lol........i appreciate the help cherry. thanks man.

 

ok some questions here. will i have to remove the outer fairing to see when the grease comes out the top/bottom??? i work in automotive-the standard hi temp bearing grease we use for auto wheel bearings is good to go here right?? should i use a hand gun or can i use the air operated gun (any seals to blow, ect??? by using air??)thanks

 

no selas to blow out and yes wheel bearing grease works fine. thats all i use when servicing neck and earlier wheel bearings.
we started installing zerk fittings in touring necks back in 86 before the factory even thought about doing it. also used
mity-vac and our own lower fork drain plug fittings to do fork oil changes. save lots of time vs. what the factory gave you for hrly to do a 10K service in.

 

I don't see what the big deal is. You'll have to fill the neck once at the first service, then a few squirts every 5k or so, as per the manual. Why not just do it, as it's $5 max in grease for the first service, pennies thereafter. I did it like this on my old RK and it's well over 100k now, with neck bearings never touched.

 

after 4k miles, the bearings on my v-rod were kaput and gave a clunk in the front end.... a closer inspection showed that the grease used at the factory looked more like sludge than grease.... apples and oranges i know, but a thought...

 

well the way I see it, the wheel bearing on your wheels are packed with a minamal amount of grease, and they'll last damn near forever. your neck bearings have a small amount of grease and dont spin anywhere as much. a couple of inches per mile? so even one pump of the grease gun should do ya for a long time.

 

I have changed a boat load of steering head bearings in my years wrenching on bikes....both on my personal bikes, and professionally while working at a jap bike dealer. Back in the 80's the jap bikes never had Zerk (I was taught its called a "Zerk" fitting BTW) fittings on the neck. So after tapping the races in I would just lube the bearings (even the non-caged style where you needed to grease the race just to hold all the ***** in place....although I would try to talk customers into Timken tapered caged roller type) like normal and slap the front end back on. 99% of the time on jap bikes that I worked on, that was all that was needed for 50K miles or so. Now as of late wrenching on HD's I see the MOCO in their infinite wisdom have installed a Zerk fitting in the neck, and call for greasing the neck until the grease comes out top and bottom. While I know this is total over kill, there is no other way of getting fresh grease in there short of removing the front end......so I do it. I use high quality fully synthetic greese....the thickest I can find, and use a pneumatic grease gun. It only takes a few seconds and its full....and I get very little overflow out the bottom. So even though I know I am using up way too much of this precious resource I still fill the neck and ride down the road knowing it was done...and done right. I could care less what anyone else here does as far as this one thing goes, because I dont know what was used at the factory or how much......but when I am done I know with 100% certainty that the bearings have fresh clean, high quality grease in there.
Now I cant tell you when the next time I would do the job would be....but I guess a good rule of thumb would be every 10,000-15,000 miles....???

 

You guys are wasting way to much grease I only fill the top half for the upper bearing and the bottom half for the lower bearing...SHEEEZZZZZZ no need to fill the whole thing!! [sm=happybounce.gif]

 

I think i might have a problem with the grease flying out and leaking down so i wonder which way should one go? I see both sides have Merritt. I have had many bikes and never filled the neck with grease and never had a problem. The neck bearings do not see that much battle so i just wonder why you would need to do that. I do grease the **** out of the wheel bearings on my boat on every trip and it makes a mess but without it trip would be short.