Essential Airhead fixes for South America

[H96669]

Originally Posted by supershaft

I just read H96669's thread a bit. Don't heat up the FD housing from the inside. Heat it up on the outside. It's the case that needs to expand. Plus you can seriously muff the bearing roller cage or worse doing that. The trick is to not cook the paint on the painted models. The nut itself doesn't need that much heat to break the red loctite bond.

Just where I got into a jam, not home to refer to the manual now but if I recall the Clymer suggest 245 F, that is well below the release temperature of Red Loctite.

Did not come off at first so more heat was required after shielding the seal/bearing area with stove gasket.Nut easily came off at 450F. Seal still looked good after all that heat, no dammage done to any of the internals and.....that is exactly how a BMW specialist did the one from my K1200RS, judging from the scorch marks he left inside.

Large mass anyway to heat up, next time I may just start it up in a pot of boiling water.

Notchy pivot bearings, more like well passed notchy....Thanks Mr PO/Mechanic! At least they were "At the right torque".....

Bearings are $30.00 US at Motobins vs $46.00 Online in the US.

[Airhead Wrangler]

Originally Posted by H96669

Notchy pivot bearings, more like well passed notchy....Thanks Mr PO/Mechanic! At least they were "At the right torque".....

Those are UGLY... in all caps.

[supershaft]

I have done a ton of those and have never found the need to scorch anything although it is easy enough to do that is for sure.

Glad it all worked out! The real trick is to get the collar threads super clean and use liquid thread tape on them. That is where they leak most of the time.

The aluminum Paralever pivots often where through their hard anodizing underneath the inner races. Once past the anodizing, the slop is only going to get worse.

[limeymike]

Are you going around the world a couple of times, racing the Dakar or just riding some dirt roads down to South America? You are wasting money you could use on the trip.

[Airhead Wrangler]

Originally Posted by limeymike

Are you going around the world a couple of times, racing the Dakar or just riding some dirt roads down to South America? You are wasting money you could use on the trip.

The trip already happened. Capetown to Vladivostok is now in the works, but still pretty far off. This is now just other people wasting THEIR money.