Greg Field
Cruisin' Guzzisti
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2008
- Messages
- 102
I posted a thread a few years ago about how to really make and keep your cush drive functional. Almost always when I disassemble one, they are frozen in place and nonfuctional for rust and lack of grease. There are several levels to which you can take it:
The most basic is to pull it apart and grease it. If you do not do this, it will seize up and be non-functional. The one on my mutant Coppa Ductapio was in this state after maybe 12,000 miles (I did not write down the mileage but it was almost 2 years ago.)
The next level is to grease and drill out the rubbers so they are not so hard.
The right level, IME and IMO, is to grease it, remove half the pairs of pucks, and then drill them. This is what I always do for my bikes and bikes in my care on which the owner wants to really be nice to his splines. It makes an enormous difference in cush-dirve action that you can feel, and it drastically reduces spline wear. See the earlier thread for pix of that.
After I got back from the National, I had to replace a roasted tire, so I though I's take the 5 minutes to open up the cush drive and see how it was holding up. Here's a pic of what I found:
The pucks were moist with grease and perfect and pliable. The cush bearing surface was just starting to show surface rust. It definitely was still operating, as shown by the shiny spots, but it was crying out in pain for grease. I knocked off the surface rust with a cloth and greased everything well.
Based on this, I'm going to grease it at every tire change, so at about every 7,000 miles on the Ballabio. If you haven't done yours in a while, or ever, I can garantee you it is running in pain, too.
The most basic is to pull it apart and grease it. If you do not do this, it will seize up and be non-functional. The one on my mutant Coppa Ductapio was in this state after maybe 12,000 miles (I did not write down the mileage but it was almost 2 years ago.)
The next level is to grease and drill out the rubbers so they are not so hard.
The right level, IME and IMO, is to grease it, remove half the pairs of pucks, and then drill them. This is what I always do for my bikes and bikes in my care on which the owner wants to really be nice to his splines. It makes an enormous difference in cush-dirve action that you can feel, and it drastically reduces spline wear. See the earlier thread for pix of that.
After I got back from the National, I had to replace a roasted tire, so I though I's take the 5 minutes to open up the cush drive and see how it was holding up. Here's a pic of what I found:
The pucks were moist with grease and perfect and pliable. The cush bearing surface was just starting to show surface rust. It definitely was still operating, as shown by the shiny spots, but it was crying out in pain for grease. I knocked off the surface rust with a cloth and greased everything well.
Based on this, I'm going to grease it at every tire change, so at about every 7,000 miles on the Ballabio. If you haven't done yours in a while, or ever, I can garantee you it is running in pain, too.
