swing arm reinstall

[Guest BIGGERJIM]

hey yall

i done the front u-joint this week end, and had to drop the swing arm.

when i was putting it back on, i notice that the two bolts that hold it on went in to different depths.

how do you know if the bolts are right,

will this throw the swing arm off to one side or the other,

is there a torque value for these bolts befoe you put on the big chrome nut

 

 

thanks bigger jim

[Guest frankdugo]

hey jim, just pulled out the service manual -----can't find any torques for the swingarm. don't know for sure,but i'd measure the depth on both sides. if their the same would guess no difference

[Guest ratchethack]

Hey Jim

 

The factory lateral tolerance for centering the swingarm via the stub axles is 3 mm (total). Most take a depth gauge measurement of the stub axles relative to the pork chops on each side before disassembly, and simply re-install 'em the way the Luigi's set 'em in Mandello and call it a day. This assumes 2 things: 1. The Luigi's got it "close enough" in the first place, and 2. Nothing has changed since they set it.

 

As for Yours Truly, I've never been confident with many Mandello assembly practices in the first place (regardless of the day of the week the bike was on the factory floor).

 

Being pretty pro-active with my maintenance, I've sorta incrementally thrown in an entire dismantling of the bike along with the maintenance schedule, and have re-assembled it with proper torques, threadlocker, and lubrication where it never got any in wot I consider critical places, with no assumption wotsoever on my part that much of anything had previously been set correctly.

 

Now there are many who evidently consider this kinda behavior anal-retentive. Well, there might be a fair trade here, since I consider the relatively negligent behavior of many Guzzi owners grossly irresponsible, and quite possibly a great deal closer to outrightly contemptible. I figure there's some kinda balance in all of this. . .but I digress. . .

 

Now then.

 

Since you're evidently left with no frame of reference to work with at this point, and I presume you have no convenient access to an alignment table? You could use the tried 'n true "string method" around the tires to get it "in the ballpark". Others use a method that uses flourescent light tubes bungeed to the rear tire, and finagle it that way.

 

As an alternative, you might consider wot I discovered to be a much quicker, easier, and far more accurate method of aligning the swingarm using a standard laser level. I opened a thread on it a coupla years back here:

 

http://www.v11lemans.com/forums/index.php?...amp;hl=swingarm

 

Hope this helps.

 

EDIT: If you forgo aligning the swingarm and simply set the stub axles at equal depths, there will be a greater than even probability that you've set it well outside of factory tolerance (see link above).