart and plug oil passages.

When I crashed in somebody else's oil that knocked the aftermarket oil
pressure gauge off the side of the engine, and riding the motorcycle
three miles to a 7-11 store pumped all the oil out of the engine, but
it wasn't damaged.

A Yamaha mechanic had been changing the oil on a customer's machine,
but was called away to answer the phone and forgot to tighten the plug.

The owner took his machine for a spin up a twisty canyon road and
noticed he had no oil pressure, so he made a u-turn in the middle of
the road and oiled the other side.

When I came around a tight turn at 55 mph in the dark, I slid in his
oil, thought I'd recovered, and then got into the oil in the other lane
and the motorcycle low-sided, throwing me onto the pavement.

I got to the 7-11 store and called a tow truck. The guy who'd lost his
oil plug was there in the 7-11 parking lot and he was oblivious to what
had happened to me.

When the tow truck arrived, he told the driver that he didn't need a
tow truck and sent him away!

Fortunately, I found a bolt on my machine that had the right thread to
plug the oil gallery hole where the aftermarket pressure gauge had
been.

I bought 4 quarts of oil and rode home. Between the two of us, that
canyon road was well-oiled...