Weather Imagery

Battery maintenance is important and fortunately it’s easy. The original battery that comes with the GS and Dakar is unsealed, meaning you periodically need to add water. How often varies but it’s best to check it every few thousand miles or so. If you do a lot of off road riding, it’s best to check it more frequently.

If the water is low, damage to the battery can occur and it won’t hold it’s charge as long. If you find that the battery is consistently low on water, there could be an over-charging problem where the voltage rectifier is pushing too much voltage to the battery. Since it’s right near the battery, we can check that with a volt meter at the same time we check the water levels.

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Changing the oil in the BMW 650 GS and the Dakar is very simple. The BMW shop in my neck of the woods wants $150 to do the job, which is why I took it upon my self to learn how to do this. While you don’t have to get the oil change kit from BMW, it’s probably best because they provide the copper ring for the sump plug, the o-ring for the oil filter, and the oil filter itself all of which costs about $15.

Some people make the job way more complicated than it needs to be, by removing the whole oil tank and getting every last drop out so as to remove all possible particles which may be suspended in the oil. I and many others don’t think this is necessary at all. After all, the oil filter is supposed to take care of that and if you have that much crude in your oil … you got other major problems.

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