Honda used steel bushes in some of the later bikes, from memory, my 1977 F2 had steel, as opposed to plastic, bushes before I replaced them. Interestingly, I make my own swingarm bushes too, from oil impregnated bronze, or phosphor bronze when I can get it, and like Puppytrax mentioned, there's a real requirement to clean up the pivot pin on a lathe as they will wear on the "load faces", as the pin doesn't rotate. (the swingarm bush rotates around it)
I use a specially built electric belt linisher arrangement against the swing arm pivot pin rotating at a slow speed in the lathe to effect this. Don't bother replacing your bushes if you don't do this first, you're just wasting your time, it'd be like putting a new hub bearing on a worn out axle.
The first set of bushes I made in my lathe are still sitting on a shelf because when I bored them, they were a couple of thou too loose, so I made another set, only to find that when I froze them and installed them, they were way too tight by a couple of thou, so rather than destroy them trying to get them out again I used a brake cylinder hone and some valve cutting paste to hone them to spec, which took forever, then longer again to remove the remnants of the paste. I first tried an adjustable reamer, but was not happy with the result as it was too coarse.
Bottom line was, had I used the original ones that felt sloppy before I installed them, they would have actually been a nice snug fit. To install them, I used a length of threaded rod with two short lengths of shouldered alloy bar on either end to sit against and inside the new bushes, then just wound them in with a nut on either end, which is much better then whacking them in, in my opinion. Just make sure you machine the old pivots if you have to use them.
Oh, and the needle roller kits that you see on Ebay and accessory shops are just garbage, there's about 10 thou slop in those suckers when installed, so don't waste your money. Cheers, Terry.
