Heya,

I purchased a set of steering bearings on eBay, which were apparently for the F4. However, the bottom bearing does not fit at all it sits just above where the orginal bearing does. Below are pics, i'm pretty sure it's the wrong one but everyone on ebay sells the same set. Any idea's peeps i'm stuck on it and this is all I need to make the bike road legal again.

Ta

Tris

Original bearing fitting:



New bearing fitting:

 

you have to remove the old races *sp, so remove, pry, cut the old one off.

 

It's above that where the problem is, the shaft is bigger at the bottom and the bearing wont fit over it.

As far as I can tell the bearing diameter needs to be another 4 mil approx

 

I'm wondering if, like you said, its not the right bearing. I know when looking for brake parts on ebay, that most people list the rotors as f4 f4i, but f4i rotors are not compatible with the f4 caliper. And seeing that the old bearing is a ball bearing, and the new bearing is a roller bearing, I'm thinking its not the right one for your bike.

This is purely speculation though.

 

It wasn't moving freely with the old bearing's in, I have replaced the top only now and tourqued it all up and it's fine, it doesn't catch just a smooth turn now. It seems only the top set were screwed. I'd rather replace them both before the police inspection though.

 

lol your doing it wrong dude....



you see your new race has that dust seal... how look at your pictures what's that under that metal race?? a seal... so you need to get a grinder and cut that bitch off just careful not to cut into the steering stem.

 

That's all well and good but the bearing does not go any lower than what you can see, the shaft itself won't allow it. It doesn't reach the old runner or seal.

Oh that sounds a bit patronising, sorry it's not meant too

 

Can you take a photo so we can see the gap your talking about, cuz right now it looks like the new bearing cartridge is sitting on the old race. I'm sure boyo agrees with me. Have you tried measuring the inner diameter of the new bearings and the outer diameter of the stem? I used to be a bicycle mech so some stuff *might* translate. When installing new cartridge bearings on a bike we had to use a driver and hammer to hammer the races into place. Looking at my service manual for my F4 it says you have to do the same thing. the new bearings are not going to just slide into place with a bit of grease. Think of it this way, if they did than that would mean that under load they could rotate and negate the purpose of having bearings there in the first place. Boyo is right either way because you need to remove the old races anyways because you are taking a steering stem that had free floating bearings and you are converting it to a cartridge style bearing.

Oh and if you could take a photo of just the steering stem as well.

here is the tool we used - you can find it at any bike shop that's worth its salt


heres a vid just pay attention to the first 30 sec. same concept just instead of a crown race your gonna use your bearings.
http://youtu.be/GPX1sFm4kwg

 

Will do when I get home, thanks guys

 

I so agree that thing the new bearing is sitting on needs to be cut out... again be carefull not to hit the steering stem