There is one main bolt that holds the gas tank to the bike. It is located underneath the seat in front of the battery. Remove this. Then there are two smaller screws that hold the front fairing to the tank, one on each side. Also remove these. Now there are two spots where the “tail cowling” is held on to the tank (the plastic that runs along side, under the seat). It is not screwed into the tank, but instead has a rubber plunger kind of set up. A little directed tug and it will pop out of the rubber pieces. Be careful that you do not cause damage to the cowl by using too much force.

Now all of the main pieces attaching it to the bike are removed. Now for the hoses. Ther are 5 hoses that are connected to the tank. I don’t know what 3 of them do. But that’s not important. They are all held on by hose clamps, and since it’s a small area they are a bit of a pain to unclamp and pull off most of the time.

The first hose is under the seat next to the big main bolt holding the tank to the bike. Remove this, but remember how it was set up so that you repeat it when putting it back on (ie, where it was routed to). Now on the front of the tank on the right side, near the resevoir tank, there are two smaller hoses. Unclamp and remove these. I had some gas or something spill a little bit from one of these so be aware of that. Remember which hose goes to which place, since they are close together. Now the last 2 hoses: the ones attached to the petcock. These are, in my opinion, the biggest pains to get off since it’s a tight space and it was just plain hard to get off. There is one on each side(or one on the right, one on the bottom of the petcock). REMEMBER to turn the petcock to OFF before doing this! You will save youself a possible cleanup.

Once you wiggled the last two hoses off you are free to go. Remove the tank and be careful not to take any of your front or tail fairing with you! The tail fairing in particular wanted to keep popping into place for me. Fine a way to spread it then remove the tank.

Now if you want to replace the petcock (the thing that controls where gas is fed from, the thing with ON, OFF, RES options on the left side of the bike) you can by just finding a nice soft place to put the tank down on it’s side (where the gas would NOT be on the side of the petcock). If you do this, run the bike so that it has very little gas in it (i had less than 1.5 gallons probably and was fine). Be aware that gas will leak through the gas cap at the top of the tank. I found it better to use a flat head screw driver to get the bolt off since it is less risk to strip the bolt. Using a socket was plain out of the question because of how the petcock is made (design flaw?). There is a nylon washer to each main bolt. Keep track of these if you plan on reusing them(but i don’t recommend that if your petcock was leaking….best to eliminate most variables). In fact it was these nylon washer that caused my petcock to leak.