Damn You, Mr Suzuki

Who, in their right mind, installs bearings where the inner seal (dust cover, call it what you like) is missing.

I ask this after the catastrophic failure of the caliper-side rear wheel bearing, only to find - amongst the debris from the collapsed bearing, gouging of the axle spacers, scoring of the disc and sundry other crapulous evens, that the bearings are installed with no inner dust seals.

No wonder the fuckers failed.

Lucky it was the day after a 150km ride through the twisties in the Barossa Valley/Adelaide Hills. Who knows what that failure might have resulted in.......

Fortunately for me that I was on my way to work and 3kms from home when it happened. Quick turn around and head home and then take the car instead.

Mr Dremel and I finally worked the inner race out this evening after much cursing.

Why the fuck would they leave the inner seal off when most bearing come installed with 2 seals for a reason???????????????????????????????????????????

RANT ENDS

How many kms had you done? No seals onthe inside isn't a big deal unless you are doing lots of gravel roads.

I'm just pulling down my wifes RM80 rear shock. It had next to no oil in it at all. No wonder it didn't have any damping left

All things fail after time, At least now the new set you put in will be good for many kms to come.

Bearings have changed a lot. My Honda Bol`dor 900 still has the original wheel bearings in it and they're still as new.

from memory the bandit doesn't have an inner seal. it is a road bike after all.
the bearings themselves are sealed (or sorts) from i recall and if they are getting that hot that what little grease is in them 'melts' and runs out, then they are getting too hot and need replacing anyways. there may also be other problems that need fixing.

interested to know how many kms on your bike as the bearings should have at the very least been checked every so often.
if they have hi kms on them (over 50k kms as an example) and have never been checked then there is no excuse for complaint over the failure. bike bearing take a hiding and should be checked often (i check mine every service) and replaced at any hint of getting close to failing.

hell, i pull my car bearings down every 20k kms and clean, inspect, repack them.

reddog wrote:How many kms had you done? No seals onthe inside isn't a big deal unless you are doing lots of gravel roads.

I'm just pulling down my wifes RM80 rear shock. It had next to no oil in it at all. No wonder it didn't have any damping left

All things fail after time, At least now the new set you put in will be good for many kms to come.

25,000kms on a well-maintained bike that is routinely serviced. It got a recxent Xmas present of new tyres and brake pads all the way round, but no sign of deterioration at that point. All seems to have happened rather quickly, really. Bearing in the sprocket carrier is on the way out, too. Thanks to Sabers club member Paul S at Gardner Bearings here in Adelaide I have the bearings and seals and will be back on the road in a day or so.

Will bolt everything back up and test ride and then will order a brace of wave rotors fromn S3 Performance in Melbourne, given that the rear is quite scored on outer face. Have their floating wave discs on my Guzzi 1100 Sport and they are every bit as good as the Brembo discs that cost 3 times as much.

Scored rear disc sounds a bit weird unless that was due to the bearing failure. My bike has 33000kms and the bearings and everything else seems to be fine. I'll check them out again next tyre change.

reddog wrote:Scored rear disc sounds a bit weird unless that was due to the bearing failure. My bike has 33000kms and the bearings and everything else seems to be fine. I'll check them out again next tyre change.

Yes it was - I had to ride (very slowly) for about 3kms to get home and store the bike safely. During that time the eccentic motion of the wheel/axle appears to have caused the scoring. Luckliy I have priced a set of replacement wave rotors from S3 Performance for a tad under $350 shipped, so I will do a full disc replacement and also replace front wheel bearings when the front wheel comes out.

BTW, the sprocket carrier bearing was on its way out as well and showed emulsification of the grease as well as rust, indicating ingress of water at some stage. All the more reason to leave on the seals that ship with the bearings - the lips for the seals are there, so why Suzuki don't have them on is beyond me. That carrier bearing is on order and should arrive Tuesday. Got top quality American UBC bearings as replacements.

Don't use a high pressure Karcher or anything like that, so buggered if I know how the water got past the outer dust/weather seal, which was intact.....