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Last Update 3/2/09
This page shows how I replace steering stem bearings on a KZ1300 or Voyager 1300. They're both basically the same, only the forks are a little different. All 1300's should use the same bearings, but the upper and lower bearings are different sizes. The idea is if you service your bearings like the book calls for and put grease on them every so often and then adjust out any play in the stem, the bearings should last a long time. But who does that, right? It's a lot easier on a KZ without a fairing in your way, but having to pull the fairing especially on the Voyager is a pain. So I guess most of us just let them go until they're so loose that we have a handling problem we can't ignore. Then one winter we take the bike all apart and do a bunch of maintenance to it all at once.
If you're going to pull the front forks to replace the steering stem bearings it's a good time to replace your fork oil. Might check your front wheel bearings too as they've been known to go bad. Good time to put some steel braided brake lines on, change your brake pads, put new brake rotors on if needed, etc, etc. That's why we don't do it, because it costs too much! It's hard to fix just one thing!
You'll need a drift to tap the races out with. I make one as shown and
keep it around for other bearing jobs like wheel bearings, swing arm bearings,
and the list goes on.
There's a good spot to support your engine when you need to pull the
forks. They must of cast that spot there in the engine casings for some
reason!
There's those Velcro tie wraps I was telling everyone about on another
page. It's amazing how often I use these things when I'm doing repairs.
If you look close, when I have to pull a brake line off of something, I cut a
piece of 3/8ths fuel line and slip it over the mounting bolt and thread the bolt
back in. This will keep fluid from leaking out or just keep dirt out while
you've got something apart, whichever you're trying to accomplish at the moment.
This upper triple tree piece you can just tap right off the top, but tap on
things with a piece of wood instead of using a hammer directly metal to
metal. Most of this stuff is aluminum and it marks up easily. The
wood will keep that from happening.
This is an adjustable spanner wrench. Taking these off isn't so hard, it's
getting them back on and adjusted properly. Too loose and your bike will
'walk' in the corners because they'll be too much play in the bearing; too tight
and the bearing will wear prematurely or you might feel a bind in the
steering. I've done a few so I do it by feel, but if you get it right the
first time
you get an 'A' for the day!
Since most of us only have 2 hands, if my drift was longer I might be able to
hold it on the same side I was hammering on. Since it's a little on the
short side I just stuff a shop towel on the one end and hold the drift against
the race on the other side. This works real well and only takes 2 hands,
but if you haven't done this before you need to 'walk' these out by striking it
on one side of the race once or twice and then moving your drift to the opposite
side and repeat the procedure.
Once you have the old races off the bike, grind down the outsides of the old
races some, so you can use them to drive the new races back in. You can see
these races had a lot of bearing wear visible.
As an alternative, one of our members, Scott Bush sent in this idea. You
could cut a slice out of one side of an old race, squeeze it and use it to pound
in the new bearings. Either way will work just fine.
The old races should slide back in at least halfway or so where you can pull it
back off by hand. If it's too tight at the halfway point that you can't
pull it back out by hand, when you use it to drive the new races in with it will
get stuck and you'll have to grab it with pliers or pry it back off with a
screwdriver.
Main thing is, don't scratch the inside of your new races!
NOTE: Getting the lower bearing off your triple tree might not be an easy task. They show a huge bearing puller in the Kawasaki tools reference manual, but I just used a big crowbar, and pried it off while I had my triple tree mounted in a vise. Someone else may have an idea that worked for them even better. david@kz1300.com
NOTE: On these newer browsers I've noticed that they don't always display my large images in full size when you open an image from the thumbnails. Once you click the thumbnail and open the larger image, if you 'mouse over' the image you should see a " + " symbol or some other indicator like a box with arrows usually on the bottom right edge of the image. If you click on the indicator, then the image will expand to it's full size which displays full screen on computers that use a 800 x 600 resolution setting for the monitor. If you click the indicator again it will go back to the smaller image. Some people use a resolution setting of 1024 x 768 or higher on their monitors and for those users the images will appear smaller than full screen in size. You can change your monitor settings easily enough if you desire. Also, the indicator I've noticed is slow to appear even after the image appears to of completely loaded. The indicator in Netscape seems to be a lot faster to display than the one in Internet Explorer.
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