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Post by ajordan92 on Nov 20, 2019 17:26:39 GMT
Hey team, Great website you got here. Excited to have found it  and love theres so many enthusiasts out there for this bike. I bought quite a battered one about a year and a half ago which served me well till I passed the full bike test and switched to a Triumph. Now its not my main ride im trying to give it something of a restoration. I've done the whole chain/sprocket change and a few other bits but i've run into trouble on the steering head bearings, which was an advisory at the last MOT. I have attempted to upgrade to the tapered bearings, but i just can't get that ***** to sit right. The steering stem doesn't seem to slot in perfect. I was wondering if anyone else has run into a similar problem on the bike? Please see pics below. Would appreciate any help on this. And yes I'm 97% confident I've removed everything in the frame itself. I used a removal tool and hammered them out. It wasn't pretty but when I put my finger up there I can only feel the grooves of the bike and no components. Thanks!    |
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ian
Member Of The Year 2019 
Isle of Man
Posts: 5,255 
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Post by ian on Nov 20, 2019 21:52:04 GMT
Hi & welcome to the forum, nice to see another 125TD on here. Sorry, but I can't tell what's going on from the pictures. I do know that fitting tapered bearings on the 250/400 SDs can be tricky. So much so, I bottled out of fitting them to my wife's TD & just replaced the ball bearings, although I have fitted them to another SD since. One thing, I can't tell, is there a spacer washer under the lower bearing in the picture? On the SDs, the taper bearing & race is a few mm shorter than the original ball set, so a spacer washer is required to raise it those few mm. This is the 2 on the SD side by side ( the ball set is inverted to make it easier to hold the ball bearings in place). The spacer washer can be seen under the taper bearing & with that in place the 2 sets are about the same height. Without the spacer, the stem tube would bind on the lower yoke.  So, does the TD need a spacer? Conversely, with some SD tapered sets, the upper bearing sits a few mm proud of the stem tube. What make are your bearings? A couple of us on here have had bad experiences with Pyramid bearings. Another issue I had was that one of the races went slightly out of square when tapping it in. Luckily I noticed & made sure it had squared up and was sitting all the way round on the raised lip in the stem tube. You'll probably need to get up to 20 posts to see this. honda-superdream.co.uk/thread/11131/steering-head-bearings-help |
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Post by ajordan92 on Nov 25, 2019 12:43:02 GMT
Hey Ian,
Thanks so much for the reply. I did it so along ago I can't remember exactly what I fitted so I think my best approach would be to just remove and as you rightly did to install traditional ball bearings. Although I do believe there is a spacer sitting underneath with a lip to keep it all in place. I used All Balls Racing bearings. So the issue seems to be that the bearings are too tall which means the steering stem isn't sitting correctly, which the knock on effect to that is the handlebars don't feel as secure and the headlight bracket doesn't sit properly back into its hole.
Where did you get your wifes head bearings for the 125? I might just buy from the same place as at least its a verified seller and know they SHOULD work. Don't think I can bare wandering back down to the cold shed again to scratch my head at this.
Thanks!
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ian
Member Of The Year 2019
Isle of Man
Posts: 5,255
mini-profile background: {"image":"","color":"29908d"}
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Post by ian on Nov 25, 2019 22:00:27 GMT
The races on the 125 were ok, so I just got new ball bearings the correct size from a local motorbike shop. David Silvers do a complete set using aftermarket races & Honda ball bearings , washer & seal and their aftermarket stuff is usually decent qualityl. I wouldn't have thought it would affect the handlebars; on the Superdreams it's just the headlight brackets that end up loose & the play there can be packed out with a couple of rubber washers. I've just put tapered bearings in Gill's CB250RS I'm rebuilding and this has a similar headlight mounting to the 125TD so I expected a problem there, but the top mounting is a large rubber clip the fits to the handlebar so there's enough rubber to take up the slack. I've not got the bike back together enough to get enough weight to test the steering bearings properly yet, but my fingers are crossed they'll be ok
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Post by na44superdream on Nov 25, 2019 22:12:14 GMT
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and love theres so many enthusiasts out there for this bike.
