Chuck

The chicken enjoying a little acrobatic flight.. 2017-02-16_11-53-37 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr I can tell you a little about tapered bearings. Aircraft use them, and at every annual inspection, one of the requirements is to remove, inspect, and repack the wheel bearings. So. Wipe up what's left of Luigi's packing job, and give it a good cleaning in the solvent tank. Blow it off. Yes, you can make the bearing spin with air pressure. Avoid that temptation. I've been told that you can get it spinning fast enough for centrifugal force to blow it up in your hand. I don't know that, but I've never tempted fate. Now that is cleaned, you can inspect it with your 10x glass. 2017-02-16_11-52-16 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr What you are looking for are very small flats on the rollers called brinelling. See any? It's toast.. Ok, the bearing has been inspected.. no need for a new one. Time to pack it. Put a gob in your hand, take the bearing in your other, and repeatedly smack the bearing into the grease. It will take a *lot* more than you think. Some mechanics push and slide the bearing against their hand. Both methods work. Just smearing grease on the outside is useless. 2017-02-16_11-52-35 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr You'll see hydraulic pressure force the grease into the bearing, and it will come out the top. Continued whatever method you are doing, while rotating the bearing around until every time you smack it into your hand, grease will come out the top. Wipe off the excess, and you are done. Yes, there are commercial bearing packers, but there is a certain satisfaction in doing it the old fashioned way. For the bottom triple, just do the best you can. I put a bead of grease all around the bearing, and tappety tap/smear, trying to push grease through the bearing. 2017-02-16_11-53-07 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Patience is it's own reward, they tell me. At any rate, you'll eventually get it done. Hmmm, I wonder if I could invent a Guzzi lower triple bearing packer? I think they all use the same bearing...

Talk to me, Phil. Soap and propane torch? On a casting? I've never heard of such a thing.

Well, it takes a big man to tell you he screwed up. So, I blame Scud. He's the one that brow beat me into checking the steering head bearings. You remember I had the Mighty Scura on the factory work stand and Pit bull front? Ok, to get the triples off, I planned to put my hydraulic jack under the pan and pull the Pit bull out. I've done this kind of thing *many* times when I used to work on Centauros.. but I always had the rear Pit bull stand on the back. Can't do that on the Scura. It would break the plastic on the swing arms. What I hadn't realized was when I put the front stand on, when it went over center, it must have levered the bike up just enough to take it off the work stand for a fraction of a second. As soon as the Pit bull went over center, it settled back down. When I put the hydraulic jack under the pan, as the Pit bull came out, the bike settled on the rear wheel and the jack and fell over. Fortunately.. the chicken started flapping his wings like crazy. He didn't want that 500 plus pounds motorcycle landing on him and heading down to the bottom of the grease pit. He managed to save the day. Now, l had a bike laying on it's side with no front end on it. Fortunately, the fuel tank wasn't leaking, or I'd just have hooked the van to it and drug it out of the Guzzi Garage. ™ Gas fumes and a grease pit are *not* a good combination. Nobody was around.. Dorcia was subbing at school, and Harley Bob was out flying somewhere. I decided it was as good a time as any to see how my back was rehabbing, folded up the cherry picker, cave manned it into the van, brought it up to the Guzzi Garage ™ and picked the Scura up. Need I say when Dorcia came home she bitched me out for that? "Hon, a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do.." 2017-02-15_07-46-21 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Damage appears to be minimal at a cursory examination. The exhaust is tweaked, it'll tweak back. The brake lever is a little bent.. it'll *probably* bend back. If so, I'll NDT it. The brake reservoir is broken. That's about it. Oh, maybe a little scuffed paint and a couple of holes in the drywall. That'll be patina. After all this, the chook was seriously giving me the stink eye, but I told him it was Scud's fault..

Haven't gotten in there, yet. Long story..

Uh, yep.. that is locking, all right. Awfully hard to diagnose when half a world away. Pulling in the clutch lever should have let it roll.. did you do that?

Oh, yeah.. holding in the clutch lever is much worse on the input shaft, etc. The first sign you see is no friction zone. It's either all or nothing. I've seen many over the years on WG. Probably most of them by Pete.

I coined the term on my Lario rehab project on WG. If you look for trouble on an old machine, you *will* find it.

You'd know it if the rear wheel locked.

Thanks for that. I probably won't be riding it for a while. Since Scud brow beat me into doing the steering head bearings and I started taking stuff off, finding even more rust and corrosion... ahhh it's a slippery slope.

Welcome, Owen.. I'm having a hard time imagining an engine stalling and locking the rear wheel. Can you explain exactly what is happening?

The Zooks are cartridge forks, aren't they?

Uhh, yeah. He can still do it.

Thanks, Scud. Yeah.. that's about what I need.. an extra maybe 200 ml to be safe. Ran that 1:45 round trip to the Duck dealer, hoping for the best. Didn't realize they were closed on Mondays. Winter hours.. no doubt, you don't have to deal with that. Oh, well. Maybe I can *ride* there tomorrow. It's forecast to be 45 degrees and not raining. Life is good, anyway.

Once "in there" you just might not need much in the way of spares. Oh, I know the feeling. I like taking stuff apart, too.

Put *some* oil in. We're not trying to fill it yet.. maybe 400cc or so. Reach in, grab the rod and pull it up. You'll hear "That Great sucking sound.." of the piston filling. Exercise it several times. When all is full, there will be no more gurgling, etc. When you let go, it'll slowly go down, depending on your setting on the bottom of the fork. We haven't changed anything, so there will be no need of looking up settings, etc. Nice..smooth.. no gurgling. Gots it? 2017-02-13_11-29-04 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Top up the fluid to an air gap of 105mm, according to "the book." This is with the fork fully collapsed, spring in, measured from the top of the fluid to the top of the outer tube. Because we may or may not have the same spring installed, your volume may be vary. Pull the tube up, and run the jam nut all the way on. 2017-02-13_11-30-14 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Almost done. Hmmm, in my excitement or something, I forgot to take a couple of pictures. At any rate, you've seen how slowly the piston shaft drops once you let it go? There's time to let it go, install the spring spacer tube, and grab it again. Then, if you hold the spacer down against spring tension, the top is easily spun on. Run it down until it bottoms, then hold the jam nut with a 17mm wrench, and tighten the blue nut. Loosen the soft jaws and pull the outer tube up a few inches. This will let the top assembly settle on the outer tube where you can tighten it with your pin spanner. Run the preload nut in the number of turns you originally counted, and you are done. 2017-02-13_11-30-32 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr No suspension settings have been changed.. all you did was put in new seals and fresh oil. It's ready to go back in the bike. Now, *you* are an Ohlins suspension specialist.. Exercising the fork several times just left a very little residual oil. I *assume* it's just from the lube on the seals and (especially) scraper. 2017-02-13_11-30-51 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Now for the bad news.. as I expected when I measured the used oil, it took a little over a half liter. 2017-02-13_11-31-23 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr I first thought, "Oh, I could top it up with some bel ray fork oil that I have up in the Guzzi Garage ™.. or top it up with just a little (ahem) used oil." No. I'll make the 50 mile round trip to the Duck dealer, and see if they'll sell me something smaller than a $30 liter. That's it. Hope you got as much info from this as I did.

Lube the seal some more and the end of the inner tube, making sure there isn't a burr or anything on it. Carefully slide it in, and when it gets into the bushing, you have it made. 2017-02-13_11-27-25 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Pull the dust cover (Olhlins calls it a scraper) down, and push it home with your fingers. 2017-02-13_11-27-44 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Loosen the soft jaws, turn the leg over and push the outer tube all the way down. Back into the soft jaws. Now is a good time send the spring, then the needle on their way to the bottom of the piston shaft. You can help them get there with the spacer tube. Once it's there, you'll feel the needle valve working with your finger on the end of the spacer tubing. 2017-02-13_11-28-18 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Drop the spring in after noting the part number etched on the top coil for posterity. Then, the "gizmo" on top. It doesn't matter which way it goes, but it's easy to see this side went against the spring. 2017-02-13_11-28-40 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr

Well, in the spirit of "We're here, might as well.. that we all know so well :grin:" I thought I'd go ahead and document the reassembly. Lube up the leg and seal well, sit it squarely on the fork leg.. you *did* remember the flat washer that goes underneath it, right? ..and drive it home. It won't take much. 2017-02-13_11-26-43 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr It'll bottom out on the washer, and give room for the little snap ring. Install it with your fingers. Lube the dust cover and slide it down on the inner tube. 2017-02-13_11-27-04 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Because the new dust cover and seal will be going beyond their normal travel, make sure all the bug guts, rock dings, etc. are cleaned up. 2017-02-13_11-29-28 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Unfortunately, one of them wasn't bug guts. I looked at it with a 10x power glass, and it was a raised chip of metal or coating. Donned my old mold maker's hat, and carefully stoned it off with a hard fine stone. 2017-02-13_11-29-52 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr Now, we're ready to continue.

Speaking of range. I just heard this guy for the first time a couple of days ago..

I would really have liked to see that completed. I do understand the curse of projects... so ...I'm out I'm not so sure you completely understand the curse of projects.. Once, I casually said, "Kool, I'll build that for you.." Ahem.. 12 years later (!) it was done.

Hey, the arrows are pointing the other way, mate! Eh, typical BMW driver.. Pete, (of course) is right on the money.. and you've probably done a lot of work for nothing. But.. now you are in the "While you are there" scenario. If I had it down that far, I'd do the things Scud and Phil said to look at. You're there...

I kept "Darth Quota" for a couple of years. It was the Guzzitech commuter before the ugly divorce between Todd and Ed, and was very well tuned. A much better handling road bike than you would think by looking at them, and a *really* good touring bike. That long travel suspension soaked up those nasty interstate expansion joints and rough roads like Yerba Buena with ease. It was a big sucker for off road, though. Oh, I'm sure it would do it, but I'd hate to have to pick it up much..

Any Harley dealer. Wear your doo wrap. *If* it is the same TPS as the Jackal, it's Harley Part # 27271-95.

My pleasure. If I find anything notable when I put them together, I'll post it. It looks to be straightforward.

Yeah, I did it, too.. many years ago. The price was $42 then.

Meeses *really* like wiring. You're a lucky guy.