I agree with John (jfheath) on this issue.
I know this post is a couple of years old but I wanted to add my experience to rear bearing changes on the ST1300 and add a few new items to the discussion. It is a common error to assume that both bearings are seated by the outer race against the inner seats of the wheel hub. The ST1300 shop manual is not clear about this and in the 2003-2004 manual (they might have corrected later on - I don't know) there is an minor error in the procedure as they have mislabeled the second bearing as "left" instead of "right" On the ST1300 you first DO drive the left bearing in until it seats as normal. Next make sure to put the distance collar in and when you put the Right bearing in you must understand that it DOES NOT seat against the hub seat like you would assume. You drive it very carefully until it kisses the distance collar an no more. IF you are using the proper driving tools from Honda opposed to an old socket you will see that it drives both the inner and outer bearing races in at the same time which allows for the correct seating against the distance collar. You however can still overdrive it even with the proper Honda driving tools but you have a lot better chance of doing it right vs using a socket which puts the driving force ONLY on the outer bearing race. I have not seen a lot of documentation on this and my shop manual doesn't really address this clearly. I checked my Haynes Shop manual and that does not address it either. I learned about this problem when I first did a bearing change on my old ST1100...I had the problem then of what I thought as the distance collar being too long and were making my new bearings very very tight. After asking a lot of questions I deduced the same issue as being talked about here and that is that the distance collar is what you drive your second bearing's inner race to and no more. One more point. Now, before I do a bearing change I check the distance collar spacing by moving it around to see how tight it is before I put the new bearing in. My experience is that it is suppose to be touching but still movable after the new bearing is in place. I assume that people who have early rear bearing failures are overdriving the right bearing in. Bearing will not "wear" in...they instead will wear out too soon if they start off being too tight. If you over-drive them, then plan on starting over again with new bearings. YMMV Tom Johnson - East Winthrop, Maine