Steering head bearing adjustment questions

[Papa Zook]

Well, the mystery has been solved. Detailed inspection revealed badly brinelled bearing races and some extremely sticky goo which I guess was supposed to pass for grease.

I have photos of the bearings and damaged associated hardware kf anyone cares to see them.

Les

Hey Les,

Please send me photos of the damaged bearings and hardware, Id like to see those!

email: info@cutnshootcustoms.com

text: 346-800-7946

Thanks!

[dadztoy]

Hey Les,

Please send me photos of the damaged bearings and hardware, Id like to see those!

email: info@cutnshootcustoms.com

text: 346-800-7946

Thanks!

Here ya go!

[Jack Klarich]

Here ya go!

Lot of etching in those races, bearings must be pretty bad as well

[pwhoever]

Ok, this post is right in line with the thread.

Can anyone confirm that All Balls bearings are the ones used for the rake kits? The reason I ask is because I had to dive in there in an effort to solve a slight possible problem. I discovered that the top bearing is definitely an All Balls bearing, but sometimes prior to getting my bike converted to a trike, I had installed All Balls so not sure if at least my top bearing was reused. The reason for the question is that once I got in there and got top plate off to get to bearing, I discovered that a dust shield was never installed and there was quite a bit of grime in there.

I decided to pull the top bearing and clean out that area. When checking the bearing, there was old grease in it and it did feel slightly gritty when manually turning the inside. I cleaned that up really good and now it smoothly turned so I think I may be ok. I regreased it and put it back in. Back to when I had changed out the stock bearings pre-trike, I had all kinds of problems with lower bearing and screwed it up so I ended up buying another kit and having a shop install the new lower. I had a couple unused parts that I tossed into a drawer in my garage and was able to find them. Luckily, there happened to be a brand new unused dust cover for top bearing as well as a new top bearing. Unfortunately, no outer races.



I was tempted to use my unused All Balls top bearing to replace the one that's in there but I know the normal procedure is to replace the outer race at same time. Is it absolutely necessary to always replace the races or could I get by for now just using a new bearing by itself? The race in there now visually seems fine and smooth. Everything in there is now cleaned up of any grime but I'm just going to stop here for the night. I want to make sure everything is the way it should before putting everything back together...

And I just want to add, according to the maintenance schedule, the steering head bearings are supposed to be rechecked and retorqued every 8k miles. Are they crazy??? After this, I will do it more and will admit that I haven't checked it since the conversion was done 7 years ago. But I'm not going through this nightmare every 8k miles...

[Papa Zook]

The All Balls tapered bearing sets are sold as a pair, so I would assume that yes, both are likely All Balls Bearings & Races. If the upper race looks fine, I would have no concern about not replacing it.

As for Honda's recommendation of an every 8K miles inspect and retorque, I think this was more a function of type of bearings that originally came on the Goldwings.

[pwhoever]

The All Balls tapered bearing sets are sold as a pair, so I would assume that yes, both are likely All Balls Bearings & Races. If the upper race looks fine, I would have no concern about not replacing it.

As for Honda's recommendation of an every 8K miles inspect and retorque, I think this was more a function of type of bearings that originally came on the Goldwings.

Ok, good deal. But then does that mean that races and bearings are not standard for the CSC rake kit and it's up to the installer to use whatever they want? Or do they just reuse the existing stem bearings? I can understand the upper race and bearings but I would question the lower bearings being reused as they get pressed into the Honda stem pretty good.

[pwhoever]

And the 8k check on steering bearings comes from the CSC recommended servicing, not Hondas. Although it might be recommended by Honda as well, I didn't check.