Our plan makes 200.000 km with Honda CRF 250L. Therefore we must take care well. We made more than 52.000 km until now.
Chain oil:
We oil our chain by hand and do that every 250 km, when we can’t find real chain oil we used motor oil for trucks, this is very thick and a good alternative for the chain oil.
Engine oil:
We change our oil every 6.000 km, we try to find the best quality available. This is not easy in a lot of countries. We try to look for 10W 40 API SG or higher JASO MA. Unfortunately we can’t always find this, as we are in Africa we can also use 20W 50 what is more available this is because the temperature will not be lower then 10 degrees Celsius when we are riding.
Oil filter:
We change our oil filters every second time we change our oil. This means every 12.000 km for us.
Air filter:
We change our air filters every 25.000 km, this is a easy job on the CRF250L.
Sprockets:
We use the original sprockets for the motorcycle 12 front 44 back for us the speed and acceleration is enough at the moment. It is possible to change them to 13 front 42 back so you have a higher top speed and the acceleration goes up. We are riding in Africa and are here to see and explore, also the road conditions are not good we see a lot of really big potholes so it’s nice to ride slowly. We change our sprockets first time after 40.000 km, the front was really finished at this point, the rear could do a bit more but not much.
Chain:
We started with the original DID 520 VX chain, which hardly went for 20.000 km. This was not enough for us, now we are riding with a golden ?????? chain, this one we use now for 25.000 km and is still totally fine.
Tires:
This is a tough one, we started with the original tires from Honda. They lasted surprisingly long, we made 17.000 km with them. After research, getting advice from a lot of people we bought the Heidenau K60. This is a tire to use off road and on the tar roads. For us this was not a good choice, when riding in Africa the roads are different everywhere the tire is useless in the sand and not good enough on gravel roads, they lasted 15.000 km. We found second hand tires in Nigeria the Michellin T63, they handled the off road conditions much better. We will now start with the Mitas E07 dakar, we certainly hope this one will get us at least 20.000 km
Spark plug:
We changed this after 50.000 km and keep the old ones with us as a spare pare what we hopefully don’t need to use.
Brake pads:
After 50.000 km they still look fine, we have a extra pair but we didn’t change them yet.
Brake fluid:
We changed our brake fluid after 30.000 km, this was even in Africa easy to find.
Brake :
We passed 50.000 km and still we use first one. We don’t use brake that much in Africa, look like 🙂
Gear pads:
Our plan was changed around 50.000 km but still going well. Therefore we have been carrying with us we will change when we need.
Light bulbs:
We only change them when they break, this happened for both our headlights after 40.000 km.
Fork seal:
We changed one in Nigeria after the terrible roads in there. Ferry’s right fork seal torn. It took 13 days to find new one because our motorcycle size is a little different. Now, we have two extra with us.
What we have been learning on the road we always like to share. You can find playlist to watch from our maintenance here :
