polarnut
Member
My 06, purchased in October, has 3,500mi. Seems the steering head is loosed, all kinds of noise on the bumps. My question here is warranty, should Yamaha fix it or just do it myself as many of you have?
Do it yourself. In fact, I would replace those ball bearings in the steering stem with these..... ALLBALLS PART # 22-1003. I did it and the diffence in steering was quite a bit. The bearing kit was about $40. It's well worth the time, and it's not hard to do.My 06, purchased in October, has 3,500mi. Seems the steering head is loosed, all kinds of noise on the bumps. My question here is warranty, should Yamaha fix it or just do it myself as many of you have?
Yep, if your bearings are very loose you will be able to feel play in the steering head when you push and pull on the fork tubes. Up and down play will probably show up first. It is easier to test this if you have the front wheel off the ground.So if one puts the bike up on the center stand, is there a test to see if there is loosness at the bearing. Like grabbing the forks and push and pull forward and back to check? Or should one just torque the big stem nut on top? A little confused. PM. <>< :blink:
So if one puts the bike up on the center stand, is there a test to see if there is loosness at the bearing. Like grabbing the forks and push and pull forward and back to check? Or should one just torque the big stem nut on top? A little confused. PM. <>< :blink:
details and photos here: https://www.fjr-tips.org/maint/shb/shb.htmlIts not the big stemnut you torque, its the nut under that. It requires a special tool that looks like a spanner wrench that you put a rachet in.So if one puts the bike up on the center stand, is there a test to see if there is loosness at the bearing. Like grabbing the forks and push and pull forward and back to check? Or should one just torque the big stem nut on top? A little confused. PM. <>< :blink:
Polar, I just got a new 2007 that was making a knocking sound through the front suspension whenever I rolled over a bump in the road. Not always, but when I hit something that forced the front wheel back rather than up into the tubes. We did the proper check on the forks and found significant "play" in them when the manual says there should not be "any". My selling dealership talked with the local Yamaha rep and one located in Japan .... they both said everything was fine, but I knew better. None of my previous bikes had ever made a sound like this. We called Tech Support in CA and were told the front end was not tight (no kidding) and should be repaired. They overnighted a complete new set of tubes, and after installing them also set the torque on the steering stem nut to the required 85 ft-lbs (tech had to turn it almost a full turn to get it tight). Bottom line ..... all is good and quiet and perfect now. I have seen so many fixes listed in this forum for the problem of front end noise, and this was what mine needed. :yahoo: All covered under the factory warranty of course. Sweet machine now.My 06, purchased in October, has 3,500mi. Seems the steering head is loosed, all kinds of noise on the bumps. My question here is warranty, should Yamaha fix it or just do it myself as many of you have?
That sounds like the torque to set the bearings, the final torque is much less, somewhere around 15lbs.also set the torque on the steering stem nut to the required 85 ft-lbs
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