1980 Suzuki GS450L oil change

Special thanks to The Media Handyman ( http://www.mediahandyman.com/ ) for editing the video for me, and to Kimoreah for his mechanical advice and instruction.

I had never changed the oil on a motorcycle before, much less this one. It's always good to have the reassurance of external information when you're doing something for the first time, but I couldn't find any information about a bike like mine on the internet, so I decided to create it. I hope this helps someone.

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Add'l info on the oil filter assembly:
Turns out, it didn't seat as well as I thought it had, oil did leak and I did have to take it off and re-seat the cover. However, this wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be. Since I used another fresh oil pan, I was able to catch most of the oil that came out, which turned out not to be very much after all. Pulled it off, the seal had flattened some so it was more willing to stay in the groove where it belonged when I put it back together.

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Add'l info about oil. There are a few caveats (you might have seen them in the comments, but I figure I ought to put them here). If you're a super racer who wants every ounce of torque out of your hayabusa, then yes, it will matter what oil you use. For the rest of us, if it works, it works. My current bike is a Yamaha Vmax and I recently took the recommendation of another Vmax rider who has used a heavy weight diesel engine oil for a long time, and it's working just fine. It's also cheap. Another caveat, some bikes "like" some oils better than others. Also the Vmax as an example: several riders have noticed that the clutch slips a little more easily when they use a synthetic oil. The last caveat is that oil additives are probably a terrible idea because they don't take the clutch into account. They might make slippage more of a problem. They might cause foaming, which can raise crank-case pressure a lot. They might even (IDK for sure) dissolve or compromise the fiber clutch disks.

The manufacturer recommends an oil... I'd imagine that's a safe bet, you know, them having BUILT the bike and all. Heavier weight oil protects more... but can come with some annoyances. And having oil is better than having not oil.

All of which is to say: use the oil that lets you sleep at night.

Ride safe.