Hello, John Talley here with partzilla.com, and as you can see we've been doing a little bit of
work on our 2005 Honda CRF450r. Now today we're going to focus in on replacing the head bearings.
Now as you can see, I've already got this pulled apart because I was actually just after the frame,
so there's a few things I'll need to do to get to where we can get to the actual headpiece
and then get the bearing removed. But you do not have to do all this just to work on your machine.
This happens to be where we are on the project, and if you're interested in watching that,
why don't you check out this unit's playlist because we're it's a very long list: all the way
down to the crankshaft and back out. Well today we're going to focus on just the head bearings,
so let's step over to the table and look at the parts and the tools we're going to use
to pull this off. All right guys, really short parts list for this one. Your bearings are the
same for the top and the bottom, just make sure you order quantity two for those. Now as far as
your dust shields, they are a different part number, so you may need to make sure you order
accordingly. Now as far as the special tools, I am going to go ahead and use the appropriate tool
to do each and every function as far as pulling the race, installing the new one,s and then even
pulling that inner bearing off the center post of the clamp itself. That's a little tricky to get
off. Now I've done different videos before where I used a drift, and a hammer, and a cut-off wheel,
and you're able to break them off. And I'm telling you, those inner races in that steering neck,
there's not even that much room for you to get a drift in there to hit it
and this tool makes it so much easier to extract. So for once we're not going to go the caveman
route. We're going to use all the appropriate tools to get this little project done. Well now
that we've got our parts and our tools assembled, let's step over to the table and knock this out.
Now guys, it was painfully obvious as you can see here, just how corroded and stuck these bearings
were. It took a lot to remove that, that head stem from this frame. I mean I was really beginning to
wonder if it was going to come apart or not. Hopefully yours is not in that bad a shape.
Now the reason we had it stripped all the way down to the frame as you can tell,
we spent quite a bit of time cleaning it up and getting it polished. Not perfect,
but it does look a lot better than when we started. So what we're after is to put this edge
right inside of that edge. Like I said earlier, there's not a lot of room to catch there,
so it may take a little bit of fiddling to get it at the right depth. Now...
and grab a couple of wrenches pull this guy out of there. So that larger nut is a 24 and then this
one is a 12. Let's see if we can get this thing to pop out of there. Oh that was a good sound.
I think she already popped loose.
You would have a hard time convincing me not to buy this tool. The further it pulls out,
the easier it's going to go, because less friction.
Almost there. There we go. That is the way to go, no doubt.
There it is. Very neat tool. Same scenario at the bottom of the neck.
Breaking that first one loose is always the hardest.
It's thinking about it. There we go, the battle is already over.
Let's get a little bit more torque on the situation and see if that helps.
There we go.
There we are. So next up, we're going to drive in the races, and to do this you want to use a driver
that has a tapered edge because we only have a very thin area to work with. And if you're using
just a regular flat type driver, if it fits in here, you run the risk of damaging that edge and
we can't do that. So we need to have one that fits in there as it should,
like that. Now we're going to use just a little bit of grease just to make it easier
for it to glide in. We're going to try this with a dead blow so we don't mar up our edge.
But I can pretty much tell you to drive it home, we'll probably end up using a metal one.
So the real trick here is to make sure you've got it
completely perpendicular when you start driving it in, because we don't want it to go in at an angle.
That will be tough to straighten back out. This should be it.
If it does angle like mine just did,
hit it more on one side or the other to line it back up. Now I think we're ready to go.
There you go. One down, one to go.
Tell you what: we'll do one the next one like this. That way i'm not trying to break my own hip.
That should be it.
The sound of success. Now we're done with the frame, let's turn our attention to the steering
stem itself. All right guys, normally if you were just doing the head bearings,
you would have removed the front tire, you would have removed your forks,
and then you just be looking at the the tree itself and you probably put it in a
a vise of some type to hold it still. We still have other projects that we have to do and I
took it off as a complete unit, so it's actually doing a decent job of just holding it still here
on the table, so I'm going to leave everything attached and then we're going to get that
that inner part of the bearing removed. Alright, let's see if we can get this cut off.
All right, that's one side broken loose, let's see if we can get the other side to pull out.
And I'll make a big old mess when they all fall out.
There we go.
As I said, there's the caveman way and the way we're going to do it. Caveman way would
be to take a cut-off wheel and cut at least 90 percent the way through on either side, and then
use a large chisel to break it loose because this metal is really hard but it's also very brittle,
that means it shatters easily. But we're going to use the Motion Pro tool, and it has a sleeve
that goes over the neck itself, and then it'll attach to this and then we'll extract it off.
So step one, we're going to take this collar-- back out each one of these Allens--
then we're going to bring it down on the neck and attach it to the race and screw these back in,
kind of like you would on a Christmas tree stand. And what we're going for is that upper edge.
All right, I may have to re-center that, but we'll see.
Now...
take this...
there we go.
Let's see if this thing will pull it off now.
There he goes.
There we go.
Like I said, pretty cool tool.
But we're not done with it yet.
Now we can get that lower seal slash dust cover out of the way.
That one's looking a little rough.
Put a little bit of grease in...
Now this tool's other function is to drive the new bearing on.
So here's the real trick here guys: to drive this on we don't want to damage this outer area,
that one that we cut off earlier. So we want something that's going to reach in
to that center section and only push on it. And of course this kit has a driver to do just that.
So
let's get that cleaned up a little bit more because it's trying to catch on it.
That should do it.
Now let's see if she wants to play nice. Before we pop it on there, let's go ahead and pack our
bearings since this will be easier to cram it in there versus hammering it on the stem.
That should do.
So we've got our adapter, the outer collar,
get this on there.
Now let's get it driven on.
All right, we have to get more aggressive.
You'll notice that this tool is just the right size to go over the the neck itself.
That way it completely drove it on there square. Motion Pro knows what they're doing. Once again,
very nice tool. Makes life a lot simpler. Plus you know putting it together this way, no damage. It's
going to work right. All right guys, I know this is going to be a little bit unorthodox,
but we are just going to go ahead and put our front wheel into a clamp, I'm going to bring the
frame over and then lower it down onto the uh, the head piece there and then we'll finish assembly.
Before we lower it down, I'm going to go ahead and put a little bit more grease on that bottom
race. I think I've got it lined up reasonably well. Let's go ahead and lower the the neck down.
I'm sure that's not the way Honda wanted you to put it back together, but that's the way we're
going to do it. All right, let's grab the rest of our pieces and start putting this together.
Next we're gonna pack our upper bearing and get it in place.
There she goes.
Next we put in our upper dust shield. Next we need to get on our steering stem nut. We're going
to put a little bit of grease around the bottom so that friction doesn't throw off the torque wrench,
and we're going to torque it to 22 foot-pounds. And we're using a Honda tool to do that.
All right, we've got it torqued to 22, but we're not done yet. What we're going to do
now is release the frame from its seat, I'm going to work it back and forth three or four times,
set it back down, loosen this up ,and then torque it to its final torque of 5.2 foot-pounds.
The 22 foot-pounds that is just to get it to seat in there. Release a little bit of pressure,
and then take it to the torque it's supposed to be. So a two-step process
All right guys, we're going to get our top clamp on and this may be a little bit tougher because of
course we're dealing with the top of our tree and the forks as well. So we'll see if she wants to
play nice and go back together. And we may end up having to open up the the top clamps for the forks
if there isn't enough clearance. Looks like she's going to go down. All right, there we go.
Get a soft blow hammer. We'll go ahead and seat that down.
Yeah, touchdown. Next we've got our washer and then our upper retaining nut. Now here is where
the real torque comes in. We're going to be torquing this retaining nut to 80 foot-pounds.
Close. There we go.
All right guys, that's going to wrap up this video, but I'm a long way from actually finishing
this build. And if you're interested in watching it unfold, why don't you check out this units
playlist. That way you can see everything that we're going to end up doing to this machine.
It's going to be something pretty special when I'm through with it. Beyond that, if you need any
parts for your machine, why don't you come see us at partzilla.com and we can get you taken care of.
If you have any questions or comments about this video, leave them in the section below
and I'll do my best to answer them. And hey, if you like what you see,
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I'm working on next. We just want to say thank you for shopping here with us at partzilla,
and we will see you in the next video. Y'all have a great day.