.....and the righteous path has been shown to me. Good stuff here. Well the head guy at this small bike shop next to my woodshop caught on to what I was planning. He came over yesterday and rather chastized me for not replacing the bearings. Knowing how thorough I am trying to be and not afraid to spend those CBX dollars, I was told to quit playing around and replace those bearings.daves79x wrote:Patrick: I'm not sure you are getting the significance of what I'm saying: You HAVE to torque the old bearings somewhat tighter than they are as you found them. That is where you'll see the roughness. There will also be a detent straight ahead, but you'll only notice this again if you tighten them down. Perfectly good bearings, or new ones , will have none of the roughness or detent. Also helps to take the wheel off when doing this check as that weight tends to dampen what you feel in the stem.
Many bad bearings will feel smooth just jacking the front end up and rotating lock-to-lock. You have to lift the hood to really check them. Every CBX I've ever serviced, worked on, restored, whatever, has needed steering bearings by 20,000 miles - Pro-Links even sooner due to the weight of the fairing. Most people ignore this fact and will never know what a properly set up front end with good bearings feels like. Most guys these days buy CBXs with this many miles or more and the bearings are already bad, so they don't know what good bearings feel like.
Dave
Also of interest, he did exactly like you said, Dave. Tightened everything up and showed me first hand the notchiness that was there and then took me next door to show me what new bearings in a steering stem feel like. Undeniably different.So, are the bearing sets from AllBalls a quality product or should I replace with OEM? Service Honda shows that they are still available at a cost double that of AllBalls. My instinct tells me that the cheaper set is just that...cheap!
Thanks for the advice regarding this.
Patrick
(sorry couldn't resist)