swing arm bearings regreasing

is it difficult to regrease bearings the bike has sat up for twenty years and I have the rear tire off and I was looking at the manual it was talking about having some special hex key?

 

Shouldn't be. I'm about to replace mine simply because of age. I pulled the rear end of an 81 Max years ago and it was easy. The allen they needed was simply to set the bearing freeplay, 6mm if I recall.

 

If you're going to go to the trouble of taking out your swingarm (it's not hard, but it's time consuming), you may as well replace the bearings rather than just lube the old ones. I did mine on my 900 Diversion a few years back and the OEM bearings were pretty cheap ($20 ea).

 

Just had mine off a couple weeks ago, and Robert is correct, you need a 6mm allen wrench. It needs to be a socket though so you can attach a torque wrench to it. The worst part is keeping that piece, torqued to something like 50 in lbs, from moving while you torque the lock nut to approx 85 ft lbs. Don't quote me on the torque specs.

 

I pried off the left dust cap and i have alarge nut with a circular hole in the middle with a metal tab pushed down locking it in place the manual says to take off the nut using a 6mm hex socket tried that and it doesnt engage anything tried 7mm and 8mm wont fit in the hole. at a loss

 

The left side is just a regular hex head. You bend the lock tab away from the bolt, and use just a regular socket to take it out. I think it's a 22mm socket you need, at any rate, it's a big one. The allen wrench comes into play on the right side. You have a lock nut, the same size as the hex bolt on the left side, that threads onto a bolt that has an allen head on it. This is the one you need the allen for. After you remove the lock nut, put your allen in that bolt head and remove it. It should be fairly easy coming out. Mine came out with just a standard L type allen. Remember to support the swing arm while doing this. After you remove those bolts, it's free to fall to the ground.