Rear coupling/sprocket bearing gone bad on 1998 XJ600
Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 6:42 pm
I had my rear tire replaced yesterday by a friend who's a certified motorcycle mechanic.
As he was about to balance the new tire, he told me that the bearing inside the rear coupling housing that the rear sprocket bolts on to, wasn't turning properly. He advised me to replace it before putting the wheel back on the bike.
Today I went ahead and removed the oil seal (item 12 in the parts schematics below) and found its insides to be full of sand and rusted powder residue. Here's the pile of crud that I scraped out of the seal:
Then I saw the insides of the bearing.... Now this would explain why the bearing couldn't be turned by hand, and was even difficult to turn using pliers and grips:
So I used a punch to hammer the old bearing out gently, and was about to order a new one + new oil seal from Yamaha. It's item #11 in red in the schematics:
The oil seal was around $9 in Norway money, but the bearing... OUCH.
Yamaha dealers wanted almost $80 for the OEM part.
Fortunately I found a picture of an OEM one out of the packaging, and it stated "KOYO 63/22RS".
Sure enough, those same markings were on my old, rusty bearing.
So - KOYO is a large Japanese bearing manufacturer that ships stuff out by the boatload, so there is no way this little bearing should cost $80.
You can get these KOYO bearings at around $10 from various online shops, the most commonly available being the "63/22 2RS".
"2RS" instead of "RS" at the end of the ID number simply means that it will have a seal on each side for the 2RS, as opposed to the bearing only having a seal on one side when it's named "RS". Dimensionally speaking, they're identical. The seals come off quite easily, so you're free to remove one of the seals, if you so wish, effectively making it a 63/22RS.
I have a contact who purchases a lot of industrial bearings, and was able to buy (locally) a nearly identical spec bearing from another name brand at around $20, so I went with that option.
But especially for those of you who are in the US, the KOYO ones are readily available online, such as here (no affiliation to me) :
https://www.bearingbasement.com/p/beari ... ng-sealed/
As he was about to balance the new tire, he told me that the bearing inside the rear coupling housing that the rear sprocket bolts on to, wasn't turning properly. He advised me to replace it before putting the wheel back on the bike.
Today I went ahead and removed the oil seal (item 12 in the parts schematics below) and found its insides to be full of sand and rusted powder residue. Here's the pile of crud that I scraped out of the seal:
Then I saw the insides of the bearing.... Now this would explain why the bearing couldn't be turned by hand, and was even difficult to turn using pliers and grips:
So I used a punch to hammer the old bearing out gently, and was about to order a new one + new oil seal from Yamaha. It's item #11 in red in the schematics:
The oil seal was around $9 in Norway money, but the bearing... OUCH.
Yamaha dealers wanted almost $80 for the OEM part.
Fortunately I found a picture of an OEM one out of the packaging, and it stated "KOYO 63/22RS".
Sure enough, those same markings were on my old, rusty bearing.
So - KOYO is a large Japanese bearing manufacturer that ships stuff out by the boatload, so there is no way this little bearing should cost $80.
You can get these KOYO bearings at around $10 from various online shops, the most commonly available being the "63/22 2RS".
"2RS" instead of "RS" at the end of the ID number simply means that it will have a seal on each side for the 2RS, as opposed to the bearing only having a seal on one side when it's named "RS". Dimensionally speaking, they're identical. The seals come off quite easily, so you're free to remove one of the seals, if you so wish, effectively making it a 63/22RS.
I have a contact who purchases a lot of industrial bearings, and was able to buy (locally) a nearly identical spec bearing from another name brand at around $20, so I went with that option.
But especially for those of you who are in the US, the KOYO ones are readily available online, such as here (no affiliation to me) :
https://www.bearingbasement.com/p/beari ... ng-sealed/