Universal joint in tail shaft

[Landlubber]

My uni has a hard spot, it will need to be replaced as the bearings are nbg.

Does anyone know of someone in Aussie land that does these please.

One way is perfect, it stops like a crook head stem bearing going the other way, so I cannot trust it anymore.

[Bob_Roller]

If you have a local drive shaft repair shop near you, they should be able to help you out .

The u-joint bearing caps are 'staked' in a few places, not overly difficult to remove with an arbor press, or with a couple of sockets and a large vise .

[Landlubber]

Ta, has anyone actually done this before, I have a 20 ton press, but cannot see how to get the parts out without doing some damage, I would rather wait and see how to do it.

Any ideas?

[Bob_Roller]

You need to remove the 'staked' metal on one of the bearing caps , on each of the 'yokes' .

Take a socket larger than the diameter of the bearing cap, place the open side of the socket against the 'yoke', place another socket slightly smaller in diameter, so it fits up against the cap .

Place in your press, add pressure, and  both bearing caps should start to move, when the caps are free of the yoke, the cap that went into the open side of the socket should come off of the u-joint .

The opposite end cap should be free of the 'yoke', then you should be able to remove that side of the u-joint .

Repeat the process on the remaining caps on the other yoke .

Installation of the new u-joint, is just doing these steps in reverse, make sure you lube the caps up before attempting re-installation .

You may have to remove all of the 'staked' metal, depending on the dimensional differences between the old u-joint, and your replacement u-joint .

All you need is a chisel, or other such tool to stake the new bearing caps .

Hope this may have helped you understand the process a bit better .

Kinda use the same process to remove the needle bearings from the rocker arms .

[Landlubber]

Thanks Rob, and any cluse where to buy the new parts too please would be appreciated as the locals here do not do it.


Now for something completely different.........I spoke to the local BM shop here, fella named Chris, a very kind and knowledgeable fella.

He described to me how to hit the end caps with a brass drift,it resets them somehow (that neither of us could define), but most importantly, it WORKS....my hard spot has gone, the joint freely flops from side to side, it certainly cannot be felt to be crook anymore, and he has never had one come back after doing this.

...now this is truely remarkable....I know it deserves flack etc etc for doing this, but it works, so.....go get em.

[Bob_Roller]

I've got a drive-shaft from my R65, that I changed about 13 years ago, for the same problem .

On my next days off, I'm going to give it a good 'whack' with a large brass drift, and a 5 pound hammer, and see if it makes any difference .

I got a quote from a drive-shaft repair shop locally, the price they wanted, was $30US .

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

$30 sounds good to me.

Once the final drive is removed, what is involved with getting the drive shaft out?  I don't have access to a air-impact wrench.  

Do you remove the swingarm from the bike and hold the drive shaft in place somehow to keep it from turning?

[Bob_Roller]

You need to remove the swing-arm from the bike .

Then remove the final drive .

You then need a fixture similar to a McPherson strut compression tool, to compress the 'cush drive' spring, then you remove a circlip from a groove, at the final drive end of the drive shaft, which by the way, BMW refers to it in their shop manual, as a 'propeller shaft' .

Then the whole drive shaft can be removed from the swing arm .

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Cool!  No big nut!

[Landlubber]

No, no big nut. The clip that you remove is not actually a circlip, it is simply a circular ring, spring steel, it comes out easily really with a very fine screwdriver. I used a pair of special pliers that I have, they are flat beaked with cross hatching on the outside, so they hold things open, it worked very well.

When whacking the uni, what you do is secure the opposite end on the anvil, get a large brass drift and hit the end cap of the uni joint, turn it over and whack it again. The second time I did it, the joint miraculously became perfectly smooth, both ways.

Thanks again to Chris at the BM shop in Brisbane for telling me this, I owe him a bottle of Rum I reckon.