u/Cddavis102

Posted a week or so about swingarm damage and bearings. I patched the damage with JB weld steel stick and got a new chain slider (cheaper eBay one) and bottom roller installed. The JB weld should serve as a good “indicator” for when the chain starts to contact the swingarm again, preventing further wear in to the swingarm.

Completely disassembled the needle bearings in the linkage and regressed (along with swingarm bearings). Linkage bearings had hard dried grease and likely weren’t even rolling.

Cleaned, aligned, and tightened chain. I eyeballed the alignment and ended up with 1/2 notch tighter on the RH side than LH side. I spun the rear wheel with the chain on to gauge the alignment. I could pinpoint the point where the chain changed from angling left vs right, so I feel good about the alignment.

Back together now; next up is fresh fork oil and the I’ll tune in the sag and rebound compression. Should be out on the trails in a couple weeks to see how she rides.

Took some time to tear down the linkage and swingarm on my new-to-me 2015 WR. The bike has 19.5k miles on it, but was pretty well maintained. It had some chain wear on the swingarm so I decided to tear it all down to clean and lube as well replace the chain slider.

I found the bearings in the relay arm to be pretty much locked up. Looks like they had some type of plastic or rubber cage to keep the roller bearings in place? At first I thought it was dried grease or crud because it was flaking out. After removing it all it definitely seems like it was a component. The connecting rod bearings didn’t seem to have those cages or holders; whenever they are. I guess the best course of action is to replace all these bearings?
I was thinking about just cleaning them well, greasing, and reassembling without the cages/holders. Nothing is super pitted or marred IMO. Thoughts? I’d rather not spend the $130 and the hassle of pressing/punching out the old bearings. I’ve never been too good with that and I don’t have a good press to use.

Swingarm bearings had a lot of good grease in them, so I’ll clean, grease, and re-assemble. I also patched the swingarm damage with some JB weld stick to at least keep the damage at bay in case the chain makes contact more.

What would you do? Clean, grease, and re-use the needles in the bearings or buy new?

Been going through the WR I picked up a few weeks ago. I was bummed to find some swing arm damage from the chain. I knew to look for this when checking the bike out. Looked good but after checking chain tension I noticed some wear on the slider. I cleaned the area and found some significant damage. The previous owner (original owner) said he kept a good eye on the slider and did replace it once.

Also noticed some wear on the bottom chain roller, and it doesn’t spin freely. I’m assuming it should spin easily like the top? I’ll replace with the slider.

I’m struggling a bit with chain tension. I know it’s critical to have the correct tension to avoid eating into the slider/swing arm. I set it per the chain tensions bulletin, but still seems awfully loose. I also removed the linkage bolt and got the sprockets and swing arm pivot in a straight line to check how tight the chain was, as suggested several times here and some forums. I had about 1” of total travel in the middle on the chain on the bottom.