My last day of Baja riding was ruined because of a rear wheel bearing. It was so bad (I had to ride it 10+ miles to get to town) I had to replace the entire wheel. Luckily for the ktm 500 tusk has a entire wheel for $300 ish.
Last weekend, my Tenere 700 rear wheel bearing “exploded” and caused a lot of damage. I’m told they pulled over as soon as possible. Steel is hard and aluminum is soft, so I think even 100 yards could have done this damage.
Prior to Renting my T7 via riders-share. I had gone through it and proactively replaced the following:
- new front tire, new front wheel bearings, new tube
- new rear tire, new rear wheel bearings, new tube
- new front sprocket
- new chain
lesson learned, no more “alls balls wheel bearings” or “ChINA” bearings. going with skf.
No small miracle getting the “race” out of the hub…after everything broke.
The slide hammer would not budge it, I tried that first after I figured out to use the inner race with ball bearings. Not place to really get any jaws on the outer race.
You can see the inner hub is super scarred from ball bearings, but I think that will be ok.
Rotor, caliper and ABS sensor are…”jacked up”. About 600-700 worth of parts…plus my labor to fix.
I had the inside race still…found some of the ball bearings and super glued them in so they’d stay equal distance from each other and then put my bearing extraction tool in there…and with a large punch got it out.
TIP to get the outer race out…that was very stuck. no way to get a punch on it…I saw some guys on youtube cut the race with a Dremel cut wheel, but you touch the hub and its a replacement….of the entire wheel.
I can’t believe the glued ball bearings held (left/right) for 15 slide hammers and then 5-10 punch with a large hammer.
The glue is for left/to right when vertical…not in/out…the steel holds that. Without equal spacing, they’d fall out…which they did several times when I was learning how to solve this puzzle.
I have the glued bearing in my “wall of shame” to remind me of this miracle.
I’m hoping the ABS ring is ok. I ordered another rotor, but I’m hoping I can get it “working” without replacing it. I ordered two sets of rear brake pads to “burn through”
Here are some photos and commentary:
