| Author | Message | ||
     Barker |
How do I determine if you bearings are bad? Mine turn smoothly, but they do take a bit of force to turn. | ||
| Jlnance |
Taking a bit of force is ok. Clicks or other noises when you spin the wheel are not. Also, you should not be able to move the wheel in any direction except "around" when you have it mounted on the bike. If it has side to side play, you have a bearing problem. Any reason you think yours are bad? | ||
| Barker |
28k miles, ride some in the rain. Other bearings I have played with seem to move alot more freely. They seem tight, I dont feel any gravely or ruff spots as they turn. | ||
| Al_lighton |
Every time you take your wheels off for tire changes, hang your wheel on your two thumbs and have someone spin the wheel. The grease may cause there to be some consistent drag, that is completely normal. But there should be no notchiness in the rotation. It is a lot easier to sense when there is notchiness when it is spinning on your thumbs than it is when it is spinning on the axle on the bike. It has to be pretty bad to sense it spinning on the bike. You don't want to run a bearing past it's time, because if it goes completely it can be quite dangerous. It can also fail by causing it to spin in the wheel bore, and that ruins the wheel for good, especially on pulley side rear wheel bearings. Conversely, you do not want to replace a good bearing before it's time. You only have a limited number of bearing swaps on these cast alloy wheels. Every time the bearing goes in and out, there is a little trauma to the wheel bore. Bearing swaps should only be done by people you trust with the right tools. The old hammer and socket tricks that work on steel car wheels will trash an alloy motorcycle wheel. That bearing needs to come STRAIGHT out and push STRAIGHT in with no walking/rocking it in. I much prefer a press to put them in, with a cooled bearing and a heated wheel, than the threaded rod HD/Buell tool. The threaded rod Buell tool pulls them in too slowly, and if you have heated the wheel and cooled the bearing, the heat transfers too fast for that slow insertion method, which increases wheel trauma during insertion. Al | ||
| Spike |
Al- What tool do you use for pulling the old bearings out? | ||
| Barker |
on American Sport Bike, I see "9069 - XB Series Wheel Bearing Removal Tool" http://www.americansportbike.com/shoponline/ccp0-p rodshow/9069.html Does that remove and install? | ||
| Al_lighton |
The 9069 tool provides the method for getting purchase on the inner bearing race, but it doesn't provide the locomotion for extraction. You still need a press for that. Al | ||
| Rdkingryder |
Well, found out my rear wheel bearings on my Uly are going out. It's an '07 with only 6,600 miles. I was replacing the tires on it and spun the front, OK and tried to spin the rear and it came to a stop. Rotated the opposite direction and it seem to stop in the same spot. Off to the dealer saturday. | ||
| Blake |
If all that has you thinking that the bearings are bad is that the wheel stopped spinning and "seemed" to stop in the same spot, well, that doesn't in and of itself sound like a problem to me. Stopping in the same spot would indicate a imbalanced wheel, not bad bearings. The resistance to rotation of the three rear wheel bearings, two on belt side, one on brake side, is significant. They will cause the wheel to stop freespinning in a short time. If there is no roughness in rotation when you turn the bearing races with your fingers/thumbs inside the wheel hub and the races are nice and snug, then there is likely no problem. | ||
| Rdkingryder |
I had my fingers in the bearing, like the axle would, while slowly spinning the wheel off the bike. While it was stiff to rotate, it definitely came to a sudden stop. It felt like it actually hit a detent on the bearing. So I slowly rotated it back the other way and it spun then stopped again. Pretty sure it's got a bad spot. Will let all know when I get it back. |
