My goal today was just to get the swingarm off the bike. I need the parts of the rear suspension free to be reconditioned.
A buddy stopped by and we had the subframe off of the
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is my first day of working on the FJ since last year. I am sick of putting
Band-Aids on this thing. Folks will tell you if you ask that there are
a bunch of good FJ's still out there to be had. I did not get one of them.
My FJ is rough even after all of the little stuff that I did to it.
My goal today was just to get the swingarm off the bike. I need the parts of the rear suspension free to be reconditioned. A buddy stopped by and we had the subframe off of the |
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in about 15 minutes. Thanks Pat!
The rest of the night I fought the swingarm and linkage. I relearned an old lesson tonight. If you are tired walk away. I looked at the GYSM before starting. There are almost no real disassembly instructions in the thing. I tried rocking swingarm left and right in the frame to get it free I found that the swingarm kept moving lower in the frame as a result. It wedged itself between the motor and the frame on the other side of two mounting |
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points
for the footpeg brackets. It was stuck. I took a break to come in a get
cleaned up and relax. About two hours later I felt the garage tugging on
me. I could not let the FJ sit like that all night. The time away from
the shop allowed me to rethink what I might be doing wrong. I went back
out there with a rubber mallet and drove the swingarm pivot up out of the
nest that it had found low on the frame. Once it was back just above where
it would normally bolt up I used the mallet to strike the underside
of the pivot point. The pivot point finally came to rest in the widest
part of that rear frame enclosure. I then rocked it back and forth about
3 times and pop, out it came. Cool! Finally! I need a bigger/ better
body if I am going to keep this up!
The rest of the linkages just unbolted except the lower shock mount. The book recommends that you take the shock out first by removing the ring clip from it's lower mount point and driving the pivot out. I did not do this. Instead I pulled either end of the linkages off of the swingarm and center stand bracket and dropped the shock out with the linkages still attached. This is the only place that I varied my procedure from the book and it seemed to go okay. I have already come across a couple of parts that have to go. As I said in the intro this bike has some hard miles on it. The heat shield for the carbs and the apron that hangs off of it are trash. I will replace this piece with a new one. The battery box was a friggin' mess too. I will spent some time on it and try to bring it back to life. The rest of the parts back here are just ugly and caked with 45K worth of chain lube. I will spend many hours removing goop from parts I am sure. |
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