you shouldnt have to replace anything unless there is excessive wear. if the swingarm bearings are within specification you just take it apart and clean,regrease and reassemble. i was thinking the same thing about a zerk fitting but didnt have time to mess with it this time around. bob --------------------- >Bob Taylor mentioned in his posting (awhile back) that the inner shaft >race also needed to be replaced at the same time as the bearings. For >those of you with a GTS Service manual-I am looking at page# 6-47. What >parts on that page needed to be replaced? Anyone put a zerk fitting in >the swingarm? > Yeah Bob, I put a zerk on mine when I replaced the bearings. Pretty simple really, just drill & tap the swingarm & screw the zerk in! I put it just to the rear of the top and used one with a bend pointed to the left side to be able to get at it easier! Bob Taylor ---------------- louis; i just serviced my swingarm bearings myself. it is no big deal and you can do it yourself. also if you have some slop in the rear swing arm be sure and check the torque on the swingarm nut. i had just barely some movement and checked the torque before taking off the swingarm and found the torque was about 25lbs low. when it tightened it to specified torque there was no play in the swingarm. just have the right grease on hand and a torque wrench tha t goes to about 100 ft lbs. bob johnson --------------- Subject: Re: Swingarm Bearings Mime-Version: 1.0 Louis, It can be done of course, it's a matter of do you want to? You need to take off the wheel and the fender to make access easy. Now if your swing arm bearings need replacing, you are most likely to need bearings in the link arm that puts the shock to the swingarm. There is one bearing there that went on mine- it's the one with the bolt through it that can only be removed by removing the center stand! So what holds up the bike you say? Good question! I used heavy duty tie down straps going from the roof of our garage to the two grab rails in the back of the bike. BUT, with the back wheel removed, the top of the bike will now become heavier than the bottom when measured through the line from the front tire contact patch to these grab rails, so the bike will try to overturn. This is easily remedied by tying a lightweight rope or another tiedown to the center of the handlebars and putting it to the ceiling. Now the bike will be stable enough. Make sure you have the right wrenches before you go for this job! I seem to remember getting away with english sizes for the big bolt that goes through the swing arm bearings. You must take off the plastic caps to see what size the nut and bolt are. When you go to replace the bearings, get all the seals that go around them of course. It's going to cost you probably 200 in parts, easy. But if they're loose, they're loose. The center linkage bearings go because the way they are designed to be sealed is about as shitty as the way they designed the seal around the upper a arm bearings in the front. They are just bound to need replacing. -Greg \ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / \|/ \|/ Greg Christopher | | | | | | stork@best.com ----------------------------- Yes, the bearings are pressed into place. Note: if you don't have play in the shock thingie, you won't need the crazy contraption I described earlier. -Greg --------------------------- thanks bob; did you place it in the center of the shaft or to one side? when i do the swingarm next time the zerk will be added. by the way bob are you interested in going to the ama races in phoenix weekend after this one coming up? im looking for someone to go over with. bob johnson -------------------- When I looked at doing this the dealer said that the metal was too thin for the fitting. Last time I trust dealers! -------------------- From: RSRBOB@aol.com Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 09:20:49 EST Subject: Re: Swingarm and Yamaha marketing Hi All! Starting off with the swing arm problem. My brother in law and I just finished up revamping all the pivot points in his rear swing arm. He got his GTS with 22,000 miles on it. He noticed that there was freeplay, IE SLOP, in the pivots. Best way to tell this is lay your chest across the seat while standing on the right side of the machine, and grab the swing arm and lift up. If it moves, you have excessive clearance in a pivot point, somewhere. We replaced all the bearings, bushings and seals, but found that there was two main culprits. The first was the clearance between the swing arm pivot axle and the "bushing". The bushing is a log tube like piece of steel that is used as the inner race for the swing arm bearings and also the bushing that the frame tightens against when the nut on the pivot axle is torqued. His axle/bolt had wear, so the bushing had play on the bolt. Replacing the bolt and the bushing solved that, although in retrospect, the bolt by itself would have done it. The second part to the solution was not so easy. Even with the new bolt, he had the axial, side to side freeplay others here have mentioned. He took a different approach, he machined two of the original old spacers, down to make shims to take up the additional clearance. He estimated the original thickness at about 0.080", and he ground them down to 0.019". He installed one on each end underneath the end caps, and eliminated all freeplay. As an aside, why everyone is concerned with this problem is eliminating undamped movement of the suspension. Any movement of the swingarm that is not controlled by the suspension can result in the handling woes described on the list. As far as marketing, and the 80's, they did learn somthing, it is better to sell out then get stuck with left over inventory. As far as dealers profit, although they could have sold more product, there sales were significantly up over the previous years, so it is like a fish overboard crying for more water. I understand it is tempting to complain about lost sales, but should someone really complain about growing a business at a rate of 25% a year? Bob ------------------ In a message dated 2/14/99 2:02:24 PM Pacific Standard Time, neelin@escape.ca writes: << Someone was commenting on a specific part where the grease washes out, I haven't found the message or the part...does anyone know what I'm talking about. Any pointers on things to watch out for (wear, etc.) on the Front or Rear (it's next) end? >> Robert; What I found with mine apart is that the bushings in the upper control arm tend to get dry. The right side has ;the needle bearing the the left side is a bushing. Also the right side has a rubber boot over it while the left side doesn't. I bought another rubber boot and put it on the left side for added protection. Also what I found on the bearings and bushings when I reassembled is that I had about 5 thousands side to side play that I didn't notice before I took it apart but there was no play in the bearing itself. I checked with Yamaha and they said that they have found that even with a new bearing and bushing set you might still have a little side to side play. I took it out by buying some sheets of shimming in sizes 1-3 and 5 thousands then cut and couple of washers out of the sheets to fit over the bushing. It took out all the play without any binding. I checked it before hooking ;up the rest of the front end. Bob J.