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Doug79

Doug79

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I got my brass swing arm bushings installed. I can put the intermediate sleeve in either side and it is fine. but when I push the sleeve thru one side ,as soon as it touches the inside lip of the other bushing, it gets tight. we messed with it for about an hour yesterday but no luck. I can get the sleeve thru both bushings but it feels pretty tight and I'm afraid if I put it together, I will get my pivot between the bolt and the sleeve and not between the sleeve and the bushing. There are a couple of very small dents on the left side bottom of the swing arm that shouldn't be there so we have concluded that there is a very small tweak in the swing arm causing the misalignment. We did dial in the sleeve, and it is spot on straight. I think the best thing to do is talk to my local machine shop buddy and see if there is any way to line bore the interference out of the bushing without oversizing the whole bushing. That will have to be discussion for later as the snow blower is out there calling my name. Got I hate winter!!!
 
"If it's not one thing, it's another."
Probably one advantage of the original plastic bushings is they could wear down, crush, whatever, until the assembly was riding on the sleeve butted against the frame. When I got my bike it had plastic bushings too and there was a lot of movement so I replaced them with bronze. To be honest I just sort of crammed it all together and I have no idea what it's doing at that level of detail. That was 50,000 mi. ago and I never had a problem with it. Originally the swing arm was real difficult to move with the bolt torqued to spec. and someone on here said don't worry about it, it will loosen up. So maybe there's how it's supposed to work ideally and other ways it can work acceptably. And maybe it self-corrects some even with the bronze bushings.

Did you replace the bolt with one that isn't necked down at the nut?
 
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Yes. new everything. So are you saying yours didn't go together smoothly either? I can push the sleeve through by hand, with a little effort. just don't like the way it fits. I also don't see the sleeve tightning up when the bolt is torqued as it appears to be exactly flush with the brass bushing flanges. I may be over thinking this. If yours is working ok. I doubt if mine will ever see 5000 miles so 50,000 would seem to be a safe cushion.
 
It didn't go together smoothly in any sense. Instead of lightly grinding the swingarm to let the bushings fit, I pounded them in, which deformed the hole at the flange and I had to take care of that with a brake hone. And I think the flanges ended up convex from all the pounding instead of flat.
 
Is your swingarm freshly painted or powder coated? There have been reports of powder coating in particular, if applied to the bearing bore ends, can hold the bushings out too much. Then you can get the problem of the tube not protruding like yours. Some have reported the lip on their new bushing to be a little too thick and that causes the same problem. It's also possible your new bushings aren't quite in all the way. You might want to give them a few good hits with a BFH to insure they are (hardwood block under bottom one and on top of upper one).
 
I pressed my bushings in with the arbor press from hell so I am sure they are seated. any idea how far the sleeve should protrude? I don't think I would worry about the tight fit between the sleeve and the bushing if I was sure I had enough crush on the sleeve to force it to turn in the bushing. Im sure it would wear in in short order.
 
Got curious about the dimentions of the bearing sleeve versus the bushing width. I squared up one side of the sleeve and swing arm and measured the other and with a depth gauge. the sleeve is .002" shorter than the bushing flanges. I am going to spot face the bushings to get a reasonable amount of crush on the sleeve, put the damn thing together and get on with my life.
 
I don't think I've ever seen a spec for how much the sleeve sticks out, but it isn't much. Just enough so it can get pinched tight when the pivot bolt is tightened and the swingarm w/bushings can rotate around it. You may need to sand or lightly file the end of one of your bushings to get some sleeve protrusion.

Yes, there is a torque spec for the pivot bolt, but I don't strictly rely on that. I do watch it to insure I'm not over-torquing the pivot bolt. They are prone to breaking because of the necked down area around the threads if over-tightened. I set the tightness so the bare arm will gently fall under it's own weight or if not dropping, still easy to pivot up and down by hand. You might try mounting yours just to see how it feels before taking any further steps. If you start grinding/sanding things down, you can't put that back.

If you get the pivot bolt to the torque spec (47 ft/lbs) and the arm is still loose, that would indicate the opposite problem to what you're having - the sleeve is too long. Tightening the pivot bolt more won't help, it will just eventually break the bolt. I think this may be partly responsible for the original bolts getting the bad rap they have (breaking). Guys are putting them together with worn out parts and trying to compensate for them by tightening the pivot bolt more. I haven't broken a pivot bolt yet and probably never will because I understand the function of the parts I'm assembling.

In your case, if you assemble things, torque the pivot bolt to spec, and the swingarm is locked in there solid and won't rotate, that would be a pretty good indication that you need to remove some material from the end of a bushing.
 
Try this -- first tighten it to spec as it is. It will probably be real hard to move if there's no protrusion because there's nothing to pivot on. Repeatedly remove material from the face of the bushings and re-try. At a certain point it will suddenly get much easier to move. That is where there's just enough protrusion to make a pivot.
 
Hi Doug,
When I replaced my plastic bushings with bronze ones I rented an expanding hand reamer from a rent-a-tool shop to align the bushings and used a large smooth file to trim their flanges to get the required 0.002" to 0.010" assembled clearance.
I wasn't aware that the stock throughbolt's end was prone to snapping off until mine did so that got upgraded later.
If I could get to the XS650 swingarm pivot designer's arse I would kick it. Where was his brain that day, eh?
Expecting that an end-squeezed tube wouldn't start to turn with the swingarm? Effin' stupid.
Here's Fred's quick fix:- Replace the bearing sleeve with a solid shaft. Drill & tap M16 both ends. Grind off the frame's throughbolt stop block. Thread an M16" Allen-head bolt into each shaft end through the frame and reef 'em up good. Put a grease nipple into the swingarm.
 
Fred...If I would have to guess on sleeve crush i probably would have gone with 002- 005. from your specs I think that will work. I agree, to expect you can lock the sleeve by pinching it with the through bolt to the exact pressure that will hold it without bulging it is asinine..Hence, i believe the reason for the plastic bushings. They will smash as much as needed and wear in quickly. no need to do any critical design work. If this bike were going to get any serious miles I would pitch those bushings and make new ones that would pivot on the bolt and give that sleeve to the guy I know that can throw the farthest. Anyway, I will get the thing set up in the mill and take about .003 off each side. and then check it and go from there.
 
Hi Doug,
alas for your "pivot on the throughbolt with thicker walled bushings" fix, the frame needs to be held rigid with something
(such as my "solid pivot" fix) in compression or it'll flex on you even more than it does already.
I guess that locking the sleeve to the throughbolt with splines or keyways would also keep the sleeve from turning
but that'd be a nasty hassle for an amateur retrofit.
 
For anyone interested.
Original and MikesXs.
1mm difference.

IMG_1215.JPG
 
littlebill31 said:
For anyone interested.
Original and MikesXs.
1mm difference.

View attachment 92003
Click to expand...
Hi littlebill,
that stocker looks like it was salvaged from a sunken ship, I've never seen one before that was in that bad of a shape.
Perhaps all the XS650s I've worked on led sheltered lives? Even the one we saved from the scrapyard's steel pile.
But the replacement? Oh my!
Besides being a millimeter too short it looks to be still contaminated with swarf and the bearing surface is as rough as a badger's arse besides.
 
fredintoon said:
Hi littlebill,
that stocker looks like it was salvaged from a sunken ship, I've never seen one before that was in that bad of a shape.
Perhaps all the XS650s I've worked on led sheltered lives? Even the one we saved from the scrapyard's steel pile.
But the replacement? Oh my!
Besides being a millimeter too short it looks to be still contaminated with swarf and the bearing surface is as rough as a badger's arse besides.
Click to expand...

I had to have to old one pressed out at work.
The new one I received today from MikesXs and I did notice the extreme difference in surfacing.
(The new sleeve won't be installed anyway as the swingarm is worthless. The one side has a severe gouge from something spinning inside of it for god knows how long and is extremely pitted where the bearings were.)
 
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that original is a good visual of what zero maint. looks like. Anyone who gets one of those new ones is going to have trouble
and when they come to this site, we will be able to refer them to this thread
 
I measured it and the bearings and the swingarm to see if it would work.
Nope.
The sleeve is shorter than the bearings. So I would need to take some material from the bearings for it to work. (MikesXS bearings by the way)
 
So is that swingarm i sent you no good altogether? Or can it be saved? Ill send back the radian on my dime if you like
 

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