swingarm, propeller shaft, and final drive maintenance

[Nails]

This is about deferred maintenance that I'm finally getting to, for the first time. I took some photos because the manual didn't really give me a very good idea of what I was doing.

I took my rear wheel in for a desperately-needed tire. And I desperately needed brake shoes. I left the saddlebag brackets &etc in place -- a good place to lay the brake. The shocks are off -- bailing twine holds up the swingarm.

The final drive comes right off with four bolts (the visible two indicated). There's a spring in there that pushes the final drive case off the propeller shaft (see photo in next post), so don't let it fall! (That cover to add gear oil is 27mm.)

The propeller shaft turns inside the swingarm. Upon reassembly, I put high-temp grease on these splines.

Detach the swing arm from the bike's frame. Here's the right end, showing the adjustment to get rid of any play. The manual calls for a special tool, but you can get by just fine with a 17mm box wrench and a 6mm Allen.

During reassembly, install the left side of the swingarm first, and grease everything so that you can adjust the play in the swingarm. The manual calls for setting that 6mm Allen (red arrow) at 95in-lbs, but that's what mine took just to turn the bolt. I had to over-torque it and then back off to the right torque, and it was a bit of a judgement call when it was right. I tightened mine very little from where it was before I took it apart. The swingarm moved just fine with no obvious play. Lock it down with that 17mm nut, holding the Allen of course.

Here are the parts that come off. The light blue arrow is a spacer that was in the yellow-arrow hole. The yellow arrow points to the swingarm shaft, still in place. These little bolts are 5mm Allen.

Here's the same story on the left side, with no spacer or adjustment stuff. The red arrow points to the "Suitable Bolt or Screw" I used to get the shaft out of the hole. (The left shaft is still in place. The shaft in the photo is for the right side.)

I took a photo of my swingarm, but can't find it now. The manual calls for popping out the bearings to repack with fresh grease. I didn't do that because I don't have the dust covers on hand. That's something else to order before next time. My old grease seemed just fine for now.

Cont.

[Nails]

This shows the shaft removed. I cleaned the shafts and this bracket (in the frame) with fine steel wool, then greased them to slide the shafts back in during reassembly.

Pull the swingarm off the propeller shaft. In this photo, the boot at the front of the propeller shaft is removed. That boot slips over the propeller shaft, mounts on a flange on the transmission, and simply rests against the front of the swingarm (a hole where the propeller shaft goes through).

This site has a lot of posts about oil dripping out the front of the swingarm. It's from the final drive and runs down the inside of the swingarm.

Here's the front slip joint, between the propeller shaft and the transmission. The u-joint is right behind (to the right) of the slip joint -- my u-joint seemed happy. The red arrow points to the hole where you poke something in to depress the pin.

Here's what the pin looks like and how it engages the slip joint. Several posts mention this pin popping out and flying across the shop, but mine stayed put. I placed a rag over it in case. You are warned.

When I reinstalled this, I added some moly grease -- even though the manual doesn't call for it.

Here's one of the o-rings in the final drive. This also shows the spring I mentioned in the previous post. I did not replace this o-ring because it looked fine -- but I'll order it for next time. (Note that it's pretty easy to remove the final drive if I really need to.)

Cont.

[Nails]

There's another o-ring that really should be replaced on the propeller shaft. It's between the the propeller shaft sliding joint and the propeller shaft. I didn't have this o-ring either, nor the long-nosed snap-ring pliers necessary to get it apart. (The previous post has a photo of the propeller shaft from the side to show how deep. I meant to measure this stuff but spaced it out during reassembly.)

My rear brake line routes through the shock mount (blue arrow) and a tab (red) on the swing arm.

These photos actually are from reassembly, which is the reverse.

For next time, I'll order those two o-rings near the final drive input shaft, the dust covers over the swingarm bearings, and get a long, skinny snap-ring pliers.

Enjoy!

[Nails]

I skipped a photo. Here's where to drill the famous final drive vent. I used a 1/16" bit because that's the smallest I have on hand. It's twice as big as generally recommended here, but half as big as some posts mention.

I understand that early XII ('96 and before) had a vent hole in the indicated dimple. MaKa quit drilling this in later XII, reportedly because gear oil leaked out of it. But then the final drives leaked even more.

The final drive gets wicked hot -- why the splines (input shaft and wheel) call for high-temperature grease. The theory is that without a vent the final drive becomes a pressure cooker and the gear oil sputters out the seals.

That was my experience: most of my final drive oil blew out after several days riding in hellacious temps -- I mean 110-120F. The oil didn't appear to drip anywhere but instead seemed to come out like a vapor. My takehome is to check the final drive oil level a lot more often than I have been, especially after desert rides.

[Highway Rider]

Nails,---an excellent post on the rear end maintenance

I went and copied this information from the Tech Tip section http://www.amervoyassoc.org/techtipsXII2.php


Voyager XII Final Drive
Voyager XII's mostly came stock with a vent hole in the final drive, later, some thought it was better to plug this hole to curb oil leakage from this area. However, it was later found that higher than normal (anything above ¼" below final drive fill hole) contributed to most if not all the oil leakage, and plugging the final drive vent hole actually could increase oil leakage because of pressure build-up as final drive oil heated up and forcing oil past the seals, therefore, it was recommended to re-open the hole if previously plugged. 1/16th inch hole is good. Just enough to vent the drive. Make sure you cover up the gear to keep metal chips out. I used a shop vac and hold it next to the drill bit while drilling. Sucks up all the metal bits.
For instructions to re-open this final drive vent hole, see below:

Drilling a final drive

After you remove the rear wheel, cover the final drive gear with a rag so you don't get chips of metal on it. Myself, I use masking tape to tape a rage to the final drive face to make SURE no chip get on the gear. A little note... look at the amount of grease on the gear. Don't use any more than that amount. I've seen too many mechanics putting WAY TOO much grease on that gear. It doesn't take much grease to work. If you use too much grease, when the final drive builds up heat, this grease will turn to oil and will be thrown outward against the inside of the hub and leak out onto the wheel and tire. Oil on tires are not a lot of fun.

Use a 1/16th drill bit. measure back from the tip of the drill bit about 3/16th to 1/4 inch and wrap a piece of electrical tape around that point. This is to give you a guide as to how far to drill into the final drive case. It's just so you don't drill through the outside of the case. The bit will go in more than that but it's a good reminder to not drill too far. NOTE: I use a shop vac and hold the hose up to the drill bit while I'm drilling. Most of the time it will suck up all the chips and none will even fall on the rag. No metal chips should go into the final drive case because it is the nature of the drill bit to pull the metal out away from the hole. You can use a small piece of wire to poke in the hole to make sure it was drilled all the way through. Even in the worst-case scenario that a small chip would get into the final drive, it would only get eaten up in the gears. You should have no problems as long as you pay attention.

[Nails]

Thanks for the kind words.

I forgot to reference the Tech Section, which I used in addition to the manual. Great resource.

[Cherryriver]

A somewhat related note about the final drive.
You'll especially want to check the condition of the pinion bearing, the one that supports the pinion gear, the smaller one that turns the big one.
Some years ago, I was touring the east on my Connie 1000 when I began to hear some noise from the rear end. I was in eastern Maryland at the time, a ways from my Chicagoland home.
By time I made it back, which included an 1100 mile day from Montpelier, Vermont, nearly all in 48-degree rain, the noise was getting kind of bad.
I rolled straight into the service department of the excellent Illinois Kawasaki in Des Plaines, Illinois (now long gone), still dripping, for an expert opinion.
A half hour later the service manager came out by the parts counter holding my final drive, with a very pale face.
The pinion bearing race had shattered, and the pinion gear was about to come completely loose, which would have locked up the final drive, possibly on the Toll Road at highway speed.
This final drive, according to the parts manager, was basically the same as the ones on the Voyager and Vulcans of that era.
They told me they'd never seen such a failure and had only ever heard of one other (in this pre-WWW world).
My luck was simply in top form to have survived.
And that great good luck held for another day as they had just taken in a totaled Vulcan and were able to sell me the final drive they'd removed from that bike. All that was needed was a minor shim on the spline shaft. They charged me about 40% of the price of a new drive and no-charged on the labor, had the bike back to together in another hour and sent me on my way.
The bike was probably at about 70,000 miles at the time; I went another 50K or so before trading it in on a GL15.
My Connie and I could easily have wound up a pile of mush on the side of the Ohio Turnpike.
It was the only serious repair I ever, ever needed on any of my Kawasakis totalling in the hundreds of thousands of miles I had them.
Still a vivid memory!
Adding a minor postscript about that dealership: My first Kawasaki was a '77 KZ650. Chas the parts manager kept my OEM chain, once I was done with it, hanging on the wall above the parts counter as a demonstration of chain maintenance: it had 40,000 miles on it and looked okay (though it was was stretched out to the limit). Every time a rider would come in complaining about only getting 5000 miles or less on a crappy chain, he'd point to my old one there hanging on the peg with the card saying "40,000 mile chain".
Saved him quite a bit of kvetching.