Rear Wheel Removal

Mileage: 27,945

Tonight I pulled the rear wheel to inspect the rear brake and drive.  Everything looks great!

Here’s the drive spline coming out of the final drive unit.  It was well greased.  Not knowing what grease was used or how old it was, I’ve cleaned off the grease so that I can inspect the splines as shown here.  I also want to start with fresh grease when I put every thing back together.  I don’t see any signs of wear.  Do you?

The driving dog on the wheel side is also in very good shape, here are a couple of pictures taken after I removed the old grease.

It’s hard to tell if there’s much wear, some of the splines do look like the edges are asymmetrical.

The rear bearing are in good shape, they turn smoothly and don’t have any play.  The ubiquitous 6302RS bearing shown in the photo above is also used in the front wheel.

Further adding to the body of evidence supporting the low mileage on the bike, the rear drum shows very little wear.   That, or previous riders didn’t use the rear brake.

I’m going to replace the felt dust seal around the brake cam shaft.  In this picture you can also see the missing tooth in the cam which is used to index the brake wear indicator.  Also visible is the punch mark on the end of the shaft.  When assembled, this aligns with the punch mark on the lever, which is just visible at the 6 o’clock position.

When I adjusted the brakes to fix the brake light problem, I suspected I’d find new brake shoes when I removed the rear wheel.  I was correct in my suspicions. The brake shoes look new.

I removed the shoes and, after cleaning the brake cover and other components, greased the cam, cam shaft and pivot pins with red lithium grease.  The cotter pins shown partially installed here will be replaced with new pins before I reinstall the rear wheel.