Ok I finally did it, I swapped my bearings this weekend. Man, it was a LOT of work. And in the end, it didn't cure my wobble completely. But it seems to have cured something else which I will get to at the end.
My experience:
Like most work you do on bikes, you have to do some work just to get to the real work you want to do. In this case, quite a bit of pre-work. Norm mentions it all in his how-to in the tech library. Big shout out to Norm for all his help w/ this and his how-to. Couldn't have done this w/ out his help.
I started out w/ the intention of taking a lot of pics as I went through the process, but I found that there's really not a lot of pics to really take.
Removing the bars, unbolting the headlight bracket from the lower triple, unbolting the speedo from the top triple, removing the tire, forks, etc is all pretty standard and there are tons of threads out there that already cover this stuff.
Once you have all that out of the way, time to get to the real work.
First, remove the ring nuts. #s 6, 7, 8 and 9 in this pic:
#s 6, 7, and 8 come right off. Use your spanner wrench for # 9. It comes right off once you loosen it. Make sure you hold the bottom triple to keep it from falling out once you remove the lower ring nut.
Then take off the bearing cover (# 11). Comes right off.
Then take out the upper bearing race and old bearings (#s 12 and 13). These also come right out.
Once all that stuff is removed, the lower triple and stem should fall right out, make sure you don't drop it.
That's the easy part.
The next part is really the name of the game and where the shops earn their money: removing the outer races out of the head tube (#s 17, top and bottom):
I bought this thinking it would make the job easy. Man was I wrong.
The problem is the races are pretty flush with the inside of the head tube so the tool wasn't able to bite into the races at all. So I ended up using a pry bar that I had laying around. Something like this:
Took a long time but I was finally able to get it to grab a hold of the outer races. Once you get here it's then just a matter of working your way around the races on opposite sides. The videos make it look a LOT easier than it is (or was for me anyway).
So now you got the outer races out of the head tube. At this point clean out the head tube real good with a clean towel.
Now remove the old bearing from the stem:
The old bearing and dust seal come right off.
Now for me this was the hardest part of the job, remove the bearing race from the stem:
I tried to do it like how they show you in the manual (#2 above) but for the life of me I could not get it to budge. Admittedly I was doing it at more of an angle in line w/ the stem so maybe that was my issue. I finally had to dremel it off. I don't know what kind of steel this stuff is made of but it's HARD, and it took me FOREVER to grind it down. If you use a dremel be super careful not to grind the stem or triple tree. Damn they make it look SO easy in the videos!
This is what mine looked like after the dremel:
I bought this hoping it would make this job easy, but it was simply ineffective in getting the race off. The thing is just on too tight.
Now what the tool was good for was getting the new bearing onto the stem. It comes with a little plate that fits exactly over the inner race of the new bearing but doesn't touch the bearing/cage itself. It's crucial not to pound the actual cage/bearing, just the inner race.
If I had to do it over again, I'd probably go buy a metal pipe that fits over the stem and inner race of the new bearing. As you can see in the pic, a pipe with an inner diamer of 31mm should do it.
At this point grease up the new bearings real good. Watch the vid in Norm's how-to. You're not going to have a second chance to do this so make sure you do it right.
Then you just use one of the protectors in the pic (I think I used the 31mm) (or pipe) to pound the new bearing onto the stem. Make sure you clean the stem before putting on the new bearing.
Put a light coat of grease on the stem.
Almost done.
Now get the new outer races into the steering tube. Again, I was hoping that Motion Pro tool would do it for me but nope. I had to use the old races to get them fully seated into the tube. You'll know they're in all the way when they're flush w/ the inner lip of the tube.
After that, slide the stem into the tube and install everything in the reverse order (see manual pics above).
Tighten the bottom ring nut w/ the spanner wrench, do it like they show you in the All Balls video in Norm's how-to.
Start putting everything back together that you moved out of the way earlier.
Once you have the forks and the tire on, but before you have everything put back together, I'd recommend checking to make sure the steering head isn't loose. Watch this vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl5RznButY0If it's loose, tighten the bottom ring nut maybe 1/8" at a time and check for any looseness in the forks.
You want the steering head loose enough so the bars/wheel turn freely but not so loose that you can move your forks.
This part is also pretty crucial IMO, as you don't want to put everything back together and discover that you don't have the ring nut tight enough.
Now put everything back together and go for a test ride.
Now, as I mentioned in the beginning, unfortunately for me, replacing my bearings didn't cure my wobble. Kind of. When I'm in 4th gear and decelerating, no wobble. 3rd gear, wobble. I don't know why. Maybe it's my install job, this was my first time doing this so maybe I didn't do something right. The bike rides fine otherwise though so I don't know. I bought my bike used and I know it was dropped before I bought it so maybe that's got something to do with it. Maybe it's the tire. When my current one wears out I'm going to try something else and see if that changes anything.
I mentioned that it did cure something else for me though. Prior to the swap, sometimes my bike would get squirelly when I rode over certain rain grooves on the freeway, or rode over thick painted lines when lane splitting (thin painted lines were never an issue). (When I say thick, I mean lines that have been painted several or more times over the years w/ more coats of paint, not thick like wide). So squirrelly (when riding on painted lines) in fact, that it was some work trying to keep the bike going straight while on the lines.
Imagine trying to keep both wheels on one of these lines while the bike is fighting you a little bit:
After the swap, there's still some occasional squirrelliness, but not close as bad as before. Maybe after I put everything back together things just got aligned a little bit better (I had taken off the forks way back when I installed my fork gaiters), or maybe it was the bearings, or maybe a combo of both, I don't know for sure. All I know is the bike actually rides better now. This was actually more important to me than the wobble, so I'm still glad I did it.
Finally, knowing what I know now, would I have spent the money I did on the tools I bought (spanner wrench, $20, motion pro, $128, race remover, $30)? No. I should have listened to Norm. If I would have, I'd have spent a few bucks on a pipe for the stem race. I had everything else in my garage. Would I have just taken it to a shop and paid a little extra? Probably. Oh well, live and learn.
Would I ever want to do this again? HELL NO. The work you have to do just to get to the work you really want to do, getting the old races out, putting everything back together again...it was hell. Now I know why the shops quoted me about $250 and said it was a 4 hour job. For me it turned out to be about a 10 hour job.
Anyway, hope this helps you if you decide to do it yourself. Or maybe it will help you decide to have a shop do it for you. Either way, good luck.
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