Don't overthink changing Royal Enfield oil

By actual measure, you will get only 1.5 quarts of dirty oil from an old Royal Enfield Bullet.

 Incredibly, I disregarded my own advice, given in this column. Scroll to the end to learn the price I paid. 

What was it I used to find so fulfilling about doing an oil change on my 1999 Royal Enfield Bullet 500? 

I did a lot of oil changes, when I was a commuter, racking up 250 miles a week. 

You could say I just got so good at it that it was easy. 

But this was never true, and my garage floor still shows evidence of repeated oil spills from those days. 

Something always went wrong. 

Like the time I forgot to put the drain plugs back in place before adding new oil.

The most common mishap was that I would try to add the designated 2.25 quarts of fresh oil, and the oil tank would overflow.

This prompted me to wonder just how much oil I really needed to add.

Well, how much was I really getting out? My discovery, verified today, was that, left to drain for 24 hours, with both plugs pulled and the oil filter removed, only 1.5 quarts emerge to fill the catch  pan.

A (dirty) quart of oil apparently remains in the motor, where I will never see it.

Remember my mention of the time I failed to insert the plugs before adding oil? I vividly recall that the stream of oil that suddenly cascaded onto the floor was not instantly clean oil, but rather the inky black of old oil, forced out by the stream of new oil.

So, obviously, some old oil does remain in the oil tank, past the point where the dip stick can reach it.

Dowel poked into oil filler finds 1/4 inch of old oil still there.

As an experiment, today I poked a clean wooden dowel into the supposedly empty tank and found about 1/4 inch of old oil remaining. How much is that?

I was afraid you'd ask. So I tried to find out. And failed.

Using a squeeze bulb got out only a few drips, and the old trick of using a drinking straw as a pipette didn't work either.

Squeeze bulb recovered only a few drips of oil.

This much I know: it took approximately 1.5 quarts of new oil to bring the level on the dipstick back up to near the "H" mark. You don't want to overfill it for fear of wet sumping.

Bottom line, get some fresh oil in there. Start with 1.5 quarts, run the motor and check the dipstick.

It's not rocket science. It's just a mess.

Here's what happened: After carefully adding back into the motor ONLY the amount that I had drained during this oil change, I fell victim to my own over caution. Preparing for the next ride I observed that the oil was only partway up the dipstick and I stupidly added an additional pint of clean oil. Naturally the Bullet wet sumped, producing a persistent cloud of smoke.

Proof that i should have listened to my own advice!