Roller Bearings For Steering Heads
Roller Bearings For Steering Heads
EVALUATION
Class distinctions. Motorcycles built to be the top of their line or for competition take advantage of the best components. Their builders make sure they’ve provided the extras, the good stuff. Other bikes, those that aren’t destined for racing or aren’t the finest in their class, or were built a couple years ago, don’t always have these features.
Case in today’s point, steering head bearings. Until a few years ago even the best motorcycles used bearings no better— maybe even not as good-as those on your dad’s balloon-tire Schwinn. Top and bottom of the headstock carry bearing cups. Between them go plain old steel balls. Every time you remove or replace the confounded little rascals, a few' always fall out of the cups and roll beneath whatever you have in the garage that’s too heavy to move easily. And because the balls tend to wear, brinell and generally not hold up, you have to tighten and adjust the upper nut on a regular basis. Even with that, the
day conies when you can’t ignore the rattle from the front end and you spend an hour stripping everything off, half a hour groping beneath the washer or dryer, five minutes doing the actual replace and/or regrease, another hour putting it all back together and wondering why the little balls don’t stay in place long enough to get the parts assembled ... all so you’re back where you were.
The topline models come with tapered roller bearings in the steering head. Roller bearings retain grease, don’t wear as fast and are much better at taking the pounding all bikes get.
But that’s only a few models, and most of us aren’t lucky enough to own them.
So it was with pleasure that we learned of a kit, a set of Timken tapered roller bearings, with races, being offered for models from the Big Four. We ordered a kit for a Honda XL250, 1972. one of which one of our guys owns and likes a lot. Besides, the front end rattled some, which meant the kit or the routine maintenance.
The supplier:
William Myshkoff 415 Conklintown Road Ringwood, N.J. 07456
The price was $34.95
Soon as the package arrived, the XL went up on blocks, the front wheel, stanchion tubes, headlight, handlebars, instruments and all the myriad wires and cables, etc., were removed. Off came the steering stem, out fell the w'retched little balls, hah. What do we care?
A caution here, as the instructions in the package were vague. Written in general, although Myshkoff tells us later kits w ill be done for each model. The instructions said to remove the lower bearing cone with a chisel. Honda uses good metal and we broke the chisel. Okay, it was a crummy chisel. Even so, the better way on this model was to drive the cone off the stem with a punch, rather than break it.
Then came the real trouble.
The bearings didn’t fit. The races were fine but both bearings had too small an i.d. for the lower part of the stem, which is stepped, and too large for the upper part.
This was Friday, the XL owner planned to go riding over the weekend and it’s times like this we’re happy we pay for the parts we evaluate. Gave us every right to telephone the supplier and give him righteous Hell.
He was surprised, puzzled and apologetic. Yes, we had said a ’72. But in doing the research, Honda had told him the XLs were unchanged from 1974 on, and he hadn’t checked the first models. This was the first time this problem had come out and he’s sold thousands of the kits.
Best part, the bearings we needed, 48mm o.d. and 25 or 27 mm i.d. were already in stock. Suzukis used them, so it was simply a matter of calling the expressman and dispatching a replacement pair.
They arrived and the bike went back together quickly and correctly. The kit includes a tube of high-quality grease, by the way, along with spacers as needed. The XL once again has a Solid and smooth steering lock.
That was the first part of the project. The next week we were working on a roadrace bike, which we’re building with bits we have lying around. Got a nice fresh Suzuki GS 750 frame, a souped-up GS750 engine from another bike but because the engine came out of a crashed GS750, we had no front end so we yanked off one from a GS1000 one of the guys has.
Except that the GS 1000, top of the line in 1979, has tapered roller bearings and the GS750 has bail bearings.
We got another order and another kit. No problems with the right parts this time, because Myshkoff had just finished doing a GS750 on his own and he knew what we needed. The kit came with the new races, sized to be a light press fit in the 750 frame, and to hold the roller bearings that are the right size for the GS1000 steering stem.
This can be more difficult than it sounds. Myshkoff mentioned that his races and bearings are made in England, on special order for a parts house there, and that it’s difficult to find the right bearings and races in the right sizes for motorcycles. Because we were in a hurry we shopped the neighborhood bearing supply house and learned that although some times you can get a bearing of the right size, and some times the races from Frame A will pop into Frame B, finding both the right bearing i.d. and race o.d. is usually impossible.
Team Performance, 6301 DeSoto Unit E, Woodland Hills. CA 91367 (213) 3467337 also sells such conversion kits, made in Japan, for $29.95. Again, the race and bearing sets are made to order for motorcycle applications, and can’t just be found in a bearing supply house.
Getting the Myshkoff bearings installed in the GS took some doing. To start with, the lower bearing had to be removed from the GS1000 steering stem. A drift punch> didn’t do anything more than destroy the grease seal underneath the bearing and break off the bearing cages and send the tapered rollers scattering across the floor.
We finally took the stem over to Racing Speed Center, 1958 Placentia, Costa Mesa. CA 92627. There, one of the mechanics placed a bronze hammer under the stem and beat on it with a 2'/2-lb. steel hammer, distorting the inner bearing race just enough to loosen it. He then drifted off the race.
That left the stem scarred and nicked, but still round {except for nick-tvpe high spots). Careful work with a fine file and emery paper restored the stem to smooth condition, but the Myshkoff bearing still wouldn’t go on. It was time for desperate moves, namely, packing the stem in ice in the office freezer and dropping the bearing into a pot of hot water heated in the office coffee machine.
Two hours later, the frozen stem was pulled from the freezer, a block of ice chipped off it. and the heated race drifted on with a punch. It fit.
The rest of the installation was simple with no further problems, except that the steering head races were a slightly-tooloose fit to suit us. so wje used Loctite Stud N’ Bearing Mount fluid on the outside edge of the races. The Loctite is made to take up any slack in bearing installations.
Team Performance sells tapered roller bearing kits to fit all Honda street bikes except XLs and CBX; All street Kawasakis. 400-1000cc: Yamaha RD125. RD200. RD250. RD350, RD400. XS250. XS400. XS650, XS750. XS500. DT125, DT400; Suzuki GT250, GT380. GT500. GS400. GS550. GS750.
Myshkoff at this writing has kits for Hondas; all Twins 250cc and up. XL and XR250 and 500 (the original models through the current “S” versions, albeit with the reservations mentioned earlier), and all the Honda Fours.
Yamahas; all TX, XS and RD series, plus the TD, TR and TZ road racers.
Kawasakis; all Z-I, H-2 and KZ road models.
Suzukis: earlv 70s on. 125cc and up: RM, TM. TS, PE, DR. SP. GT and GS. and even the Rotary.
The project itself, that is, converting from ball to roller bearings, is the sort of thing an owner does mostly for inner satisfaction. The bike won’t go faster. If it handles better, that means the original bearings had been allowed to go unserviced for far too long. All you get for the two hours or more that it may take will be the knowledge that your bike has the best steering head bearings on the market, and that you’ll never again drop those dratted little steel balls behind the workbench.
