Article [13] ST1300 - U-joint Remove/Replace

Hi,
About a month ago I did my u-joint R/R. And I said I'd post my experience. Well... work, home, and kids have kept me from even visiting the best site ever! ( st-owners.com ).

I thought my blog site might give me more posting options and it lets me save without posting.

Anyway the post is HERE (http://tomdeboeser.wordpress.com/my-st1300-u-joint-rr/).

man, keeping a job these days is hard... but thats a different story .

Re: My U-joint R/R ( remove / replace ) aka... I'm back...

Nice write up. How many miles did you have on the bike when you replaced the u joint?

Re: My U-joint R/R ( remove / replace ) aka... I'm back...

66k, gotta weird vibration around 54k. Theres a u-joint thread here:

https://www.st-owners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46961

Re: My U-joint R/R ( remove / replace ) aka... I'm back...

That was really cool to see. Don't worry about not having video or believing you're not a good writer, the pictures are all worth a thousand words and your explanations were well done. Having been curious about the u-joints and having not been that far into the *** end of my ST, I now have a really good idea what I will eventually be in for.

Thanks.

Ray

Re: My U-joint R/R ( remove / replace ) aka... I'm back...

Thanks for the kind words. I'm going to update the photobucket pics with descriptions...more words might help.

Re: ST1300 U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Great info. Thanks Tom!

Re: ST1300 U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Hello. Well I followed your advice and checked out my U-joint as I have been having this nagging vibration that can't seem to get rid of and the bike has 100,000 miles on it, so I figured what the heck. The joint was fine so I re-installed it. Got most of the bike back together and then checked the parts schematic and noticed an oil seal between the drive shaft and the u-joint. Problem is, I didn't see one when I took it apart. Is there one? Did it fall into the swing arm when I removed it and I didn't notice it upon re-assembly? There is zero mention of it in the service manual and no sign of it in any of the diagrams. Thanks for your help.

Re: ST1300 U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Bill Tinge said:

Hello. Well I followed your advice and checked out my U-joint as I have been having this nagging vibration that can't seem to get rid of and the bike has 100,000 miles on it, so I figured what the heck. The joint was fine so I re-installed it. Got most of the bike back together and then checked the parts schematic and noticed an oil seal between the drive shaft and the u-joint. Problem is, I didn't see one when I took it apart. Is there one? Did it fall into the swing arm when I removed it and I didn't notice it upon re-assembly? There is zero mention of it in the service manual and no sign of it in any of the diagrams. Thanks for your help.

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The seal was on the shaft. When I pulled the final drive, the shaft was sticking out and had a seal around that. When the shaft went into the final drive, the seal should press against that so it's possible your seal stayed in the final drive unit when you pulled it off.

You said the u-joint was okay. Would it move easily on it's axis or was it firm?

Re: ST1300 U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Got it. I ordered the seal and when I took the final drive off again and looked more closely, I realized that the seal in the schematic is the one where the shaft goes into the final drive, just as you describe. Thanks.

Since I have you on line, we will be riding in Texas in April, renting BMW RT's in Austin. And advice on where to go? We have a week. Thanks again.
Bill

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

After reading this thread recently and following the experiences of our friend Shuey I started looking for a good low mileage U-joint to put on the garage shelf. I am almost at 100K and likely will ride my '05 well into the second 100K. Honda lists the part for $122 which isn't all the much but used parts are more plentiful than I thought and found a matched U-joint, drive shaft, and final drive for less than $80 on fleaBay. The parts are from a 2007 that was totaled with left front and front plastic damage. The fill and drain fittings on the final drive have not been touched with wrench or socket so I believe them to have less than 18,000 miles. They look and feel brand new. Now that I have spares I will probably never need them - isn't that how it works?

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Wise idea on putting a u-joint in my bin-o-parts. I looked at all the u-joint replacement experience on this site, I figure 70K miles is a good replacement service life FOR ME since I often ride 100's of miles at a time in rain. I'm going to write this as a maintenance item in my Service Manual chapter 3 so I don't forget.

84K Slo~ride
80K Shuey
152K CrazyKZ
71K Yowsasz
48K Steve - from WI
66K Tdeboeser
50K Mellow

78K is Average mileage
70K is Average mileage if you throw out the highest and lowest values.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

RCS said:

Wise idea. I looked at all the u-joint replacement experience on this site and I figure 75K miles is a good replacement service life FOR ME.

84K Slo~ride
80K Shuey
152K CrazyKZ
71K Yowsasz
48K Steve - from WI
66K Tdeboeser
50K Mellow

78K is Average mileage
70K is Average mileage if you throw out the highest and lowest values.

Click to expand...

Recently Gandolkf with just over 32k.

But, you're sorta assuming they will all fail using that average.. if you look at just the mileage awards on the site, many with 50k, quite a few over that, your chances of having a bad one 'ever' are reduced quite a bit.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Mellow said:

Recently Gandolkf with just over 32k.

But, you're sorta assuming they will all fail using that average.. if you look at just the mileage awards on the site, many with 50k, quite a few over that, your chances of having a bad one 'ever' are reduced quite a bit.

Click to expand...

I agree that a u-joint failure may never, ever happen but I tend to be overly conservative as virtually all of my rides are 600 miles in a sitting - so to speak - and I have and will continue to ride through tropical storms.

I reason there are two schools of thought on this. Either it is never going to fail or it is going to fail. So, taking the latter school of thought, if it is going to fail it, based on experience it will fail at around 70,000 miles.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

jinx #1 - I believe that since I replaced mine at 50k, I will never have another u-joint issue ever again.
jinx #2 - On 4/19 after 3 years of ownership I DID NOT purchase the extended warranty as I do not believe I will ever have another issue that will necessitate the use of said warranty.

Now, BRB - I'm going to go run with scissors.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

I am of the school that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. These types of joints generally don't fail just like that but rather give lots to a fair amount of warning with increased vibration, slop, or noise. I can appreciate changing it out based on a fixed time or mileage but I'll just check lash often and feel & listen for changes. We have evidence of a few failing ones but there are thousands upon thousands of them in use. The same joint or this one with small differences is used in all shaft drive Hondas from 750 to 1800cc with no history of premature failure.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

dduelin said:

I am of the school that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. These types of joints generally don't fail just like that but rather give lots to a fair amount of warning with increased vibration, slop, or noise. I can appreciate changing it out based on a fixed time or mileage but I'll just check lash often and feel & listen for changes. We have evidence of a few failing ones but there are thousands upon thousands of them in use. The same joint or this one with small differences is used in all shaft drive Hondas from 750 to 1800cc with no history of premature failure.

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I think, some of the GL1800s as well as Valkyrie 1500s are seeing some failures but, like you said, based on how many are in use it's a very small failure rate.

I think I was lucky, mine failed on one side of the u-joint and if there was vibration, I didn't notice it... but some of the other guys that had them fail did seem to have some unusual vibration but it probably feels similar to a bad tire or one very much out of balance.. I personally feel your clutch will go out before your u-joint - statistically speaking.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Mellow said:

I think, some of the GL1800s as well as Valkyrie 1500s are seeing some failures but, like you said, based on how many are in use it's a very small failure rate.

I think I was lucky, mine failed on one side of the u-joint and if there was vibration, I didn't notice it... but some of the other guys that had them fail did seem to have some unusual vibration but it probably feels similar to a bad tire or one very much out of balance.. I personally feel your clutch will go out before your u-joint - statistically speaking.

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You did notice changes in how the shaft sounded and the way the wheel acted when turned some 4,000 miles before replacing it right? And you probably could have ridden it like that for thousands more before it failed completely. It would get seriously noisy. Some of us that have rear wheel drive cars now or remember when we had one years ago know how worn universals telegraph problems for a long time before failing. That is why I never could understand seeing a car or truck on the side of the road with a dead driveshaft hanging down on one end or lying on the road. One has to ignore the signals a while for this to happen. My experience anyway.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

dduelin said:

You did notice changes in how the shaft sounded and the way the wheel acted when turned some 4,000 miles before replacing it right? And you probably could have ridden it like that for thousands more before it failed completely. It would get seriously noisy. Some of us that have rear wheel drive cars now or remember when we had one years ago know how worn universals telegraph problems for a long time before failing. That is why I never could understand seeing a car or truck on the side of the road with a dead driveshaft hanging down on one end or lying on the road. One has to ignore the signals a while for this to happen. My experience anyway.

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In my case, never felt any vibration.. but the spinning of the rear wheel would make a noise that 'I thought' was due to the new dampeners I installed for no particular reason.. sounded just like you were compressing them.. so I figured it was just 'cus they were new but the more I looked at the rear wheel action, the light bulb went off.

Here's my vid of the noise/action I was getting - The 1/2 of the u-joint on the engine-side will only turn with the output shaft, the one on the driveshaft side need to not only turn but also rotate while at an angle as the swingarm moves up and down. Mine was failing at the engine-side so I think that particular failure bought me some more of an indication. I do believe if you are feeling some excessive vibrations it's time to pull over and check it out.. I'm just not sure how much of that happens before the failure is so bad the swingarm is toast as well.

[video=youtube;otnNHbI-EiM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otnNHbI-EiM[/video]

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

If the failure has progressed bad enough that the spinning parts are hitting the swingarm and still don't prompt a search for the reason.............well, there you go.

Re: ST1300 - U-joint R/R ( remove / replace )

Mellow said:

Here's my vid of the noise/action I was getting

Click to expand...

Extremely helpful video and sound. Thank you.

I'm not at all worried about u-joint failure on the road other than my bike isn't covered by warranty and I'd hate to toast a swingarm. If I can I'd rather do my best to ID the problem in my garage before a trip and make the necessary replacement. I'll put this test on my pre-long-ride-checklist.

This video with sound helps.