First off, I want to say that I am not a motorcycle mechanic but someone who did this himself with a buddy to keep cost down and to be able to take a little bit of pride in the fact that I wrenched on my own bike. This wouldn't have been possible without Johnrocks help and his garage. A big Thank You goes out to him for his help in this. With that being said, if one of these steps can be done easier please add your thoughts so that anyone who looks at this in the future can see it as well. I tried to take pictures of every step but of course I get involved in the project and I missed a few. It would help you to lay put a few blankets on the garage floor to lay your parts on as you take them off to protect them. The book also tells you to remove the tank, I believe. I left mine on and just covered it with a thick moving blanket.
Step 1: Remove your windshield/fairing if you have one.
Step 2: Remove your chrome gauge housing from the tank by removing the three
hex screws (one in the back towards the seat and 2 on the front edge of the tank). I didn't unplug mine as I didn't remove it clear from the bike, it just needs moved to clear the upper past the key surround.
Step 3: Remove the headlight and headlight bucket. The headlight first comes apart by removing the two visible Philips screws, one on each side of the bucket. This removes the trim ring and actual lens itself exposing the wires behind. (Once the Philips screws are out you will need to pull out at the bottom and then lift up slightly to clear the tabs at the top). Unplug your headlight and then set that front housing aside. You will need to unplug and separate the rest of the wires in your bucket so that you can feed them through the bucket as you are removing it from the bike. It helped us to tape and mark some of the wires so that we got them back together properly. Once the wires are all disconnected, you can remove the three bolts that mount the headlight bucket to the bike. There are 2 longer screws and 1 shorter. The short screw goes in the bottom and is marked by the blue arrow in the picture. Once the bolts are out, carefully feed your wires out the bottom and the back and set the bucket aside where it won't get damaged.
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Step 4: Remove the front fender by removing the 2 bolts on each side, one on each side of the fork on each side. (blue arrow) While down here you can also loosen the caliper bolts, leaving them in place. (red arrows). Once the fender bolts are removed, you can just rotate the fender around the tire and out the front of the bike, and set aside on a towel or blanket or something to protect it.
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Step 5: Place the jack under the bike and put slight pressure on the bike, not fully lifting it off the ground. Just basically standing it up straight and lifting some of the weight. Now is also a good time to break the torque on the center nut on the upper tree and the front axle. This saves a lot of unwanted flexing and bobbing of the bike while in the air.
Step 6: Now you can remove the caliper bolts loosened previously and then remove your calipers by just sliding them up off of the rotor. A good idea would be to put something between your brake pads to keep the pistons from working themselves out, a thin screwdriver or even some of those wood door frame shims. I hung mine over the highway bars for now.
Step 7: On the curb side fork at the bottom you will need to loosen the pinch bolt for the front axle. Once loose, you need to lift the bike to where the front tire is just resting on the ground with no real weight on it. Then you can unscrew the axle itself removing it from the fork. The front tire will simply roll out towards you now, Keep you eyes on the spacers on each side so as not to lose them. Also note the tire tread direction so that you can out it back on the same way.
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Step 8: Now you can take your windshield brackets off the forks, along with your driving light bar or turn signal bar. There are 4 bolts total, 2 regular bolt heads and 2 allen head screws. Be careful as once you remove the two lower allen head screws, your lightbar will be free and drop if your not holding onto it. (Don't ask how I know, hence why I moved the step of removing the fender to before this step)
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Step 9: Now on the underside of the lower tree, you need to loosen and remove the bolts for the brake line assembly (red arrows). I also removed the riser nuts as well to be able to remove the bracket that holds your lines from the handlebars (blue arrows). Also at this time, and I apologize for not marking them, but you need to remove the 4 bolts on top of the lower tree out beside the forks that hold a small bracket that again, holds your lines in place (you can see the nuts in this picture on the underside of the tree out towards the forks, they are silver).
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Step 10: Now that your brakes are completely loose from the forks, grab the calipers and hoses and bring them right out the front of the forks and swing them up over the trees and I just layed mine across the tank.
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Step 11: It is time to make note of the depth that your forks sit in the upper tree. This way you know the height to put them back in at and to get them even during re-assembly (red circle). Also at this time, you need to loosen the pinch bolts on the back of the upper tree (blue arrow).
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Step 12: Remove the chrome nut in the center of the upper tree making sure to note the chrome washer underneath it so that you don't lose it. Once the nut if off, you can lift the upper tree off and lay it and the handlebars back onto the tank. You may need to use a flat screwdriver to pry the upper tree apart by the pinch bolts but do so carefully as you can mark up the aluminum tree.
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Step 13: Remove the upper fork tins by just lifting them up off of the fork tubes. note the rubber bushing and metal washer.
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Step 14: Remove the lower tin bolts, 1 on each side.
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Step 15: If you are going to do any maintenance on the forks internally (fluid change, spring change, seals, etc), now is the time to pop loose the caps while the forks are still held tight.
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Step 16: Loosen the pinch bolts on the lower tree that holds the forks in place. Hold onto the fork tube while doing this. Once loose, the fork will just slide out the bottom. set them aside keeping the forks separate from each other.
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Step 17: Remove the lock tab that is over top of the steering stem nuts. The top nut can be removed but make sure to not damage the rubber washer in between the two nuts. The book says to replace them but the Yamaha dealer told me not to worry about it, they never do, to each their own I guess. Once the top nut and washer is off, you can loosen and remove the lower nut and drop the steering stem out of the frame.
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Step 18: We chose to drive off the lower bearing ourselves using a drift and hammer. after we had it off, we took some emery cloth and just dressed up the shaft lightly and took the new bearing and stem down to the local
yami dealer who pressed the new bearing on for a small donation to the coffee fund.
Step 19: It is time to tackle the least fun part of this job. Pounding out the bearing races. We used a couple different drifts and hammers to get the right combination to catch the tiny edge that you are given to get the races out. They do make bearing tools that I am sure will do this job easier however we did not have them. We finally got them out and cleaned the neck really good removing any shavings, grit, old grease, etc. A tip provided by Mike (Frosty) that worked great for him was to use a Dremel with a small grinding wheel to weaken the lower race for easier removal. The new races were in the freezer overnight so they went in fairly easy. We used the old races to pound in the new ones. Just be sure to pound them in evenly because if they get crooked you can score the race area and damage the races themselves. You will hear a definite change in the sound of the pounding when the races hit home. And the feel will be very solid. When done, the races are slightly lower than flush.
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As you can see my races weren't that great. The factory grease was almost non existent and what was there had the consistency of water.
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At this point you can choose to put the bike back together or leave it like this and sell tickets to ride your mechanical bull. Choice is yours!
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Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly. I did not take pictures of the reassembly. All together we started on the bike at 9 am and with lunch break and the running to the dealer to press the bearing, we were test riding by 4 in the afternoon. It really helps to have a second set of hands to help.
SPECIAL NOTE Make sure after the bike is completely reassembled to pump the front brake lever several times to re-engage the brake pads with the rotor. We all paid too much money for our seats to feed them to our backsides due to not doing this step.
These are the torque specs for the respective bolts as they apply to performing the removal of the steering head, steering bearings and a fork oil change.
* Please Note * There is a discrepancy between the Clymer torque specs for the steering stem adjusting nut and what has been stated here on the RSC. Clymer recommends 3 N*m or roughly 2.2ft.lbs. We chose to follow the RSC recommendation of 13ft.lbs on both Bigrigme 2004 and Johnrocks 2006 bikes. Both bikes performed exceptionally after this adjustment.
Steering head nut 96ft.lbs
Steering stem adjusting nut initial 38ft.lbs then back off one turn then retorque to *13ft.lbs
Steering stem locking ring nut Finger tight
Lower fork bridge clamp bolts 15ft.lbs
Upper fork bridge clamp bolts 10 N*m or roughly 8ft.lbs
Fork leg cap bolt 17ft.lbs
Front axel 58ft.lbs
Front axle pinch bolt 15ft.lbs
Front Caliper - NOTE Clymer recommends applying medium strength thread locker to ALL caliper bracket and caliper mounting bolts for ALL years.
99'-03
Caliper bracket mounting bolt 30ft.lbs
Caliper mounting bolt 20ft.lbs
2004 on
Caliper mounting bolt 30ft.lbs
Front Brake Hose Assembly
Connector Lower Fork bridge Allen bolt Not Specified
Brake hose guide Allen bolt Not Specified
Fender bolt Tighten securely
Front turn signal assembly Tighten securely
Headlight bolt Tighten securely
Headlight housing screws Tighten securely
Windshield bolt Tighten securely
Meter cover to fuel tank 7 N*m or roughly 5ft.lbs
Favoured: 38
on the second set of hands.
