Oil Change, Radiator Flush, Final Drive Oil

Last evening as the day cooled down I started to go to work on the bike. The big three were oil, coolant and drive oil.

I did the coolant first as it's neccesary to have the bike cool. The coolant didn't actually look too bad. Rather than putting coolant back in I chose to a Prestone 10 minute flush. Although, I could have just done the 10 minutes they have an option to let it "stew" for a few days. I put the stuff in and started the bike up to heat up the oil. Once I had it running I put it in gear to heat the final drive oil a bit. I waited until the heat indicator got up to the point where the fan kicked on; that way I was sure that the thermostat would have opened and started circulating the coolant/flush.

I've chosen to hold off on titling the bike for a bit because with all the work I'm doing on varius bikes I'm flat broke; tags and titling fees will run about $200, I don't have it. Not to mention that even if I get the bike running superbly it needs tires and I might be tempted to ride it on bad tires.

After the heating I attacked the final drive oil first because I thought it probably didn't get all that hot in the first place. I tested the fill hole (17mm) for sticking and then the drain plug (10mm). It wasn't as bad as I thought. It was liquid but it was ebony in color, bad enough. I put some new oil (API GL5 Hypoid SAE 90, in my case I used SAE 80W90, I'm not sure you can find straight 90 any more) in and turned the rear wheel back and forth by hand to "rinse" the gears. I opened the drain back up and let the oil drain again. It was a mixture of old black and new honey colored oil. I don't think it was clean by any means but it was better. The bike isn't being ridden so I don't think I'm doing too much more harm. After the bike gets rolling I'll do another final drive oil change.

Reading about final drive oil changes in the forums there were cases of filler and drain bolts being welded shut. In these cases some people did oil changes through the vent bolt. There is no vent bolt on the 1976 bike, or, I know there is no vent on my bike.

I then started on the crankcase oil. Again, I tested both the drain and oil filter bolts for removal. I of course did the drain first and then opened the oil filter bolt and casing. The GL1000 uses an enclosed oil filter (Fram CH 6009) which I was lucky enough to find at Advance Auto Parts which came with both the outer and inner O rings. I saved the old O rings just in case. I put in the perscribed 10W40 oil and "measured" about 3.5 quarts. I hate the Mickey Mouse window on the GL's I can't see the oil in the window.