Gift horse - part 2

The first area that received a full rebuild was the front end of the bike.

Once the fairing was removed (not as simple as it sounds), off came the headlamp, handlebar, front wheel and the complete fork. With that gone, we replaced the steering head bearings as the existing ones were worn out, and the outer races especially were all notchy. Doing this required the use of special pullers from CycleWorks in the US to get the job done. This was a moderately-sized pain in the ass, mainly because it took us a minute to figure out exactly how the puller works, and also because the outer races in the steering neck were stuck and seized solid: it took a while to get them out. With the steering neck thoroughly clean, we pressed in new outer races, then a new dust cap on the bottom of the steering stem, a new inner bearing and back onto the frame.

Here you can see the lower yoke with the steering stem pressed in:

A new dust cap, rather delicate and essential:

And the new bearing; I spent quite a bit of time cleaning the oil off of the bearings and packing them with grease properly.

Here are a couple of Hungarian FAGs:

Here, pressed into the steering neck:

Eventually we'll get to the swingarm bearings, as these machines are clever enough to have adjustable tapered roller bearings. They are probably due for replacement, but they'll have to wait for now. At least we have a puller (from CycleWorks as well) for those, so it should be a fairly straightforward job.