Suspension Lube alert

[HeUeR]

HeUeR,

I'm a little lost in your terminology.

My definitions: Each of the pivot bearings have a sleeve in them that act as the bearing inner race.

Th pivot arm has six bearings. One (front)connects to the bikes frame, close to the swing arm mounting points. The rear one connects to the lower shock absorber mount. The middle two bearings are located on a common sleeve which is through-bolted to the lower end of the dog bones.

The last two remaining bearings are located in the swing arm. Those two bearings also have a common sleeve that rides in both bearings. This pair is through-bolted to the upper end of the dog bones.

In order to grease any of the bearings the bearing sleevs need to be pushed out of the bearing far enough to expose the bearing rollers. For the swing arm pair, you just have to remove the upper bolt holding the dog bones on. Then the sleeve can be pushed out the left side of the bike. (it can also be pushed out half way toward each side to expose the individual bearings)

In order to service all of the bearings in the pivot arm you have to remove the pivot arm from the bike. This is a pain in the arse due to the right side centerstand mount. But you have to get the mount off in order to remove the forward pivot arm bolts that holds the front sleeve in place. well documented here:pivot arm removal Near bottom of page.

Once you have the pivot arm out, greasing those bearings is easy. If your seals are original, I highly recommend replacing them.

I don't know which 'little one inch spacer' you're refering to.

Hope this was helpful.

I'm talking about the sleeve, or I guess race as you called it that's inside where the red arrow points. The smaller one I could get out the other side, but the right side under the red arrow has a flange on it and would not come out unless the seal was removed and replaced.

 

[FJReady]

OK, now I get it. I believe the bearing on that side of the swing arm is held in place with a retaining ring. You probably have to remove the seal to gain access to it. Yes, the sleeve on the other side comes out easy to allow you to grease the needle bearing there. The ball bearing on the end you're pointing to is a sealed bearing. You can't grease it.

 

[OldSwartout]

Remember the good old days of grease zerks? It would be great if the manufacturers would start installing these again. Even an Alemite hole for a lube point. This era of bragging about how little maintenance a vehicle needs and how long oil will go before it is useless goes a long way in my opinion towards a lot of these problems. Most 4 wheel drives and heavy duty trucks nowadays have very few lube points on the front ends and driveshafts. I never minded having to lube my vehicle!

One thing to consider if adding a zerk to any pivot or other bearing is that if there is no escape for the excess grease, that it is very easy to push a seal out of its bore when greasing the item. At that point you are far worse off than if you had just left it alone, as now you have opened it up to the elements without realizing it. Most of the grease points on older cars had seals designed to relieve the excess grease to the outside without damage to the seal.

 

[edjo69]

I just rebuilt by entire swing link with new bearings and seals, I even ordered new bolts and nuts. Any way to get the bearings out simple tap them out with a hammer and a socket that fits inside the housing. I have a bearing press that I used to put the new ones in but you can use the same sockets and a vise, and then gently align them with the same socket and the vise while take measurements on where to center them in the swing link from the manual, install the new seals, lube it all up and re-assemble.

 

[lnewlf]

Just serviced the bearings in the relay arm and observed...

Plenty of grease in the bearings of my '06 with 24K- however it had turned to some kind of plastic and you could take a piece of it and snap it between your fingers.

As mentioned elsewhere , the "easy" way to get the centerstand off is to cut the heads off the offending bolts. However with the stand off there still is not enough room to remove the relay arm to frame bolt. Problem solved by loosening the muffler bolts and right side rear footpeg bracket bolts and using a pry bar on the exhaust pipe as a persuader to create enough clearance.

Couldn't get the relay arm free of the frame even with the bolt out. I could have saved myself a lot of cuss words if I had looked at the schematic and realized that the inner bearing race-bushing is two piece and that the relay arm was simply hung up on the short bushing-again, pry bar to the rescue.

All the needle bearings were fine- some can be removed, the hardened grease cleaned out and replaced. Glad I didn't wait any longer to do this-swingarm bearings are up next at the next tire change..

 

[e2b]

Last year before my XC trip I pulled the shock and dogbones off to lube as much as I could down there. I stopped short of pulling the front pivot of the 'boomerang' because I didn't want to get into the sawing off of the centerstand mounting bolt, etc.

So yesterday I decided to go in and finish the job. Yes the centerstand removal is a major PITA but with enough time and persuassion the C stand can be wrestled out of there.

One thing that was odd was that when I was removing the bottom Shock mount bolt, it was not very tight. I know I tightened it pretty good last year.

When I got the 'boomerang' out and was checking the movement of the inner bearing races I discovered that the shock mount one was frozen. WTF? I just lubed it last summer. (That was at approx 45,000 miles. The bike has 70K on it now.) That would explain the loose bolt- the bolt was acting as the pivot/bushing since the inner race was not moving. It looks like some of the mounting bracket of the shock has worn away essentially creating a clearance between the clamp and the inner race.

The other bearings moved fine and still had sufficient grease in the rollers. Including the ones on the swing arm (at top end of dogbones)

I pressed the inner race out to have a better look. It ain't pretty. I must have damaged the seal at one end of the bearing that allowed water to get in and corrode the rollers.

Question for anyone whos been through this: How tough is it to get the bearing remains out of the boomerang? I gave it a pretty good shove in the vise, but it doesn't seem like it wants to move. I don't want to add heat for fear of damaging the other seals and bearings.

Also, does anybody know the part number of this bearing? I have to call around to find one.

Much thanks

Russ

I had a similar failure but it was on the swing arm section which has two bearings, the other two were fine. To make a long story short I replaced all the bearings and 2/3rds of the seals (don't ask). The bike had 105K miles and I thought I had greased at least two of the shafts before that. I think that just removing the right side swing arm bolt will give you clearance to remove that bolt, will know more next time. I used Mobil One synthetic grease. The manual says every 16k miles to "lightly grease with lithium soap grease" these bearings. Just for an opinion I thought too that grease fittings would be great but upon disassembly it was pretty obvious that it would require a much more complicated assembly.