Friday, May 11, 2018

Oil Filter Drama and adding some luggage

The new CBR is due for its first oil change. (@ 600 miles) Being the good, modern guy that I am, I looked online and ordered what Amazon said the Bosch equivalent was. A couple days later, it arrived, I opened the box and thought: "Gee, this seems bigger than the stock one..." Then, I put it down and went about my life for the next couple days.

I got out to the garage, removed the original filter, drained the oil, and reached for the Bosch. It's about the same diameter and seems to have the same threads, but it's probably 40% longer than OEM. Won't fit, due to interfering with the exhaust pipes coming out of the cylinder head. Damn.

At this point I was still too busy to get out to a Honda shop. So I looked up a charge of equivalent oil filters from an old post on the cbr500riders.com forum. It cited a couple of Wix filters that would fit. I thought this would be more reliable than Amazon's recommendation, as it was posted by a CBR500 rider. Alas, that one came a couple days later, and it is longer AND wider than the factory one. Damn-damn!

I thought about taking a trip to the Honda stealership at lunchtime today, but it's in a bad traffic area and it's under construction and it's Friday. It'd take my whole lunch hour to get it done.

I'm a glutton for punishment, so I looked up another one on Amazon, the HifloFiltro HF-204. From the pic, it looks to be the right size. The manufacturer says it is a replacement for the OEM one. The specs are also impressive, as they specifically cite quality components and 3rd party TÜV certification. I paid extra for next-day deliver, so we'll see how she fits tonight.

Honda OEM filter in the middle, with the non-fitting Wix on the left and the non-fitting Bosch on the right:


I've added some soft luggage to the CBR to make it touring-capable. Here are a couple of quick YouTube videos on them:

Tail bag and inexpensive ($5) tank protector:


Tank bag - Cortech Super 2.0 12L:

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