ATTENTION!
whatever I do here, I do on my own motorcycle and I take responsibility for it, my own motorcycle!
If you decide to do something along these lines and break/destroy/annihilate/exterminate your motorcycle, it's totally your own responsibility!
So, as clearly as this can be said: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE for your damages!!!!
11.3.2024
Installing Nushings on my R1100GS!
I have owned this bike since 2001! So far it has 99.700 km's on it.
Last year, (ok, it was 2022!) we rode to Morocco for 20 days and upon returning, I very carefully checked the whole bike. It had endured a very tortuous trip indeed!
I discovered the final drive had a very slight sideplay. At that time, I removed the torque rod below the FD and re-torqued the left side pin.
The play was eliminated but it was there in my mind!
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After reading about the Nushings at the AdvRider forum, I decided to give them a go. In fact I ordered them in late 2022, the parts arrived in early 2023 and since then I had the bike sitting on the battery tender, covered carefully and doing nothing really! Actually in all 2023 I did the tremendous amount of kilometers: 220 total!
A few days ago my friend Spyros insisted we should mount those Nushings at some point in my bike's life! So, today we DID IT!
The easy part , I did it on my own!
Washed the bike, removed rear wheel, rear brake caliper and stopped there...
As soon as Spyros arrived at my little sunny garage, we removed the final drive, then we removed the swing arm, and finally we got to do another in-significant work that bothered me for the last five (yes five!) years. Replace the Neutral switch that resides behind the gearbox!
What it did? The very big and very bright green light in the middle of the instrument cluster was ALWAYS lit, no matter what gear the gearbox was in. Very frustrating, especially at night!
So, I simply found the switch connector and disconnected it.
I then needed to pull the clutch whenever I was starting the bike, because it "thought" I was in gear (even when the RID showed 0, zero!)
As I said, frustrating, but I learned to live with it!
Spyros' favorite tool!
Look ma there are spiders down there!
Of course we removed the rear shock (and the right side seat base).
We first tackled the neutral switch. There it is!
Another view of the two switches: The gear indicator switch resides on top of the neutral switch. The are both sandwiched together. They are held with some very tiny M4 bolts that are a little difficult to remove.
I actually replaced them with 3mm Allen head bolts, which are a LOT easier to manouever in there, instead of blindly fiddling with the 7mm socket!
They came from my HPI Baja 1/5 scale two-stroke petrol RC car parts bin!!!!!!!!
At one time we lost them! But they were right there! Oh well, I'm getting old and forgetful!
We lost almost an hour searching for them! hehe
Upon removing the gear indicator switch which is on the outside...
... we realized it was brittle on the outside with small plastic parts falling all over the place!
Instead of panicking (which meant we should find a new switch -probably used- and leave the bike semi-dismantled while waiting!) we decided to use good old RC cyanoacrylate glue and try and fix as many small parts as possible.
After carefully putting back a few small pieces we found, I smeared a dab of black windshield glue all around the switch and left it hanging to dry, hoping for the best!
In the meantime, we removed the neutral switch only to discover gearbox oil was coming out of the hole!
We put it back in!
Then with a quick ninja-like move, we pulled it out again, while at almost the same time we mounted the new (used actually!) neutral switch!
A spoonful of oil leaked. No big deal! We cleaned it and moved on!
Time to attack the FD, then:
We emptied the FD completely, since it was leaking from the top hole, where the ABS sensor passes... And anyway right after this a full oil service is due for the bike (engine and gear oil).
Using a socket with a long extension and a hammer we removed the old bearings and the cages.
We then followed Nushings' instructions and frozen the nushings for a couple of hours. Then, after heating the FD the cold Nushings almost fell into the holes.
We cleaned the FD very carefully, of course before mounting the Nushings in there.
Carefully we tapped the Nushings with the plastic mallet, not wanting to hurt them. They didn't need a lot of hammering anyway.
We cleaned the swing arm inside and out. We noted that its bearings were very smooth so we didn't need to replace them. Alas, we didn't have a long threaded rod and a few nuts that we needed to do it properly.
Another time!
Swing arm installed, rear shock installed.
FD installed and measured!
Tomorrow morning we will mount the rear wheel, rear caliper and ABS sensor. The easy part!
And fill the FD with the appropriate gear oil again, of course!
Big thanks to Spyros for his kind help!