| No real secret. It's pretty easy to do with the bike just on the centre stand. If you've got the ride height jacked up like I have you might want to put a bit of 4 x 2 under the centre stand so the rear wheel is well clear of the floor.
Then get your socket (I think it's 42mm - but I can't be sure without running out to look in my toolbox). If you're really fussy, you might want to take your socket down to a machine shop and get them to turn the socket down to lose the bevel on the flats. The wheelnut is not very thick so getting the socket to fit really snug onto it by turning it down is a good idea otherwise the bevelled bit takes up about half the width of the nut and the socket is more likely to slip and round off the wheelnut a bit - I haven't bothered lathing my socket, but then again my wheelnuts are mullered.
Then I just undo one nut. I take the wheelnut and spacer thingy on the chain side off - but you can take your pick. I leave the spindle in at this point.
After that I undo both 12mm bolts on the chain adjusters fully, and push the wheel right forward as far as it will go to make the chain slack, then I rotate the wheel and ease the chain off the sprocket from the bottom.
Once the chain is off, I slide the wheel back again and remove the spindle. If it's been nicely greased you should be able to grab hold of the wheelnut and spacer that you didn't bother to remove and just pull, wriggle and shimmy it out. If it hasn't been well greased you'll need a block of wood to hold against the spindle (on the side you've removed the wheelnut from) and give the block of wood a few small taps with a hammer to drift the spindle out.
As the spindle comes out on the right hand side, you'll need to take the weight of the wheel, and also remember that the rear brake caliper is mounted on to the spindle (and held from twirling round by a peg on the swingarm), so as you remove the spindle you'll need to hold the caliper to stop it falling and potentially damaging the brake hose.
That's about it, except that the rear wheel has a conical spacer on the sprocket side, which I always forget to take out. It usually falls out as I push the loose wheel up the path on the way to the car.
Re-assembly, as they say, is the reverse of this.
Remember to give the spindle a good slathering with grease, before you put it back in.
Getting the rear brake caliper to stay where it's supposed to is a bit of a faff, as is getting everything lined up so the spindle can go through all the holes smoothly, but a bit of patient wriggling is usually all that's needed.
Put the chain back on and adjust it up with the wheelnuts just finger tight (remember to check that the adjusters have the same number of 'lines' each side so that you know the wheels in straight) then torque it up.
Ta da! Job done!  |