I have the All Balls in both STs- so far, no issues. It’s a pig of a job to do, but I did them maybe 2-3 years ago. Nice and smooth. My old races weren’t horrible but I could see the bearing marks on the race surface (like a light mark, visible but not palpable). To get the new ones in, I inverted the old race and tapped in the new one using the old one as a same sized template. To get the old one off the steering shaft, I used a Dremel and made a diagonal cut on the race to free it, then used it inverted to help tap the new one in place. I would say that the part of the job that took the longest was getting the bottom race out of the steering head and you need a tool with a slight hook at the bottom. I actually wound up using a prybar that I bought from Lowe’s. I had a very mild curved hook at the bottom and it was good enough that it would grab the edge of the race so I was able to tap it out. Take your time and all will go well. I also used a lot of padding to hold the handlebars up against the dash and windshield as well as some bungee cords to hold the handlebars in place. I also had never done the job before, but once I did the first one, the second one was really straightforward. It’s just a lot of disassembly and reassembly. For me, I had each bike apart in the garage for a couple of days because I was really taking my time doing it. When you tighten the nut once everything was reassembled, I used 20 foot pounds of torque, loosened the retaining nut, then went just a little bit past hand tight because with taper bearings, you don’t need a substantial amount of torque because the bearings were us wedged themselves in place. Once you ride, you may realize the bearings are maybe a hair loose and then, although it’s a pain, do serial tightenings maybe an eighth turn by an eighth turn. With the 94, I have a suspicion they weren’t properly torqued originally because the bottom race may not have been fully seated, but then once the bike was used a few times, I was able to feel a little bit of a clunk in the front end, but now that that bike has been tightened properly, the clunk is completely gone. I did not experience that with the 2000 and did not have to re-torque the bearings. My 94 now has near 60,000 miles on it and the 2000, about 55,000 miles so I suspect I will likely never do them in my ownership of these motorcycles in the future. I only put about maybe 4000 miles per bike per year so it’s going to take a very long time to wear out these bearings.
One more thing, a lot of people will recommend putting the steering head in the freezer overnight and I have a garage freezer, and I did this. The thought is you may be able to shrink the metal just a hair in order to take off the lower race more easily. For the record, that did not work for me. so cutting it became my best option. You have already done quite a bit of work on your ST so I have zero doubt that you can do this easily.
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