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I'm going to bring my Ninja 250 in for the 500 mile service soon. Is there anything I need to be aware of or prepare for or do before I hand her over to the dealer?

Not really. The service is going to be an oil change, plus checking various fasteners for the proper torque. A couple other small things also, but that's the meat of it. If you have any questions or concerns this would be an ideal opportunity to talk it over with the service department.

Thanks! I'm going to give them a call soon.

The techs should give the bike a once over to make sure nothing is chafing, or loose from the initial assembly (out of the crate).

If any of that sort of problem is going to show up, it should by now, and this is the chance to fix it before it becomes serious.

P

How long does this service usually take? The dealer has held onto my bike for a few days now and everytime I call them they say that they'll get to it or they're still working on it. I did ask them to look at some other things, but this seems to be taking too long.

Took the Suzuki dealer about 90 minutes to do mine. Did you make an appointment, or just show up? Sounds like you may be getting a bit of the run-around. I'd show up in person and try to light a fire under their collective "O Ring".

I made an appointment. Why would they delay working on it? It doesn't seem to have any gain for them.

I'll probably give them another day since I'm quite busy tomorrow and I also don't want to aggravate them since I don't want them to do a bad job with it, but...I want my bike back!

This is a very busy time of the year for dealers, but that's no excuse for such a simple service taking more than a day. Sounds like they got backed up and failed to mention that it might take awhile. I'd definitely be making some noise about it.

I finally got my bike back. It idles much lower than it used to (it used to idle at about 3000 rpm and now it idles at a little above 1000 rpm). I've been told this is a much better idle speed.

One thing I'm concerned about is that they didn't check the valves. They had told me they would when I brought it in, but when I went to pick it up, they said that they never check the valves because it doesn't need it in the initial service and that they weren't going to do it. However, on the ninja250.org forums, the general concensus is that it is important to check the valves. Now I'm also a bit worried that there are other things they didn't do since they said that they would do everything listed in the owner's manual, but they obviously didn't do at least one thing. (I don't know whether it's good or bad that they were honest enough to tell me)

Unfortunately, I'm currently not mechanically knowledgeable at all so I don't know how I would be able to tell if there's anything I should be concerned about. (I'm going to take a basic maintenance course this fall to see if I can at least learn some basic things about tools / motorcycle engines / etc)

It seems to run ok so far. The only big difference I can tell is that when I let go of the clutch, there doesn't seem as big a pull as there used to be (I think that's because of the lower idle, but not sure). It's a bit harder to do the rocking back and forth exercise from the BRC because the bike doesn't pull forward that much.

They were nice enough to listen to all my questions and answer them in a calm, patient manner though.

A lot of people at the local dealership belive that checking the valves is unecessary untill around 3 thousand miles. If the valves are kinda messy at 500 miles, it will take a LOT more miles before your engine gets really bad. Usually the 3k mile checkup is the major check up, and if the valves are messed up then they will fix it fully. If your valves are messed up now (and you fix them at 3 thousand), you're ninja might only last 40k miles instead of 50k. I'm personally willing to risk it.