Mosshead

front wheel

December 19th, 2005

After establishing a decent music station, I used my new motorcycle jack for the first time ($50 at Schucks was a great deal!) and took the front wheel off today. It took a little longer than I would have liked and somewhere in the middle of the day our classic December fog turned to freezing fog.

Things I know I have to do with the front wheel:

1. replace tire
2. replace bearings, preferably with sealed bearings
3. replace all seals & wearable parts while I’m in there
4. drill the brake disc. I’ll post the drill pattern I decide on here
5. (new discovery) replace speedometer cable
6. (new discovery) replace brake lines
7. find any high/low spots, adjust & balance spokes as needed
8. clean up the wheel, polish and seal/wax it

My Haynes manual is pretty good but a couple of steps were unclear.

Before I took the wheel off, I tried spinning it and noticed it was catching badly enough to stop spinning consistently at one spot. I’ll have to look into that. I was going to look for high and low points but lost patience with the catching. Hopefully it’s just a brake caliper adjustment issue.

The manual tells you to disconnect the speedometer cable at the wheel end - I found that it was easier to disconnect it at the speedo end first. While disconnecting the speedo, I discovered that the cable will likely have to be replaced. Later, I noticed the brake lines at the reservoir appear to be leaking.

Next, Haynes instructed me to loosen the “spindle clamp bolts” which were nowhere to be found on any wheel-related diagrams. I finally located them on the bottom of the fork tube (duh).

Next, removing the split pin and castellated wheel nut. Haynes says to use a “tommy bar” to pound out the spindle bolt. I don’t know what a tommy bar is, but a 3/8″ oak dowel worked well.

I removed the valve core to deflate the tire a little so it would come off more easily. Now that the wheel is off it’s time to figure out how to break the bead on that old tire. The tire is most likely the original - - 33 years old!

Entry Filed under: i like bikes