Front Wheel Bearings

[Crossrodes]

I decided to give my front wheel good cleaning while I had it off.  Man does it look good now... a little simple green, nail brush and a tooth brush combined with about 2 hours of scrubbing and lots of rinsing worked wonders for this wheel.  It's probably never been this clean since it left the factory.  But I digress; on to the question:

I noticed a fair amount of old dried up grease on the wheel near the bearing.  I assume this is a sealed bearing in the snowflake wheel.  I'm not used to seeing that amount of dried grease on the Goldwing (but I'm guessing that the BMW didn't get the same attention from the PO that I have given the Wing).  Is this fairly normal on the R65?  The wheel seems to turn OK without any rough spots.  Would you guess that it's time to replace the bearings?

I noted in the manual that it calls for a special BMW tool ($) to remove the bearings.  Is there a tool I can make to do the job?  

[Justin B.]

The snowflake does not use a sealed bearing it is a "normal" tapered roller bearing and can be removed without any special tools.  Just pull the grease seal and the bearing will fall out.  Inspect the rollers and the race in the wheel carefully and if they are OK then clean, re-pack, and reassemble.  The only time you would need any special tool would be if the bearing or race was bad and you would then need a puller (or punch) to get the race out after the wheel was heated.

[Crossrodes]

Thanks Justin.  I'll check it out in the morning.

Mike

[Ed Miller]

It's probably too late for this post, buy you will probably want new seals before taking the old stuff out; they become deformed pretty easily during removal.  Then again, maybe I'm a ham fist.  

[Justin B.]

They fit rather loosely in most of my rims and so far have not had any problems - if careful.  OTOH, most automotive wheel seals seem to damn near require a hammer and chisel