All balls steering head brg kits

I sure hope all balls tapered steering head brgs for xjs are better then they are for hondas. From what i understand in the US they are the leading manufacturers for these kits what a joke. I just finished them on my honda 400 . These kits fit just about every older honda out there from cb1100f and smaller. Poor design in my opinion they really could have done a better job.

To start with the instructions 3x3 sheet of paper and the only thing it said was to put your old brg back together and measure it if its taller then the aftermarket brg they supply a 2mm washer or 4 mm washer space it out to with in 1mm of the old brg. Next the seals i have been wrenching 35 years on bikes the seal only goes 1 way and it would be very east to put them in backwards. If you put the bottom in or the wrong washer you have yo buy another kit because you will destroy them when removing. Here is where it gets good the upper race sticks out of the steering head ad least 1/4 inch see pic Then they want you to modify the steering nut there is a boss that sticks out of the bottom it has 4 or 5 notches they want you to grind the boss down so its even with the bottom of the notch see pic. I have a belt sander with a 5 inch disk to boot most people would not grind it flat and you would have un even pressure on the brg. Hmm if the upper triple tree is up 1/4 inch or maybe a bit more with the seal now the ears for the headlight are loose and jiggle all around had to make extra spacers out of rubber to put on top of the old ones none of this on instructions. The brgs work great but lack of instructions and modifications don't think i would recommend them for a honda. Hopefully they are better on an xj. And yes they are in correctly and all the way in i read a big write up on a honda and all the pics looked exactly the same as mine in another forum.

 

Yuck, I see horrible "universal" costcutting measures :?

Basically they sell a kit that does not fit the bike & tell you to hack the bike about in order to make it "kinda" fit... I'd complain, or buy elsewhere... (if the original bearings still have the 4 digit numbers on the outer races you can take them to a bearing factor & get decent Timken/SKF/FAG replacements

 

Its all done just a lot of extra work that you should not have to