This Hawke Oiler has been sitting on my workbench for a couple of years. Last Saturday, I finally installed it on my 2003 Suzuki V-Strom, as part of a chain oiler comparison I have decided to do this summer.

Above is a picture of the contents of the kit, along with a few handwritten labels so that people looking at the picture can tell what the various items are, and a ruler to show the relative size of the items.

I don't think anything in this kit, was manufactured specifically for the Hawke Oiler. Instead, it's cleverly cobbled together with off-the-shelf components. The installation instructions are on the website.

All in all, the installation was fairly simple. The V-Strom has a lot of room for such things, which also helps.

It came with some little gray stick-on cable routing brackets to hold the applicator, but I didn't feel they were very trustworthy, so I augmented them with some long black zip ties as you can see in the picture below. (White zip ties would look prettier here, but I used contrasting black ones so they would show up well in the photo.) The instructions recommend using heat to mold the tubing to the correct shape. I used a little butane torch, and this worked well. Then they suggest you use GOOP to glue the applicator in place, to keep it from pivoting. It seems effective enough. Here's a picture of the installed applicator:

Then you route the hose along the swingarm, and up into the bike, taking care that it has enough slack for the swingarm to move up and down, and that it won't get caught on anything. I ran it up and into the space under the seat. I drilled a few holes, to route the hose into the underseat box, and to run small zip ties through, to tie the hose and pump into place. After examining the oil reservoir bottle, and thinking about how I would fill it, I decided to include a bit of extra hose between the pump and the reservoir, because I'm going to need to pull this bottle out sometimes to fill it, and I want enough slack that I can do this without spilling.

Here is a photo of the underseat compartment, with the hose, pump, and reservoir bottle:

I drilled a 3/8" hole in the fairing for the switch. The switch is just a push button.

I routed the wire along the frame, from the pump to the switch. The wiring is a bit nuisancy. Both the positive and negative leads coming off the pump, are enclosed in a heavy gray plastic sheath. This sheath was difficult to peel apart, to separate the wires. The red wire attaches to the switch, but the black wire is simply a ground. If the two wires weren't both in the sheath together, I would have grounded it to something close to the pump. But since the sheath was so hard to peel, and the red wire had to go to the front of the bike, I routed the black wire along with it, and grounded it up near the switch. The red wire attaches to one side of the switch. The fuse attaches to the other side of the switch, and then I had to splice in a little extra wire to reach the switched accessory power panel that I already have installed in the front fairing. (Unlike, say, grip heaters, I don't think it matters whether the oiler is run from switched power, but since I already have a switched accessory block set up, it's convenient, and it will prevent pesky children pushing that button and dumping oil on the ground while the bike is parked.)

The Hawke Oiler website recommends using synthetic oil, so I filled the bottle with a little Mobil One 10w40, and I was ready to try it out.

The Hawke Oiler depends on the rider to decide when to oil the chain, and how much. When it's time, you simply push the button, and it oils the chain. But before this will work, it needs to be primed - there is a lot of empty hose between the reservoir and the applicator! Priming it turned out to be kind of difficult. Every time you push the button, it cycles the pump just once. This is not enough to draw the oil from the reservoir. In fact, pushing the switch a hundred or more times doesn't move any oil, though the pump got kinda hot. This was very frustrating and it made me think that perhaps I had not hooked it up correctly. It turns out, though, that the secret trick is to prime the hose by sucking on it. I used my mityvac, first on the hose between the reservoir and pump, and then once that hose was almost full, I plugged it back in to the pump, and used the mityvac on the other side of the pump to pull it right on in.

Once there was oil in the pump, every time I pushed the button, the oil traveled about an inch down the hose. Eventually it came out of the applicator tip. So it appears to be working! I have not yet taken it for a test ride, because the V-Strom is currently waiting for a new water pump seal. I have that seal on order and I look forward to testing it soon. In the meantime, oil did drip on my garage floor. I am not going to assume this is normal, though - likely it's the result of me testing it by pumping until oil came out. If you pumped it while riding, and didn't immediately park, I don't think the bike would mark its spot like this.

Supplies needed for the install, that were not included in the kit:

Extra wire

Connectors to link the pump to the switch, the switch to the fuse, and the fuse to the extra wire.

GOOP

More/longer zip ties than the ones that were included, in contrasting colors if you want to take nice photos

Things to know, that are not covered by the directions:

Leave some slack in the hose so you can get the bottle out.

Prime the pump.

It took me about six hours to install it, but half that time was spent trying to figure out why I couldn't get the oil to come through, before I got out my mityvac and primed the pump. I was also taking things very slowly and carefully, and taking a lot of pictures. Knowing what I now know, I could probably install one of these in an hour or two. Of the three oilers, this one is the simplest to install.