Whatever you decide to do, be safe: assemble your new parts DRY (no grease) and install the arm, then torque it to 25 ft-lbs. Then, with the bike on the centerstand, alternately push-pull the rear axle slot side-to-side. It if moves more than 0.004", you're in trouble.
That's not a typo: 0.0040" is the OEM spec for the new parts. Worn-out is just 0.080" side-to-side movement, unless you believe in the first K0 sandcast manuals that showed 3mm (0.120") side-to-side, later ones were tighter. The reason: when the arm can wiggle side-to-side, this movement is amplified by the entire length of the frame to the steering head, where it results in a speed wobble. You can perhaps write to one of our members (Matt, found in my book, PM me if interested in his details) to ask him what happened to him last year after he decided 0.060" was OK, and went down on I-70 in the Sheridan Lake Curve at 60 MPH (in traffic!) because of said speed wobble... He brought me his swingarm last summer, after his bones healed and he began the rebuild of the whole bike.
Those of you who know me well understand why I am so "adamant" about this topic: a man was killed "on my watch" in 1973 by a swingarm that wobbled only 0.040" side-to-side when the bike went into a wobble at 60 MPH: be smart.
HM
Thanks for the info. I was completely sold on sending it to you but now I'm not sure if I need to. I shined up my collar with 600 grit and it came up like new (It's not mushroomed btw) so I cleaned everything up and assembled it dry to test with only 25 pounds of torque. With the bushings dry (black, I assume is stock plastic) and the bike cinched down to a motorcycle lift, I can't perceive any lateral movement in the swingarm at all. How do you even see .004"? Is there a way to measure/check properly that I'm missing?
Could these have been recently replaced with stock bushings to be this tight? I have no history on the bike but with 35,000 miles on it I'd expect this to be sloppy and obvious.
This isn't unusual: here's the 'inside skinny' about the post-1974 swingarm system on these bikes: beginning during the K4, Honda removed the grease grooves from the collar and the expensively-machine swingarm bolt with grease zerks and drilled passages, to save $$ as they were fighting with the Kawi 900/1000 in the price arena then. Instead, they made interference-fit collars (bigger OD than before, by 0.0004-0.0008" larger at the bearings) and removed the little grease felt seals, using instead a flanged phenolic bushing in place of all their previously good parts (but expensive). This new collar is actually 0.0004" larger OD on the outer half of each bearing, divided by the groove in the midst: the idea was said to be that if the owner pushed grease hard enough into the center grease zerk in the swingarm, it would ooze up to the groove, and when riding it would get hot enough to melt and move toward the outer bearing where the tightness comes from.Not a GREAT theory, but that was it...
In real life, few owners greased these arms, ever. I did on bikes that came to my hands, and those lasted a long time, if being hard to grease. Usually, it only worked if the big bolt was loosened and the arm worked up and down during the greasing.
The lack of grease then causes the phenolic to ride hard on the collar, when dry. Phenolic is sort of a bearing with the steel of the collar, but with enough grease it becomes spongy, too, over time. This, plus the scoring that often grinds away the phenolic over time, causes the looseness. Most often today, what we see if the grease got hard form sitting 30 years, then the arm refuses to accept grease at all. Also, phenolic absorbs moisture from the air: in the early designs Honda sealed the outside with the felt seal to keep this away, while on the later one the rubber-lipped end cups lose effectiveness and let moisture reach the edges of the phenoil flange, which wicks it trhough very quickly. This makes the collars rust, especially if idle. I have several arms here that will have to have the whole works bored out, as the rust in the phenolic has gripped both the swingarm (outside) and the collars (inside) so that they cannot be disassembled: one of these recently came from Kickstart's own 750 when he was building it!
The main difference with switching to bronze bushings (besides their enormously long life) if the major increase in hard-over frame stiffness when cornering. The overall sensation form them is that the bike seems to have lost 50 lbs of weight, making itself more nimble. Tapered steering head bearings do this again, and the 2 together makes the bikes wholly different from the way they were when stock.