2003 ST1300 swingarm bearings to replace or not to replace, that is the question.

Joined
Aug 30, 2012
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235
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Webb City, MO
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2006 Aprilia Capo
Pulled the swing arm to replace the u-joint and found the swingarm bearing race to have wear marks. The marks can't be felt but are easily visible.

I'm guessing that I should go ahead and replace the bearings, correct?

$42.94 from Ron Ayers (includes shipping).

Enlarged screen capture of the race.

swing-arm-bearings.jpg
(click on the picture, for the big picture)

Currently, the bike has 55,000 miles.
 
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Fort Worth, Texas
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91 ST1100/06 ST1300
Looks like galling...where bearings are not rolling but riding back and forth with the swing arm motion. I saw this same pattern in a bike I rebuilt with tapered steering bearings. It was an old installation that the PO greased with wheel bearing grease. The grease congealed and locked several rollers. I cleaned them up...took soaking in acetone to clean the the hard grease from the rollers....between the cage and inner race was the time consuming part. I could feel no damage or flat spots although the race looked like your photo. Anyway, they cleaned up fine and I reused them...along with some modern grease (used Royal Purple).
 

Byron

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I'd say that if you can't feel any wear and they function smoothly you can re-grease and replace. There are many more bike out there with double the mileage and more without even having the swing arm pulled. Besides, there is really very little movement of the bearings themselves and I doubt there is any chance they would go back together in the same place so would have fresh contact points.
 

BakerBoy

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If you can't feel it (or measure it with a micrometer), and if the rollers aren't flatspotted, you can clean, relube, and reuse with little implication. There's so little swingarm movement, and such a long swing arm length, that slight surface finish change is of no consequence. Even if they were dimpled, you'd have never known it without seeing it by eye
 
OP
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Aug 30, 2012
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Webb City, MO
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2006 Aprilia Capo
I'm going with the consensus, going to reuse the existing bearings.

Cleaned up the rollers with some solvent and lubricated with some lithium based lubricant per the Honda manual.

Appreciate all of the words of wisdom!

Thanks.
 
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May 9, 2014
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Minneapolis, mn
EDITED: Just still didn't seem right, so on the 110th time inspecting the race I now know it's new bearings as well...... With my fingernail 90 degree from the race with a slight amount of pressure I can feel and see my fingernail hang up slightly on the outside of the discolored area and as I continue the movement it releases it and notchily (if that's a word) moved over the discolored area indicating to me that the metal has the slightest of deformation and this ultimately result in issues with being out of spec... ie if I reinstall the same bearing and its on a non-deformed area and then moves enough to slip into this depression the rear could be out of spec and feel loose...

ORIGINAL POST: I realize this is tread is kinda old but thanks as I'm replacing a bad U-Joint and saw my bearings look like this and thought it seemed odd that they could wear all the way around and look like this but after reading the responses and cleaning them up AND running my finger nail over them a 100 times I'm pretty confident that the (what I thought was wear) was just a "stain" on the race and greasing and reinstalling will be fine...
 
Last edited:

ST Gui

240Robert
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EDITED: Just still didn't seem right, so on the 110th time inspecting the race I now know it's new bearings as well...... With my fingernail 90 degree from the race with a slight amount of pressure I can feel and see my fingernail hang up slightly on the outside of the discolored area and as I continue the movement it releases it and notchily (if that's a word) moved over the discolored area indicating to me that the metal has the slightest of deformation and this ultimately result in issues with being out of spec
This sounds like Monday morning quarterbacking but I was surprised in reading your original post that you didn't feel the wear in the race(s).

In just looking at that pic it seems you should certainly be able to feel the wear. So it took a few tries but you did feel it.

Now it could be that the pitted areas are just that— pitted not flattened and still provide the proper smoothness and curvature of a perfect bearing race. That said I'd have put in new bearings and races (assuming that's possible?). $43 is cheap insurance even if it's only to make me feel better. People spend more on oil with too frequent changes.
 
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The picture is from the original poster but mine looked very similar... I'm OCD and if I think the part has ANY compromise I'll replace it no matter cost if it involved my driveline or brakes.... That being said, these bearing don't rotate (only back and forth) and I can see some might interpret this as more of a polish area than a wear area. Like I said earlier it took a very delicate feel to feel the slightest of deformation... By the way I found 2 new Honda bearings on EBay for $1.77 each and $8.49 for shipping so yeah not a hard decision....

This sounds like Monday morning quarterbacking but I was surprised in reading your original post that you didn't feel the wear in the race(s).

In just looking at that pic it seems you should certainly be able to feel the wear. So it took a few tries but you did feel it.

Now it could be that the pitted areas are just that— pitted not flattened and still provide the proper smoothness and curvature of a perfect bearing race. That said I'd have put in new bearings and races (assuming that's possible?). $43 is cheap insurance even if it's only to make me feel better. People spend more on oil with too frequent changes.
 
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