2008 ST1300 rear wheel maintenace
- Thread starter Kevcules
- Start date
Just to throw a little extra info into this thread, I suspect whether you often ride in wet conditions or not makes a difference. My splines are still looking great after 105k miles and 19 years without anywhere near the maintenance suggested above (which I'm not disagreeing with, just offering another data point for comparison). Bought the bike in '97 and I didn't even own any Honda Moly paste until last year. If the tire changer put some on as a bonus, that was all it ever got of the Honda moly paste. I'd occasionally dab it with regular moly grease from the tub, which I knew wasn't the proper stuff, but didn't really worry about it. I kept an eye on the general spline condition at every tire change, and never noticed anything unusual, so didn't worry about it much. I've never changed a single O-ring in there in 19 years. When I see the trashed splines like Afan recently showed us, I can't imagine how neglected the splines have to be to get that destroyed, maybe they had no lubrication at all at some point. I'm guessing that maybe the fact that I ride 99.9% in the dry has helped me get away with less than stellar maintenance, I don't know. Or maybe just having some moly in there at all is good enough if it doesn't get wet.
I wonder if the bike's previous owner used a pressure washer to blast dirt from the rear wheel - and water into the splines? Looked like rust mixed in with what little grease was holding the metal particles in place.
I think that's a valid theory. That would probably force water into that area, depending on the angle of the pressurized water. Conversely, I've never washed my bike with a pressure washer.
