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Swingarm bearings.

GTM®

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GT di Razza Pura
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It's worth pulling the arm when fairly new to grease 'em.

Just to cheer you up I thought you'd like to see what the factory grease phobia will make your CARC bike swingarm bearings look like if you don't grease 'em.









Admittedly this bike, a 1200 Sport owned by a guy who rides the piss out of it, is in for its 100,000 service but if they grease'em properly on assembly it wouldn't be an issue. The linkage bearings were pretty bad too.
 
Thanks for the pics, glad those splines still look good after 100000K too :D

Stretch
 
I did mine at 20k before the rust set in. I replaced on another at 30k. Im fiting breva gearing to a Norge at the moment and his bearings are collapsed and knackered at 75k. I suppose mine at 90k are worth doing again.
Cheers
Milton
 
Are they not greasing them properly as they should because they save a big bunch of cash from all dat greaz
or are they afraid that their ready-to-sell bikes will develop minor stains from grease overflow when the sun hits them in the shop windows for hours and so they will be sending customers away from these... leaky italians?
 
How did you remove the outer races from the frame please?

Have just stripped my bike down and the swinging arm bearings are done, this after 10 thousand miles.

Thanks
 
I'm planning to have a go at this over the winter and having a look through the manual there seems to be the need for a Guzzi special tool. Is this necessary or is it possible to improvise?

Cheers.
Iain
 
Just a note the swingarm bearing on my yamaha scorpio sx4 225cc went at about 30000km, the dealers said they didn't get much crease on assembly so probably alot of manufacturers are stingy with grease packing!
 
iainw said:
I'm planning to have a go at this over the winter and having a look through the manual there seems to be the need for a Guzzi special tool. Is this necessary or is it possible to improvise?

Cheers.
Iain
If you are talking about a type of peg spanner for the ring nut, any adjustable C spanner will work.
 
Yeah my steering head bearings went south at 25,000km which caused me to check the swing arm and rear shock linkages. All pretty dry. My mechanic tells me that most makes are dry now even jappers and Beemers. Very scary and piss poor in my book!
 
Guy R said:
Yeah my steering head bearings went south at 25,000km which caused me to check the swing arm and rear shock linkages. All pretty dry. My mechanic tells me that most makes are dry now even jappers and Beemers. Very scary and piss poor in my book!
This kinda stuff just bothers me. I have a brand new bike and it looks like I need to take it apart and grease everything. I've already noticed the that the shift linkage (rearsets) is dry as a bone.

What's the preferred lubricant for head bearings and swingarm bearings?
 
SOME :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sorry .... just any good lithium based grease. My suggestion is to look out for the seals in the swing arm as they can be poorly aligned on the inner as it is easily displaced when reassembling
 
Kym? Are you talking abut the same swingarm? On the CARC bikes there is an internal seal in the frame that is supposed to keep grease in :roll: the cone of the bearing has an integral seal incorporated in the outer race. I can't see how it can be displaced???

In theory it's a fine design. As long as it is packed full of grease and serviced regularly. In practice, because they are too cheap to do the job properly at the factory, they will fail early and often unless packed right.

What I find so STUPID is that in the factory service schedule they say you should rebuild the forks at the first service! Why for f@cks sake would you ask the forks be rebuilt? Do they have a special assembly line in the Showa factory for Guzzi bike forks where they fill them with sand? NOWHERE in the service schedule is it SPECIFIED that the swingarm bearings or shock linkages should be checked and overhauled.

Cretins and bean counters...
 
Just as an addendum to this I had a Stelvio in today that the owner was happy for me to check both the linkage and swingarm bearings on. It is a 2010 model but was only registered last year. Pulling the arse out of it revealed a tiny quantity of lithium grease in the swingarm bearings and essentially bugger-all in the linkages. In future I am going to STRONGLY suggest to all my customers that they pay to have this service performed early in the piece as it will greatly extend the life of the components.

In anticipation of what I expect to be a disaster when I pull my swingarm on my Griso, (When I have a chance to scratch myself!) I've ordered in new seals, bearings etc for both the S-arm and linkages and expect to spend a tedious and frustrating day or two swapping the whole bloody lot out. I'll probably swap out the steering head bearings for tapered rollers at the same time and stick a new shock on it while I get the forks rebuilt, resprung and revalved by my local suspension bloke. Then it might be less like riding a Garden Gate Norton when you hit a big bump! It handles OK but bugger me its unforgiving to my beaten up old bod!
 
Thanks for the replies on the tool. I thought the nut might be recessed from looking at the parts diagrams but the photos in the post show that it's clear and can be accessed with a C spanner, so I'll use one of those.

I recall reading on a BMW forum that they use special grease on the gearbox output shaft. Is this necessary on the Guzzi or will the lithium bearing grease be sufficient?

Thanks.
 
Grease free zone

As much as I love my Stelvio I have had it long enough to know it's a bit Friday afternoon.
So yesterday I dropped out the swinging arm and lower linkage to see if there was any grease there (I've only done 16k miles so in theory it should be ok).
The link was so dry all the needles fell to the bottom once I took the inner races out, I have attached a pic of the g/change side swinging arm bearing. No danger of getting your hands dirty there.

The job didn't take long but was complicated as the drive shaft came away from the bevel end first so I had to drop the bevel off to join it all up again. This was probably made worse as the splines were also dry so I put a bit of moly grease on each spline.

A couple of hours well spent thanks for the tip.
Ray
 

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Heads up for BNS12 Carcs:

The shop manual makes no mention of the fact that the foot peg side plates have two bolts at the bottom that also stabilize the centerstand. Once the two bolts, each side, are removed the center stand is free to pivot on the gearbox bolt. This job requires a wheel chock and a lift under the engine to hold up the bike while doing the work. Fortunately, I caught the bike before it fell over. A sore knuckle and smashed threads on 2 bolt was the only damage.
 
Rafael said:
Heads up for BNS12 Carcs:

The shop manual makes no mention of the fact that the foot peg side plates have two bolts at the bottom that also stabilize the centerstand. Once the two bolts, each side, are removed the center stand is free to pivot on the gearbox bolt. This job requires a wheel chock and a lift under the engine to hold up the bike while doing the work. Fortunately, I caught the bike before it fell over. A sore knuckle and smashed threads on 2 bolt was the only damage.

Thanks for the heads up. This will probably apply to the Norge as well since they are so similar.
 
When i did my swinging arm bearings on my Breva 1100, as I removed each foot peg side plate I put a short nut and bolt in to hold the centre stand in place. Worked fine and I could remove the whole unit with the bike on the centre stand.
 
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