Swing-arm & rear shock linkage maintenance

After the previously mentioned "swimming" exercises with my WRR, figured it was time...
Time for new tires, time for new bits, time to upgrade my suspension, time to get the mud out, and time to get some grease in.

Take your shoes off baby, make yourself comfortable.


After cleaning this wound several times, she's still bleeding.



Guess it was time to remove the skid plate and address a few obvious issues here as well.


Loosen 4 bolts on the triple clamps, twist, pull, cuss and then twist and pull some more. Eventually her legs will come off.


Old wire hangers are always handy to have around.


Using HF's method of grabbing a few wrenches and "getting after it", sure enough, her pants come right off.








The bolts holding the swing arm, relay arm, dog bone and shock in place
were all showing signs of wear. Similar to what HF found, mine had
extreme wear marks that you can see and feel, and even some pitting
from corrosion.


Once I got the swingarm off, I flipped it over to see if I had any
chain damage. I probably wouldn't have thought to check for this had it
not been for 10Cup finding it first.


Judging by the amount of mud, water and grime that spilled out while
taking all this apart, I think it was definitely time to freshen things
up. I stuck my finger in a few of the bearings and they feel like they
are packed with sand and mucus, not grease. I'll post up the horrific
pictures of my bearing's contents and reassembly process as soon as my
suspenders are completed.

How many miles on this puppy ???

Bob

Sweet!!

*I haven't looked around yet, but is there a good write-up on the process? I know i can use my manual, just figured it would be nice to have something to go along with it.

Not that I've found, but its pretty straightforward once you get into it. The service manual does have a procedure for it, but its convoluted and spread over a few sections.

Loosen the rear wheel nut, put the bike on a center stand. Consider the removing the rear brake lever for clearance and so you don't accidentally apply the rear brake.

Remove the rear wheel and axle, set aside.

Remove the brake caliper and unscrew the lines from the swingarm, hang from the frame with wire or something.

Unbolt the shock linkages and dog bone, remove. Unbolt the upper mount, remove the shock (didn't remove the shock, should have). I also didn't tear apart the linkage's bearings, just repacked it. I didn't want to chance botching reassembly...

Clean the hell out of everything. Mineral spirits or kerosene works great. Be careful with the lower shock linkage, its got a weird caged bearing. Grease everything with your favorite brand. Installation is the reverse of disassembly.

http://www.wrrdualsport.com/tech-guide/chassis/66-swingarmmaint

While your at it, clean and repack the rear wheel bearing, swap ends and do the front too.

I really need to do all this again, not hard but tedious, not looking forward to it.

2goose wrote:

How many miles on this puppy ???

Bob

3219 miles.

inspector wrote:

I haven't looked around yet, but is
there a good write-up on the process?

If you check WR250forum.forumotion.com someone posted pictures of this dis-assembly. There are only 4 or 5 bolts, so as HF said, grab a few wrenches and get to it.
I also found this detailed write up somewhere.

skierd wrote:

Loosen the
rear wheel nut, put the bike on a center stand. Consider the removing
the rear brake lever for clearance and so you don't accidentally apply
the rear brake.

Remove the rear wheel and axle, set aside.

Remove the brake caliper and unscrew the lines from the swingarm, hang from the frame with wire or something.

Unbolt
the shock linkages and dog bone, remove. Unbolt the upper mount, remove
the shock (didn't remove the shock, should have). I also didn't tear
apart the linkage's bearings, just repacked it. I didn't want to chance
botching reassembly...

Clean the hell out of everything. Mineral
spirits or kerosene works great. Be careful with the lower shock
linkage, its got a weird caged bearing. Grease everything with your
favorite brand. Installation is the reverse of disassembly.

http://www.wrrdualsport.com/tech-guide/chassis/66-swingarmmaint

I just went and did mine for the first time yesterday and it was pretty straight forward.

Took off the rear wheel. Pulled the caliper away from the swingarm after sliding it from its slot, and unscrewing the retaining brackets that hold the brake hose to it, then slid a thin piece of corrugated plastic in between the pads. Unbolted the lower dog leg where it attaches to the underside of the swingarm; no lower shock mount unbolting is necessary (I greased the dog leg assembly back when I put the Yamalink in, so the upper dog leg has lots of grease due to having a nipple in it). Removed the front sprocket cover and case saver. Removed the swingarm pin; I did not have to remove the rear brake pedal assembly, and pulled the swingarm away from the bike. Removed the chain. At this point I put the chain and any dirty parts into a bucket with kerosene in it and let it all soak.
Mine must have been one of the bikes they shipped with grease in the swingarm. There was a tiny drop of water just on the inside of the swingarm before the bearing...other than that no dirt or yucky other stuff but the grease that was jammed in there. Ou came the Ultra Duty II and repacked the whole cluster, along with the pins and a small bead on the inside of the dust covers. You might want to check the rubber dust seals on the engine block as well as the inner arms of the swingarm for wear. I took a rag with kerosene on it and gave it a good wipe so I could inspect it closer and there were no shreds of rubber or cracks. It's also a good idea to check your wheel bearings while you have it off and repack those as well. The only trouble I ran into thru this whole thing were cold fingers. Bike's got over 5000 miles on it. Only wear were the inside bearing sleeves which was easily fixed by rubbing 1500 grit wet or dry over it a bit to take off the minimal scoring.

I have a question about swing arm greasing and maintenance. I read through this thread and I read through HF's writeup on wrrdualsport.com. I think it looks mostly straight forward, but I do have some concerns:

1. HF seems to soak everything in mineral spirits. Doesn't that dissolve any/all grease packed in the bearings and all around? Can everything be relubed easily? Is soaking really required?

2. I can lube a shaft or a bolt, no problem. But I see no details about lubing bearings. Some are "sealed" apparently, some are not. How do you lube each? Do you take any apart first?

3. In HF's writeup, his Connecting Rod turned into a small pile of metal needles (the bearing). Should I expect this to happen? How difficult is it to get the needles back in and reassemble?

4. What are the torque specs for all those bolts? Can I find them somewhere?

Thanks!

1) The point of soaking is to clean away all of the old dirty grease thats contaminated with sand, grit, crap, gravel, water, and whatever else you've been riding through. Everything can be relubed easily enough. If you want to get everything clean, soaking is required.

2) The wheel bearings can be repacked if you c a r e f u l l y pry off the dust shield with a pick tool. Get a good one so the tip doesn't break and fall in. Jam it full of grease until you can't more in, then replaced the cover using a large socket or something similar to apply even pressure. The weird caged bearings in the linkage is a different beast, just make sure she's dry from the mineral spirits and carefully put some grease in there with your finger. Both times i've done this (both bikes) I've managed to get a little of the yellow cage material out too unfortunately, but it doesn't seem to be worse for wear. As far as the connecting rod...

3) Yes the needle bearings are supposed to come out. It is slightly tedious but pretty darn easy to get back together. Using a white tupperware pan like HF (and I the last time) did makes it easy to find all the little buggers. I found it easiest to separate them into two separate equal numbered piles. Pack the bearing area in the conrod with grease. Put each needle bearing back in with a helping of grease on top of it to help it stick and stay until they all are in, the readily dropped back into place on mine and it was obvious when it was done. It really isn't a hard job at all!

Torque specs are something like 49ft#'s for everything except the rear axle, which is 89ft#'s or thereabouts. They can be found in the shop manual (PM shewolf if you need it).

Well, I just got finished taking off the swing arm and rear linkage components, lubing them, and putting them back on. Overall a pretty easy job, though I did have a few small hangups.

I have less than 1K miles on the bike and all the bearings looked nice and cleaned and greased. However, everything else was bone dry. So, I spent a good time lubing up all the parts that move.

Everything is back together now. So, the small snag I had... the lower shock mounting bolt... where the shock mounts to the angled bracket thing... I'm not sure I didn't strip the damn thing. So, I have a pretty nice torque wrench. I set it to 38 ft/lbs and started to tighten it down. However, given that I was using an extension, I was being very careful not to wiggle anything or overtighten. Well, I know I got past 20 ft/lbs.. and a bit more.. but then it kinda just kept going. My torque wrench didn't click. So I stopped and left it like that. All other bolts (torqued to their 50-something ft/lbs specifications) clicked as expected.

So now I'm a bit worried. I mean, it's TIGHT, but I'm not sure if I overdid it. Didn't FEEL like I did, but I don't know why it didn't hit the torque I set it for.

Mr.Metal wrote:

Well, I know I got past 20 ft/lbs.. and a bit more.. but then it kinda just kept going. My torque wrench didn't click. So I stopped and left it like that. All other bolts (torqued to their 50-something ft/lbs specifications) clicked as expected.

May seem like a silly question, but are you sure the bolt head is seated all the way so the entire bolt is not turning as you torque the nut? If the entire bolt is not turning, then it kind of sounds like you may have stripped something. 38ft pounds is not very much and shouldn't have been too difficult to torque, unless you have a really short wrench

If the bolt is seated and the nut still just seems to turn freely, I would pull the nut off and look at the threads before putting the bike back into service.

Well, shit.
I pulled the lower shock mounting bolt. Stripped like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls.

I guess I overdid it with the torque wrench, still not sure how that happened. So now I have to see how quickly I can order a replacement bolt. Guess who is NOT going dirt riding this weekend.

Finally got around to swing arm / relay / connecting rod maintenance.

Good news it was much easier than expected - I'm inexperienced at wrenching and got through it no problems. I recommend looking at High Five's 2 tips as both came in handy:

High Five Swing Arm Maintenance

Don't worry about all those pins falling out. They go back in very easily.

Bad news was my swing arm was damaged. Comments on swing arm damage in other thread are here (pg. 5)

Did my swing arm, etc. maintenance last night as well - pretty straightforward, just messy. Plan on having plenty of rags/shop towels handy. Glad I did this now too, because I found some early signs of chain wear on my swing arm as well, so I ordered a new guard.

Does anyone have the exact torque specs for putting it all back together? And is it recommended to use loctite on everything?

Thanks.

Go to general maintenance thread and see Sticky up top for torque values. Sorry. On phone. Links are PIA

gatorfan wrote:

Go to general maintenance thread and see Sticky up top for torque values. Sorry. On phone. Links are PIA

Got 'em, thanks. I searched earlier, but didn't come up with that page. Saved them to Evernote now.

I had gotten a 2020 WR250R this past April with 712 miles on it.

I had greased the dogbone and knuckle bearings at around 1,000 miles. The bearings in the dogbone and knuckle had a decent amount of grease in them but I had cleaned them up and regreased them anyway.

At the time I did not remove the swingarm bolt to lube the swingarm bearings.

I had removed, cleaned and regreased the dogbone, knuckle and swingarm bearings yesterday. I was happy to find that the swingarm bearnings had a good amount of grease in them but I had cleaned and regreased them anyway as I plan on keeping and riding the WR for a while.

I'm going to have the gold valve/RaceTech installed, maybe this winter. The fast rebound is not really affecting me as I have not been riding fast enough or on rough enough trails to have the back end kicking up on me but I would like a tad more plushness and to have the rebound controlled a little better.