I am a long time Beemer airheads owner (1970 R75/5) and have cleaned and lubed the drive train on this bike many times over the years.
I recently acquired a 2011 NT700VA with 16,000 miles on the odometer. The bike didn’t come with a maintenance log and so I decided to include cleaning and lubing the driveshaft spline in the general maintenance I was going to do. When I pulled the drive shaft, I found a trace of what appeared to be moly paste, so I was glad I’d included this in my maintenance schedule. Once cleaned, I had a very tough time getting the u-joint side of the drive shaft to mate with splined u-joint fitting. I eventually figured out how to do this, which leads to my question. When the driveshaft feels like it’s coupled correctly to the u-joint, the bolt heads on the final drive protrude through the posts on the swing arm just enough to start the nuts, leaving a ~1/2 inch gap that has to be closed in order to bring draw the final drive unit up to the swing arm. I am able to close draw the units together, but it takes quite a bit of effort. I was expecting the units to more or less mate when the driveshaft was pushed in, then simply torqueing down the nuts. What surprised me was the effort it took to tighten the nuts. My concern is that the driveshaft splines aren’t properly mated to the u-joint. I cannot find any relevant online or in my NT700VA shop manual describing how to tighten the finish reassembling this process. So…
My question: Is it normal to have to apply some effort in order to tighten the final drive to the swing arm or am I doing something wrong?
Cheers,
Doug Minick
A.k.a Kazimoto
I recently acquired a 2011 NT700VA with 16,000 miles on the odometer. The bike didn’t come with a maintenance log and so I decided to include cleaning and lubing the driveshaft spline in the general maintenance I was going to do. When I pulled the drive shaft, I found a trace of what appeared to be moly paste, so I was glad I’d included this in my maintenance schedule. Once cleaned, I had a very tough time getting the u-joint side of the drive shaft to mate with splined u-joint fitting. I eventually figured out how to do this, which leads to my question. When the driveshaft feels like it’s coupled correctly to the u-joint, the bolt heads on the final drive protrude through the posts on the swing arm just enough to start the nuts, leaving a ~1/2 inch gap that has to be closed in order to bring draw the final drive unit up to the swing arm. I am able to close draw the units together, but it takes quite a bit of effort. I was expecting the units to more or less mate when the driveshaft was pushed in, then simply torqueing down the nuts. What surprised me was the effort it took to tighten the nuts. My concern is that the driveshaft splines aren’t properly mated to the u-joint. I cannot find any relevant online or in my NT700VA shop manual describing how to tighten the finish reassembling this process. So…
My question: Is it normal to have to apply some effort in order to tighten the final drive to the swing arm or am I doing something wrong?
Cheers,
Doug Minick
A.k.a Kazimoto
