Better to do it yourself - swingarm bearings

[ViciousCycle]

1000 miles ago I paid the local Yamaha dealer to replace my swing arm bearings(16000 mile maintenance) and steering bearings(they were shot).
Usually I do this sort of thing myself, but time for projects has been hard to come by lately.

On the way to work last night the rear end felt a little squirrelly getting on and off the throttle. I checked tire pressure, axle nut tightness, and temp on the final drive unit. All appeared okay from a quick and dirty inspection.

Driving it home this morning, I found that opening the throttle drove the rear end to the right and closing it was driving it left. Went to bed and tossed and turned knowing my chances of riding the bike to work tonight weren't to good.

When I got up this afternoon, I checked the swing arm bearings and found that the right side pivot shaft was several turns away from being even hand tight. I torqued it and the locknut down and checked the left side shaft. It was overtorqued, so I retightened it to the proper torque. Then I noticed that the four nuts weremissing from the studs on the cover where the driveshaft enters the final drive unit. Holy crap! how did I not see that before? I'm not sure if the Yamaha service tech removed them when replacing the swingarm bearings and then didn't replace them, failed to tighten them, or what. I have to look at the service manual and see if he could have done the job without removing those nuts...

In the meanwhile, I'll be very carefully checking everything on the rear of the bike before I take it on the road again(plus replacing the nuts on the driveshaft cover).

P.S. If this looks familiar, it's because I posted something similar on VMOAtech this morning because VmaxForum was down for maintenance.

 

[Buster Hymen]

Holy crap! It never fails to amaze me how lousy the service is you get from dealership with a VMax. For a bike that has had very few changes for the last 20 plus years, you would think they would have figured it out by now.
Any ways glad you were able to fix their mistakes. I have heard that over torquing the swingarm bearings will cause handling issues. I think someone makes replacement swingarm bolts that take the slopout of the swingarm.

 

[firefly]

Its always good to visually check the work that was done, good mechanics can forget things too, I am blessed with a dealer mechanic that is not on drugs or alcohol and is meticulous and very clean in his work but I still visually inspect the bike after service.
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