Rear suspension linkages; need grease please

Just a word to those who don't know the GRiSO has horrid 1990's style low set suspension linkages with needle rollers, no grease nipples and no protection from rear wheel spray.

At 28,000 miles mine were so badly corroded they had to be hammered apart and the bushes show brinelling = signs of percussion wear from the needle rollers before they seized solid. When i got the rust off the surface one area was brinelled worn down about 10 thou.

Unless you have a press and a needle roller mandrel you will have to pay to get them rebuilt as new links are rare

So I am just warning you that in a wet climate with a lot of road salt the linkages probably need re-greasing annually

Not worth rebuilding as after you have bought the bearings, pins seals etc you're within a cooee of the cost of a new linkage. Just grease the new one well before installation and they last well enough, at least they do in Oz. Treat greasing them as a regular service thing every 25,000km. I use a marine grade grease.

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Not rare here in the States: Pinwall on eBay

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Yes Pete you are right about the cost of new ones its not bad but several  dealers list it as no stock of the single 'con rod'.
I am waiting to see if i can get both - if not it is re-build time.

Second had ones are around in uk - but i already have second hand ones with ferrous oxide bushes fitted

I was going to use outboard grease as well - and also make a short mudflap to go at the base of my hugger. The road salt here is awful but it is not cold enough to stop riding

boat trailer grease is good - water-proof - winner!

when you say grease them, do they need to be fully disassembled?
Or are you just laying a bead of grease around the out ward side of each bearing?
I see 4 bearings, what would the torque be on the bolts when reassembled?
Is this a simple procedure if you have a center stand, with rear wheel supported?
Has anyone retrofitted grease nipples?
Installing a flap is a great idea.

thanks!
Gord

Best thing I can probably do is post up a pic of the exploded view so you can see what's involved.

You understand that when you take any of the bolts out of the linkages the back end of the bike will collapse so you must support it, either on a stand or under the sump with the front end tied down?

If you get to them early, before the weather gets to them, you just take the linkages off and push the centre bushing/race out a bit less than half way and smear a sponge of grease into the needles. Then push the Bush out the other way and repeat from the other side. Do this with all the races on both the double con-rod and the wishbone.

I'd strongly advise going in to the swingarm bearings at the same time as these are almost universally installed with, at best, the packing grease they were shipped from the bearing factory.

Before I would ride my GRiSO on salted roads, I'd drink my weight in buzzard puke and die from the drizzlin shitz. But that's just me, carry on.

As you can see if you buy the bearings, seals and inner races there are a shit-ton of bits and by the time you've bought them all you're very close to the cost of a new con-rod.

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The wishbone is probably worth rebuilding as it only has one bearing and race and two seals.

Reply for Ghiggs
There are 7 bearings with 8 seals 3 in pairs in the linkages and the one at the bottom of the shock where (bush 8 goes) is a single.

One of the things that makes Pete R right about the cost of the parts is the cost of the bushes they are just machined mild steel and rust easily- MG ones cost as much as two bearings for each bush

If you have a centre stand (1) how did you do that? and (2) yes you just have to support the wheel.

Tightening torques are on pages 23 and 24 of the workshop manual from this site (see Grisology/Maintenance Schedule /Requiring Fluids/Torquing etc) basicly 40Nm for the bolt at the bottom of the shock and 50Nm for the rest.

Yes you could put grease nipples in challenges is that you would have to do it properly with drilled bolts and bushes
No good puttign them through the aluminium links as 1) no where to put it for the single race 2) the twin races are pressed tight together so no way for the grease to get to the needles.

lcjohnny wrote:

Reply for Ghiggs


If you have a centre stand (1) how did you do that? and (2) yes you just have to support the wheel.

Factory stand or equivalent rather than a centrestand. No need to support the wheel.

Gord,
As you can see in these two pictures, this project is a little involved. The guy in the picture is a buddy of mine (Jerry) who had done this before on his GRiSO. I know I couldn't have done it by myself even though there are good instructions from Pete and others on this site. I had the bike in a sturdy front Wheel chock which we strapped to the wheel. Then we put a jack under the sump with a wood block to get the rear of the bike up. Once the wheel comes off, the rear is more stable. I had taken most things off that I could before Jerry came over (muffler, rear foot pegs etc). I think it took us about 4 hours to get it done. To Pete's point, there wasn't much grease (maybe what the bearing came with when MG bought it) on anything. My bike probably had maybe 14,000 miles and was 5 years old (a year ago). It wasn't in bad shape but I wanted to get it done and now it will be good for a long time.




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As I hadn't got round to buying a stand and mine was due it's MOT I thought I would support my local mechanic be a lazy git and get the shop to grease the head bearings and rear linkage at the same time.

Phone call yesterday went along the lines of

Him - "One of the swingarm bearings was in pieces and fell to bits when i took the swingarm off - at some point it's been put in the wrong way round and the back wheel was out of alignment. Did you find right handers were a little easier than left handers?"

Me - "Yes but I just thought I was a shit rider"

Him - "And potholes?"

Me- "Well I thought they jarred a bit but put it down to sports suspension"

Him - "You might like your bike a bit more when you get it back :-)"

Glad it went into the shop now !

Ditchfinder wrote:

As I hadn't got round to buying a stand and mine was due it's MOT I thought I would support my local mechanic be a lazy git and get the shop to grease the head bearings and rear linkage at the same time.

Phone call yesterday went along the lines of

Him - "One of the swingarm bearings was in pieces and fell to bits when i took the swingarm off - at some point it's been put in the wrong way round and the back wheel was out of alignment. Did you find right handers were a little easier than left handers?"

Me - "Yes but I just thought I was a shit rider"

Him - "And potholes?"

Me- "Well I thought they jarred a bit but put it down to sports suspension"

Him - "You might like your bike a bit more when you get it back :-)"

Glad it went into the shop now !

I don't know how a swingarm bearing can be put in 'The wrong way round'?

As for alignment? The swingarm is aligned by the frame. Unlike earlier models where you could move the alignment of the swingarm by winding stub axles on which the swingarm pivots in and out one way or the other on the CARC system the swingarm sits outboard of the frame in which the bearings sit. The spindle goes through the swingarm from the left and screws into it again on the right after passing through the two tapered roller bearings whose outer races are in the frame. Those bearings are then pre-loaded by a collar screwed onto the outside of the spindle. Once the preload is correct it is prevented from moving by two pinch bolts on the left hand side of the swingarm.

There is no way that anything can be put in 'The wrong way round' and either fit or work. Nor is there any way that the wheel could be out of alignment because that is a function of the frame and swingarm that on CARC bikes is non-adjustable!

While I don't doubt for a second that your swingarm bearings were fucked, most of them will be after a few rainy rides due to the shit sealing system and lack of grease ex-factory the explanation of the failure is bollocks.

Also no comment on the linkage bearings? If you had one falling apart swingarm bearing, (in itself enough to make a CARC bike handle like a three legged hippo with a harpoon in its date!) I'll bet London to a Brick the linkage bearings and wishbone bearings are long history too.

Look at the parts diagrams if you don't believe me. There is no way you can put a swingarm bearing in the wrong way round.

Also, the harshness isn't just down to buggered bearings. Stock GRiSO suspension is shite. Some might say 'Marginal' or 'Quirky'. I call it shite.

The best money you can spend on ANY CARC bike, but particularly GRiSO, is on suspension, closely followed by brakes. Apart from that? Just map it. It's as good as it will get.

Thanks Pete, he's dropping the linkage tomorrow to grease that up so I'll expect a phone call saying that needs new bearings too I'll ask him in more detail about what's been assembled incorrectly - he's saving what's left of the bearings for me to show me so I'll post pics.

Hope I'm not having my pants pulled down here but he says it took 3 hours to get it all apart because the wrecked bearing was a sod to get out. He also said because the bearing was in bits that the swingarm wasn't able to move much.

Until you've ground up exactly the right drift getting the swingarm bearing outer races out is an absolute frontbottom of a job. I'll bet he spent three hours on it. Especially if the outer races were rusted into the frame.

If the linkage is fucked, and I'll wager it is, just buy a new one. It's almost as cheap as all the parts but without the labour of rebuilding the old one. Just make sure the new one is properly packed with grease before it's put into service.

Cheers Pete, i'll let him know to get a new one if it isn't looking pretty.

And if you are lucky enough to have a hugger.... hang a mudflap off the front of it to protect the linkages it only needs the centre of the nudflap to hang 10cm below the bottom hugger mounting.  

I made the flap out of Damp Proof Course pvc (useful to have a roll lying around ) and pinned it to the mudguard with plastic rivets like this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It is pretty much invisible when it is in place


Now it is my turn to go into th e swing arm bearings

So it seems the linkages weren't so bad after all and were fine once re-greased. Picking it up tomorrow so will post pics of knackered swingarm bearings then.

All in it's cost £460 for head bearing grease, swingarm bearings, linkage re-grease, oil & filter and an MOT.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]so after a chat with the mechanic things were a little clearer than the phone call we had earlier in the week. The bearing wasn't in the wrong way round he just said it had been installed wrong.- he says it had been massively overtightened and the misalignment was due to the collapsed / crushed bearing.

thanks for all your comments this work looks way to involved for me! I will get my independent shop to lube the head, 8 rear suspension linkages, and swing arm bearings. I'm sure he will be grumbling this wasn't done at factory?  
catch you later!!

Update links, swing arm bearings have been lubed. Mechanic thought head didn't need lubing, and there was evidence of grease in the links my bike was built on a Wednesday. It took him hour labor to take entire back end of bike apart, very glad he did this I would have been there all day and broken something!!
Next to be worked on in a different threads high temp no start, high idle when hot.
Hope 2021 is a great year for all of you!!
thanks!!
Gord

How long the grease lasts update - using outboard motor (& boat trailer) grease.

After 9,000 miles and one winter riding on UK salted roads.

Positive
None of the mounting bolts were seized or damaged, The bearings are all good & there is still grease in all of the needle rollers.      
Negative
The grease beads i laid between the links to protect the seals is almost all gone.  
The mudflap failed, every material that i tried sucked against the tyre and wore through.  

So i think that even in UK with all year riding, well greased linkages should last 2 years or 12,000 miles before needing a strip and re-grease.  
But i will spray the outside with ACF50 after re-assembly

Jon,

Since you're considering ACF 50, you might want to take a look at something a little heavier such as Boeshield or Corrosion X HD (heavy duty). These both set up whereas the ACF likely would need frequent reapplications. The Boeshield even feels waxy when it goes off, Corrosion X HD feels more like grease.

Cheers,
Kel.