Bike Maintenance
Well, it looks like it came apart pretty easily. Glenn came over on Sunday morning and we went to work on some swingarm maintenance. The objective was to remove all of the pivot bolts that hold the subframe, swingarm and suspension together to get at the innards, then re-grease all of the bearings and jot down the numbers in the workshop manual for future reference.
I don’t have a very professional workshop and therefore needed to make do with a few bodgied-up items for the task. The bike-stand is cut from a tree stump out at Glenn’s farm with a piece of old tyre tube stretched over the top. The process of hoisting the bike up involves rocking it back onto the sidestand, shoving the tree stump under the frame (watching out for the sump plug) and then rocking the bike up and onto the stump. This naturally tips the bike back so I tied a piece of rope from the ceiling to the rear footpeg and hauled it up.
First step was to take the back wheel off. Basically held on by a big bolt with a nut on the end, unscrew the nut, bash the axle out (gently) and wiggle the wheel out taking care to remove the chain.
Remove every LARGE bolt in sight and the swingarm will eventually come off, lean it somewhere safe like this open garage door.
Below is a picture of the innards of the bike without tyre or swingarm. The silver bit poking backwards is the stand, the coily bit dangling down in the centre is the rear shock absorber and the chain is hanging free beside the tree stump. We located every bearing and greased it all up and Glenn cleaned the chain. We discovered the bit sitting on top of the tyre in the above pic comes off a lot easier if you undo the bolts holding the engine case to the frame. If we had realised this while taking it out, there wouldn’t be a hundred dents all over it’s poor little aluminium backside.
Okay, job finished, back tyre went back on very awkwardly. I’d had a really really big night and the sun / frustration / awkwardness nearly made me sick. Cleaned up the workshop, kicked the stump out from under it and went inside to watch TV.
I rode it the next day without the wheels falling off. In other words a job well done.