Oil filter removal

Easier to remove it you'll have more room, only 4 bolts.

Gr8ful said:

Must I removed the lower plastic guard to get the filter off. Coming up on 600 miles and wonder if I can unscrew the filter without removing the guard. No problem with the drain plug or fill port.
thanks

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I doubt it, but I can't imagine why you'd need to; the guard is trivial to remove, unlike some actual skid plates.

I did a filter change once on my 2nd gen bike without removing that guard. Possible, but far faster and easier to do with the guard out of the way.

if your stubborn enough, sure you can do it with the gaurd still on... but most likely you'll also have a nice oily mess inside of the gaurd when your done..... that you'll have to take off to clean. Im all for taking short cuts when worthwhile, but this probably isn't one of them. just my 2 cents.

Adam.

It's going to take a lot longer if you don't remove the guard.

Remove the guard it is. Thanks all.

If a person is heavy handed, I think that it would be too easy to accidently cross thread the new oil filter on installation, with the guard in place.

Improperly Torqued said:

the guard is trivial to remove,

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On my last service one of the bolts of the guard somehow had glued itself to the bracket. I buggered up the bolt hex head when trying to remove it. Ended up having to undo the two bolts of the side cover that also hold that triangular bracket in place before I could remove the guard. And the only way I could get the guard free of the bracket was to hacksaw into both the bolt and the bracket, necessitating the replacement of both.

To this day I still don't know why that bolt didn't want to come loose. I typically don't overtorque bolts like that, and also don't use Loctite or anything. Maybe road grime, salt, corrosion? But I spend several hours in total on something that should've been trivial. Plus the order lead time on the bolt and the bracket meant the bike was out of action for a week or so.

I just removed the lower cover. Piece of cake.
Thanks