Topic: Uhhhgg, swingarm bolts

[eigenvector]

The garage queen, otherwise known as the Nighthawk, is in for it's latest drama.

From the sounds of it, the U-joint blew a bearing (at least I HOPE that's what it is, I'd hate to think it was the transmission) <clack clack clack clack> it goes whenever the wheel turns.  Gotta be a bearing and the U-joint is the most likely suspect.

So I'm tearing the rear swingarm apart - which is how you get to the U-joint.  Left bolt - 14mm allen head.  No problem, apply my foot to the handle of the wrench and it breaks free.  The right bolt - I don't even want to know, Honda has it secured with a castle nut/allen head bolt.  I'm guessing that is the actual swingarm bolt - seeing how I couldn't budge it at all.  In the interest of not breaking it I'm taking a bit of time off so that I can rethink my plan.

Is this one of those times where I have to break out the torch and a massive cheater bar to remove?  It's still not entirely clear to me how it's secured in there.

[calj737]

Typically a castle nut is not nearly as tight as the cotter pin provides the "safety" versus the torque on the nut.

Are you saying the end of the shaft has a socket head recess with a castle nut?

[eigenvector]

Something like that.

I'm glad I took a break.  Came back and remembered I had a castle nut socket from when I rebuilt the clutch on my CB750.  It fit well enough, that and the breaker bar that I had broke it free.

The swingarm bolt screws into the swingarm housing, then the castle nut screws on around the outside of the bolt locking it into place and preventing it from rotating.  Basically the same way you would secure a bolt by using two nuts, one against the other.

And it wasn't even the freaking U-Joint that was faulty   Oh well, the transmission housing is easy to get to now that the U-Joint is gone.

[eigenvector]

Pulled the clutch so that I could spin the tranny while in gear.

Can't see it clearly, the stinking oil pump is in the way, but based on what I'm seeing of the gear motion - I think I broke a shift fork.  When rotating the clutch shaft, the gears are popping in and out of gear every other turn or so.  That's what's making the noise - the gears tabs coming in and out of contact as they rotate.  The output shaft rotates in a start-stop fashion, not smoothly as it should.

I have the pull the engine to fix that - assuming I want to.  Might just stick this money sink into storage and get back to it later - much later.

[MikeSimon]

Can you post a picture of that "castle nut/allen head" and maybe the "castle nut socket"...just curious. Never seen one.

[eigenvector]

Sure thing

[eigenvector]

You know I'm looking at that swingarm bolt and the bearing surface doesn't look very good - in fact it looks downright worn out.  You can see where it's necked down toward the end with grooves and scoring in the metal.

[calj737]

That bolt is similar in design to the ones on my '74 R90. More like "pins" than bolts but I see why you were so daunted in removing it.