Voyager 1300s Rear Wheel

[pwbii]

Howdy! I have found some disturbing maintenance issues with the 1300 back wheel. I now have 3 of these & all 3 have the steel ring on the starboard side of the wheel (gear box side) has loosened up in the aluminium of the rear wheel. Since we are talking about a 35+ year old item, I figure there must be others out there with this same issue. I don't know how Kawasaki originally made these wheels, but with mine the aluminium has stretched enough to allow the steel ring holding the starboard bearing to become loose. First what I advise is all of you do this; Put your bike on the center stand on a hard surface. Then actually lay on the ground with your face looking the rear tire. Take your hand & see if you can move your wheel side to side @ all. There should be zero movement! Now here's praying you folks don't have any movement in your wheels, but IF you do. I think I have a fix. Since new rims are no longer available. If you can remove your rear wheel, do so & once it's off. Try to move the steel ring sideways with your thumbs. If it moves @ all then it has loosened up in the rim. As an aside, I have a procedure to remove the rear wheel while it's on is center stand that doesn't require taking apart all the guards & lights on the back off. As to my fix, due to aluminium being soft. I have take a repair process from the small engine side of things. If you remove the drive plate from the rubber insulators on the wheel (one big "C" clip), you can then see where the steel ring is inserted in the aluminium wheel. What I did is take a prick punch & every 3mm, I pricked the center width of the aluminium ring around the steel ring. I'll add a pic of the finished job. My steel ring is tight now. I'll reinstall it & keep checking it over the season to see if it loosens up again. And if so, how soon. see pics below.

[Greg]

Nice and some dang good brain work there.