Living with a super bike - Kawasaki Ninja 1000, 7 years and 35k kms up

The fact remains still, that despite being a reliable workhorse from a Japanese stable, big bikes are not economical by any sense of the word, lol!

BHPian KarthikK recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Seventh Annual Service / 70 months Maintenance Update (~35,000 km up)

July / August is usually the time that the Ninja is up for an annual service. The Ninja has been mostly soldiering on since the last service in July 2023, effortlessly and silently piling on miles through various trips done over the last 13 months. It is impressive how even into its sixth year, the battery had been holding up steadily and showed no signs of going weak at all. At around the 35000km (and 6 year) mark, I had covered almost ~10000 km since the past service, so it was time to visit the service centre again. I wanted to preventively replace both the battery as well as the chain sprocket kit, which I had procured and kept separately months before this service was done. The spark plugs were also into their sunset years and I decided to change them out proactively.

The details of the battery procurement were updated in a previous post here (Living an evolved dream: My 2019 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 ownership review. Edit: 5 years up!).

The bike has been performing simply flawlessly and I really have to give credit where it is due. The Ninja 1000 has excelled in terms of providing bulletproof reliability through the years, ZERO niggles in 6 years and countless trips! "Fill it, shut it, forget it and keep touring" has been our way wherever we wanted to go with this bike, and it happily complied with every trip we wanted to do with it. 6 years have almost been completed, and it is impressive that there have only just been 7 service centre visits done ever, in all these years! Just the routine annual services and proactive replacements of important parts to keep the condition top notch and that is all I have done.

During the last year's service (Living an evolved dream: My 2019 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 ownership review. Edit: 5 years up!), I got the cone set steering bearings replaced and the front brake pad set (two pairs) replaced. While these two works bloated up last year's bill, this year's bill is also on the pricey side due to the battery, spark plugs and chain sprocket kit replacement. I also got the brake fluid replacement done on both the front and the rear brakes.

With these two major services done, I foresee the service bill reverting to just routine oil and filter services for the subsequent few years.

I reached the service centre early in the morning and the service chief and Kawasaki Guru Unni took over the bike immediately, tending to all my requirements and of course, in his OCD-style inspection, he told me a few more things he wanted to check and fix. I also pleasantly ran into friendly BHPians and resident superbike gurus krishnaprasadgg and wolfy, who were there for wolfy's 10R service. It was nice bumping into them both and chatting for a while .

My bike was ready the next day, after all the work was done diligently and brilliantly as always. Here is a picture of the bike ready for pick up

The items extra this time that were picked up by me outside of Rideventur were:

Yuasa YTX-9BS 8Ah AGM Battery - INR 9000

JT front and rear sprocket kit and DID Chain - INR 16000 (imported from USA through a friend)

NGK Iridium CR9EIA-9 Spark Plugs (4 pieces) (please ignore the goofed up hand-written entry in the invoice as CR9EIX, the correct model is CR9EIA-9 for Ninja 1000)- INR 7600

Silkolene Synthetic Engine oil and HiFlo oil filter - INR 5356 + 900

Maxima Brake fluid DOT4 - INR 650

I had a spare BMC Air Filter lying around at home that was never used, so I swapped that with the stock air filter - INR 0!

Kawasaki service report after OBD diagnostics check post wiring the bike up onto the diagnostics tool

Labour costs for the servicing work done at Rideventur service

All in all, the total costs this time came up to a whopping INR 49,035! Some of these parts were procured over many months, so luckily it didn't pinch all at once, but still things have to be collated when presented. But do note, this is for miscellaneous wear and tear items which have been serving well over the past six years, which I have grouped together and replaced in one shot and will work for another 5-6 years. The fact remains still, that despite being a reliable workhorse from a Japanese stable, big bikes are not economical by any sense of the word, lol! Here is the latest maintenance timeline snapshot, with details of the 7th service appended to my usual service table.

Some extra work which was done by Unni - throttle body cleaning, sub-frame bolt tightening (important if the bike is used with 2-up and luggage load), horn was cleaned and replaced, the brake lines were serviced and put back, etc.

New chain and sprocket kit to help touring for the next ~35000 km

The bike has transformed and feels totally new now after all these components have been changed out. While mechanically the bike got a refresh with this service, I thought it was time to give the bike a cosmetic refresh too. At my usual wash place I got a simple ceramic coating done on the tank for ~INR 2k to give it some more gloss and keep looking like new for some more years.

Before Ceramic coating, not that it is bad in any way, this shade of black still sparkles after so many years.

After ceramic coating, Gloss-mania! 

An update on the Michelin Road 6 tyres - They have clocked around ~9000km so far in the past 1 year, and they astoundingly show no signs of wearing out or squaring off at all! The tread wear indicator block still looks far, far away, and I think these tyres can easily cross 20,000 km of usage even with my pattern of full load, 2-up and lots of mixed road usage.

Lots of tread life left!

Let us look at the tyre life timeline at the current point in time - the third set of tyres have been piling on miles rapidly, and I foresee that with my current rate of touring I will need a new set of tyres in another year.

Other miscellaneous updates - We got this Dainese Airbag Vest for my better half. It is worn inside the regular touring jacket (yes it inhibits air ventilation to some extent), needs to be charged, but is quite easy to use and check using Dainese's D-Air app on the phone. One still needs to wear a regular riding jacket for the elbow and shoulder protection as usual though. Think of this vest as more of a chest and back armour replacement.

That's about all I had for this maintenance / service update. August saw trips with other vehicles in the garage, while September will be a busy month with some house-moving and other related errands. I should be back to some heavy touring in October and November though, there are multiple Ninja trips planned for those two months. Until my next ride report, thanks for reading!

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