Maintaining One’s Bearings

There are multiple ways to interpret the word “bearings.” In the midst of a recent garage work session, it became clear I was maintaining not one set of bearings, but two.

The task at hand was a mock-up of the rear wheel assembly on my Honda XR600R project. The bike I purchased is a 1988 model year, which was factory-equipped with a drum rear brake. There was nothing wrong with the drum setup. It functioned and was certainly restorable. The wheel and hub were fine as well. I just wanted to “upgrade” to a disc brake.

For the type of riding I do, a restored and well-adjusted drum brake is perfectly suitable. It’s relatively sealed, low-maintenance, and extremely durable. By comparison, a disc brake setup is quite a pain. The caliper needs a guard, the rotor requires protection on the underside, and the whole operation is exposed to the weather, allowing it to be coated in a constantly refreshed, abrasive slurry of dirt and water.

But the heat management is worth the trouble. That large rotor happily hands off heat to the atmosphere in a manner so true it’s a law that long predates brakes of any kind. A disc setup produces consistent stops, and the increase in effectiveness far outweighs any decrease in durability. So, of course, I decided it was high time I had a trail bike with this newfangled technology. I’d also been wanting to do a project that involved a little more fabrication, and the conversion from drum to disc brake seemed perfectly designed to teach me a few new things.

So after checking a few fitment details between the first-generation, drum-brake XR600R and the second-generation, disc-brake bikes, I began pillaging the halls of eBay, slashing at the buy-it-now button with a plastic sword 16 numbers long. The spoils arrived at my doorstep in a handful of boxes. The largest of the treasures was a swingarm from a 1994 XR600R, followed by a rear caliper and mount from a 1992 XR600R and a rear brake master cylinder from a Honda CRF450X.

The hardest part of the process would be hanging the master cylinder, so I started with the easy bit. The swingarm bolted right into place and even included the linkage that connects the shock to the swingarm. This was a nice bonus, because the linkage is comprised of the same parts as the ones coming off with the drum brake swingarm. Having a second linkage allows me to rebuild one while the other is still bolted to the bike, allowing me to test the fitment of other parts. Plus, spares. Everyone loves spares.

The needle roller bearings in a linkage pivot are some of the humblest parts of a motorcycle. They take a tremendous amount of force while being subjected to the brutal environment that is the bottom of an off-road motorcycle. The linkage gets bounced off rocks and roots while being pelted with everything flung off the front tire.

These bearings always put up a fight coming out. Always. The hardened steel shells, which reluctantly joined the links on their high-pressure first date, become nearly inseparable from the cast aluminum with time. The union is so strong that I had to use my bench vise as a press to break the two free, adding heat and tension until the aluminum expanded and allowed the bonds, formed over decades, to break. Only then could a new relationship begin, with new bearings.

Items like bearings are not meant to last forever. They are consumable things, meant to be changed when the time is right. Just like our personal, figurative bearings. Desires and directions shift and evolve. It is best to take a step back, reassess, and reorient ourselves with where we are going—and if that is indeed what we want.

The idea of doing a fair amount of extra work just to fit a disc brake to an aging motorcycle is slightly absurd, and as I mock up the assembly and measure for the spacers I’ll be making, I reminded myself that the whole disc-brake project is irrational. However, while none of it makes any real sense, we are granted the freedom to be absurd. That freedom includes making the decision to solve problems that don’t exist. I didn’t lose my way and wander off into the weeds. No, my bearings are well-maintained, even if one type is leading me down the more difficult path.

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