I have neverr checked swing arm or head bearings on any bike I have owned. Is it worth the trouble? Has anyone done their swing arm bearings? I could see maybe repacking the steering head. Need some input on how much trouble it is. I have 22K on my 05".
Swing arm- Bearing grease pack
- Thread starter maddawg46
- Start date
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Bustanut joker
Well-known member
Ok even though this is outa character for me and it's a Friday, I'll be decent and suggest.... FJR Tech.
Ya used up all yer points with me bud, so.... behave.
K?
:jester:
Ya used up all yer points with me bud, so.... behave.
K?
:jester:
dcarver
Well-known member
I have 40k on an 06, never looked at steering head or swing arm bearing but I feel guilty for not.. Is it worth the trouble? Yes, if you do it yourself, probably not if you have it done, at least at 22k - unless of course you pressure wash it every week.
madmike2
Shtirrenuppenmeister
Bounce is one of the pioneers for FJR maintenance. You should check out his website clicky here! The link should take you to the swingarm maintenance, but be sure and look through all of his information, it's all very good. 
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Yes... Thank you very much for the link from another new guy. My 03 is in need of the same service. After reading the very informative site, I'm inspired to tackle this myself. I'm a carpenter by trade, not a wrencher per say. After inspecting the rims from my last tire change, scratched and hipped :angry2: Looks like I'll have to buy some more tools. Long winter's in Canada. No excuse not too at least try. Luv the part in Owners manual that says "Only a licenced Yamaha Tech " should preform this service. Read twice then attempt.
Huck Fonda
Well-known member
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Not yet, but I plan to at 20K (now at 18.7k). FSM calls for it sooner, but I'm going to go full steam ahead with fluid, torques, plugs...the whole deal.
Steering head bearings I've adjusted on lots of bikes in the past, but only ever packed when putting new ones in. Never felt the need to do swingarm re-pack, but this is a heavy bike, so will give it a look-see.
I'd be happy to post results when completed if no one gives you a better answer before then.
Stay tuned...
Steering head bearings I've adjusted on lots of bikes in the past, but only ever packed when putting new ones in. Never felt the need to do swingarm re-pack, but this is a heavy bike, so will give it a look-see.
I'd be happy to post results when completed if no one gives you a better answer before then.
Stay tuned...
madmike2
Shtirrenuppenmeister
This was a double posting that most of us "skipped over". For more complete information please clicky here!
Thenk yew fer yer suh-port!
Admins, can you close or remove this double posting to prevent it becoming additional information?
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tyronewildman
Real Old Guy
A long time ago (posted in '05) in a land far away
Lessons learned from rear linkage lube. My ’04 FJR1300 is about 1 year old and has 9000 mi on it and I have ridden thru many rainstorms here in the Hotlanta area. After reading the many horror stories of rusted/non-greased parts, I bit the bullet to lube & inspect & here is what I found. Working from a 3’ high lift is great & having an overhead hoist above the lift is even better.
#1 Things needed: a 19mm hex socket (removes the front axle also) to remove & re torque the swing arm pivot shaft, a set of torx sockets for the one torx bolt on the front of the shifter mount, a good set of 6 point metric sockets (large ones too for re the swing arm pivot shaft nuts), a good set of combination metric wrenches, the factory service manual for the assembly pictures & torque values, a copy of the https://www.fjrtech.com/ article on lubing the pivot points for the instructions.
#2 There was no rust or fretting corrosion on any thing and all splines & bearings were greased & all shafts had a light coating of oil on them. If I had known this, I would have waited a few years to do this job.
#3 The center stands on the pre ‘04s (with their extra added gusset) may break, but they darned sure won’t fall off because of loosened bolts. These 4 bolts & nuts were the tightest & hardest to loosen of any I have ever seen. These 4 bolts were inserted from the outside, so the exhaust system has to be pried over & down to remove the bolts. While the book says to remove the exhaust system, you can do it without removing the headers by removing the muffler bolts & exhaust bolts to the center stand. When remounting the center stand, insert these 4 bolts from the inside so the exhaust won’t interfere. On the front 2 bolts I used a thick flat washer under the bolt head and purchased 2 thinner nuts (blue thread locker too) for proper exhaust clearance. I made sure that the weight of the bike was on the center stand before tightening these 4 center stand bolts/nuts.
#4 Remember which way the relay arm (the dog bones attach to the center of this) goes or you might have “falling rate” suspension. The arm with the bend in it goes to the back & is hooked to the Shock. A while back someone posted pixs of his relay are where he added grease fittings to it but I elected not to do this because I couldn’t see how the grease would get by the outer race of the needle bearing unless these bearing housings have a grease hole in them. Any ideas on this, guys & gals? Is there a hole in the bearing housing? I do believe that a grease fitting will work where there are 2 needle bearings separated by a space as in the center of the relay arm and on the swing arm.
#5 Remove the right muffler & the swing arm will have enough clearance to drop out.
#6 Didn’t pull the drive shaft out of the rear end cause it gets it’s lube from the rear end. Did remove the “U” joint and lube both splines with Moly lube. Looks like the “U” joint could go in either way but the splines on one end have a lead in bevel to help when inserting the drive shaft.
#7 Single best improvement was from lubing the shifter arm pivot, but it wasn’t from the added grease. This pivot is a shoulder bolt w/2 thrust washers & a “wave” washer & the proper clearance (read no slop) is obtained by screwing in the bolt till the wave washer is slightly compressed. The bolt is locked in place with blue thread locker from the factory. My bolt was too tight & was binding the shifter. You can easily check this by removing the upper shifter arm from the tranny shifter shaft & seeing that the foot shifter arm moves freely & isn’t binding. Mine was way too tight but I couldn’t tell it cause there is no slop in the linkage, until I disconnected it from the tranny. After removing the shoulder bolt & greasing it, I reinstalled it (with new blue thread locker) without binding it. What a difference. It shifted fine before but now it’s like warm butter. This shifter maintenance can be done by itself by removing the “Shifter/footpeg/sidestand” assy but this assy will have to be removed to remove the “U”joint.
Later,,,De
Lessons learned from rear linkage lube. My ’04 FJR1300 is about 1 year old and has 9000 mi on it and I have ridden thru many rainstorms here in the Hotlanta area. After reading the many horror stories of rusted/non-greased parts, I bit the bullet to lube & inspect & here is what I found. Working from a 3’ high lift is great & having an overhead hoist above the lift is even better.
#1 Things needed: a 19mm hex socket (removes the front axle also) to remove & re torque the swing arm pivot shaft, a set of torx sockets for the one torx bolt on the front of the shifter mount, a good set of 6 point metric sockets (large ones too for re the swing arm pivot shaft nuts), a good set of combination metric wrenches, the factory service manual for the assembly pictures & torque values, a copy of the https://www.fjrtech.com/ article on lubing the pivot points for the instructions.
#2 There was no rust or fretting corrosion on any thing and all splines & bearings were greased & all shafts had a light coating of oil on them. If I had known this, I would have waited a few years to do this job.
#3 The center stands on the pre ‘04s (with their extra added gusset) may break, but they darned sure won’t fall off because of loosened bolts. These 4 bolts & nuts were the tightest & hardest to loosen of any I have ever seen. These 4 bolts were inserted from the outside, so the exhaust system has to be pried over & down to remove the bolts. While the book says to remove the exhaust system, you can do it without removing the headers by removing the muffler bolts & exhaust bolts to the center stand. When remounting the center stand, insert these 4 bolts from the inside so the exhaust won’t interfere. On the front 2 bolts I used a thick flat washer under the bolt head and purchased 2 thinner nuts (blue thread locker too) for proper exhaust clearance. I made sure that the weight of the bike was on the center stand before tightening these 4 center stand bolts/nuts.
#4 Remember which way the relay arm (the dog bones attach to the center of this) goes or you might have “falling rate” suspension. The arm with the bend in it goes to the back & is hooked to the Shock. A while back someone posted pixs of his relay are where he added grease fittings to it but I elected not to do this because I couldn’t see how the grease would get by the outer race of the needle bearing unless these bearing housings have a grease hole in them. Any ideas on this, guys & gals? Is there a hole in the bearing housing? I do believe that a grease fitting will work where there are 2 needle bearings separated by a space as in the center of the relay arm and on the swing arm.
#5 Remove the right muffler & the swing arm will have enough clearance to drop out.
#6 Didn’t pull the drive shaft out of the rear end cause it gets it’s lube from the rear end. Did remove the “U” joint and lube both splines with Moly lube. Looks like the “U” joint could go in either way but the splines on one end have a lead in bevel to help when inserting the drive shaft.
#7 Single best improvement was from lubing the shifter arm pivot, but it wasn’t from the added grease. This pivot is a shoulder bolt w/2 thrust washers & a “wave” washer & the proper clearance (read no slop) is obtained by screwing in the bolt till the wave washer is slightly compressed. The bolt is locked in place with blue thread locker from the factory. My bolt was too tight & was binding the shifter. You can easily check this by removing the upper shifter arm from the tranny shifter shaft & seeing that the foot shifter arm moves freely & isn’t binding. Mine was way too tight but I couldn’t tell it cause there is no slop in the linkage, until I disconnected it from the tranny. After removing the shoulder bolt & greasing it, I reinstalled it (with new blue thread locker) without binding it. What a difference. It shifted fine before but now it’s like warm butter. This shifter maintenance can be done by itself by removing the “Shifter/footpeg/sidestand” assy but this assy will have to be removed to remove the “U”joint.
Later,,,De
madmike2
Shtirrenuppenmeister
Aha! The admins folded to 2 separate posts together. Good job! :clapping:
spalkin
Well-known member
I've never been through a swingarm either in all my life. Here's the way I look at it, first I take into account the fact that in the service manual they call for an entire rebuild of every master cylinder and slave or brake assembly every two years. That, and this swingarm nonsense is all just ground work to be able to deny liability if something goes wrong. Don't get me wrong, servicing this thing like a jet is something we all love to do, but I've riden many motorcycles over many years and miles and I've gotta tell you, I've never seen slop in a swingarm. These bikes are only a few years old. Yamaha demands high quality from their vendors. Those parts are as good as it gets. Weigh on the other hand, though, that this design of suspension puts a tremendous amout of pressure on it's pivot points. Unlike bikes from the past and present that support the rear end with shocks mounted straight up from the axle to the rear sub frame. In those designs, every bearing except the wheel bearing has no weight on it. They're just anchors that keep things located. Back to our swing arm; That entire assembly has about a 12 degree maximum range of motion. That means that, the way the mechanism is set up, the pressure points for the individual bearings and bushings are very concentrated. God, I gotta stop drinking coffee late at night. Anyway, Not a terrible idea to dismantle your F16 er JR's rear elevator at any mileage over 20k. For me, it's just going to be a good checking for play and looseness every oil change. Every time the bike's on it's center stand, the rear wheel is right off the ground for it. At the first sign of gremlins, I'll go through the whole thing. For now, though, she's an '03 with 25k and solid as a rock. Everywhere. I'll cocentrate on the forks and fluids. Everything is captive back there. If something wears it's going to be an inexpensive bearing and not the actual part. And, I'll catch it before it becomes a problem. That's my job. These things are built to ride. Go ride... but check you rear end for play first.
spalkin
Well-known member
#7 Single best improvement was from lubing the shifter arm pivot, but it wasn’t from the added grease. This pivot is a shoulder bolt w/2 thrust washers & a “wave” washer & the proper clearance (read no slop) is obtained by screwing in the bolt till the wave washer is slightly compressed. The bolt is locked in place with blue thread locker from the factory. My bolt was too tight & was binding the shifter. You can easily check this by removing the upper shifter arm from the tranny shifter shaft & seeing that the foot shifter arm moves freely & isn’t binding. Mine was way too tight but I couldn’t tell it cause there is no slop in the linkage, until I disconnected it from the tranny. After removing the shoulder bolt & greasing it, I reinstalled it (with new blue thread locker) without binding it. What a difference. It shifted fine before but now it’s like warm butter. This shifter maintenance can be done by itself by removing the “Shifter/footpeg/sidestand” assy but this assy will have to be removed to remove the “U”joint.
Later,,,De
Later,,,De
Geezer
Parsimonious Curmudgeon
I have not lubed the swing arm yet, but I did replace my rear shock and found very little grease on the moving parts of the linkage at the bottom. Since most grease is not waterproof, even if the factory greased things up well, which they don't, the grease would eventually wash out from riding in the rain. I plan on doing the swingarm and re-doing all the other suspension pivots this winter.
Try these as a couple of reference pages.
Swing Arm
Steering Head Bearing
and, while you have the swing arm off:
U-Joint
since it's in the service tasks, it's worth doing. since it's relatively simple, take your time and you should be fine.
Swing Arm
Steering Head Bearing
and, while you have the swing arm off:
U-Joint
since it's in the service tasks, it's worth doing. since it's relatively simple, take your time and you should be fine.
