oil screen

[teesee]

I was looking in my manual and it says that you need to clean the engine oil strainer screen every 8,000 miles. I know it will be a while before I need to do this but I was wondering if anyone knows where this is and how to get to it.

[jeff schenkel]

you basically have to drain the oil and remove the right side engine cover to get to it. if you do, you'll probably want to have a replacement gasket on hand in case yours gets torn. dealer has it for about $15. (yours is a new bike but it is still a paper gasket. if you have to replace it, you'll have to remove all of the old gasket from both the cover side and the engine side.)

the fact of the matter is those things rarely need to be removed or replaced. they really only need to be removed and replaced if they are torn. to make sure they are clean, you can get down there with a mirror, a flashlight and a few q-tips, dip the q-tips in some oil laying around in the engine somewhere, and kinda wipe the screen off to make sure it is clean. as i say, they usually are anyway.

and that is a good thing because those things are difficult if not impossible to remove. the screen is located under the intake of the oil pump so oil flows up into the pump through them (in other words, the bottom side is the side that would collect the dirt.).

but to pull them, you have to remove the oil pump -- three phillips head bolts that are blue loc tited in at the factory. if you have a classic (mine is an 85 250 and i never did get it out), and it has never been out, it won't come even with an impact driver. i even tried heating it with a propane torch.

on your new bike you may have more luck. or you may strip your heads on the bolts.

in my opinion, you'd be better off buying a magnetic drain plug for $10 from that baja vw guy (you might try googling magnetic drain plug either here or on the other board).

that thing removes a lot of metal shavings from the oil stream that otherwise could cause engine damage.