Hi I have just had my SM610 up on a high lift to adjust, clean and lube the chain. Whilst tightening the rear spindle I noticed a lot of slack (up and down) in the swinging arm. This slack appears to be caused by excessive wear in the lower shock bush. ie where the rear shock is mounted to the swinging arm. The bike has only covered 3000 miles. Is this normal? Is it something that you would expect and carry spares for or would you expect to clean and grease the bush during normal routine maintenance. Many thanks in anticipation. Regards Dazlove
I think my SM610 had about 2,500-3,000 miles on when I got it but mine was ok. When I got mine I went over the whole bike and regreased anything that was serviceable as the factory are notoriously meager with grease and a lot of people recommend doing this even on a new bike (whatever the make!). On mine I had to replace a bearing in the swingarm even though the bike was only about 2 1/2 years old at the time..... I've just acquired a much neglected YZ250 crosser ('06) and am going through the whole process again. You really don't want to hear the state of the linkages etc on this thing! From what I can gather from the Yamaha 2 stroke section on Thumpertalk it is the bottom shock mount that often gets the hardest time as it is the closest to the ground. One thread I read recommended that you should grease your linkage bearings twice as often as your swingarm bearings and grease your bottom shock mount bearing twice as often as you do your linkage (which kind of makes sense!) On my Yam the bottom shock mount is a needle roller bearing but IIRC the bottom shock bearing on the 610 is a spherical bearing so pretty much sealed so you'll probably have to just replace it. I'd be looking to get one from a bearing factors as opposed to the silly money you'd pay for a genuine Husky part which is probably no better or even worse than you'd get from somewhere such as BSL (or Brammer I think they're known as these days). If I were you I'd regrease the swingarm and linkages while you're there as the chances are you might need to replace some other bearing while you're at it........... Good Luck (and be prepared for the linkage bearings to go spilling out all over your garage floor if they're not very well greased. They're not in a cage or anything - was the first time I'd seen this!)
Always something to look forward to the factory skimps on grease. It’s like paying .50 euros for a squeeze of ketchup with your fries. I'll be looking at mine soon.
