The vast expertise and abilities that most members of the VJMC appear to have has always been a source of amazement to me. In reading the VJMC Newsletter, it seems like some of the members can restore a vintage motorcycle in about the same amount of time that it takes me wash one of my bikes and change the oil. I picture them getting up from the dinner table, undoing their belt a notch, and saying "Great pot roast Eunice, now I think I'll go out in the garage and restore that basket-case CA77 I've had hanging around here for a couple of weeks." And when they come back in the house for the 11:00 O' Clock News, that basket-case has been totally restored: Sandblasted down to the bare metal, prepped, primed, and painted, all the hardware re-plated, brightwork polished, tires Armor-All'd, and two coats of rock-hard Carnuba wax applied.

I, on the other hand, have had my '65 CB77 under restoration for most of the decade I've been a VJMC member. And the possibility of completion is just now beginning to appear on the horizon. I've completed the chassis, the forks, and front wheel; re-lacing the rear wheel is one of the last major tasks to be completed before I tackle the engine.

A few weeks ago, while polishing up the rear hub prior to re-lacing the wheel, I noticed the bearings (one on each side) were very stiff. Since I plan to ride the Super Hawk at Unreasonable and Imprudent speeds, as was apparently intended by the manufacturer, as well as show it, I thought it would be a good idea to replace those bearings with their 30 year-old crystallized grease, with new ones.

The front wheel bearings were the same way, but they were only shielded, not sealed, bearings. Using my dental pick, I popped out the shields, cleaned the crystallized 30 year-old grease out with solvent, re-packed them with fresh chassis grease, and snapped the shields back on. My thinking here is that with less than 600 pounds of bike and rider, these bearings have no need for anything as thick as regular automotive wheel bearing grease.

The rear wheel bearings proved more difficult than the front. Since they were sealed, I needed to remove them from the hub, but I couldn't figure how to get them out. So I fired off an e-mail appeal for help to a prominent VJMC marque expert. His response (in summary), was to suggest that it was easy -- just go in from one side with a long, thin drift, and tap the one on the opposite side out. That would allow the internal "spacer" to fall out, thus giving unfettered access to the other side. So I got a long, thin drift and started tapping. All I succeeded in doing was to tap some really nasty burrs into that internal spacer.

Next, I took advantage of the fact that I work for an activity with a large well-equipped tool room. This tool room is tended by a friendly fellow that I have known for years, and he allowed me to borrow a thin, internal-jawed "Slide-Hammer" type bearing puller. But when I got it home, I found that I couldn't make the jaws get enough of a grip on the bottom edge of the bearings to pull them out. I'd get the jaws set on the bearing, give the slide hammer a whack upwards, and the jaws would just slip off. At this point, things were looking grim.

Now, I recall years ago having read/heard about a guy who removes crankshaft bearings from motorcycle cases by putting them in the oven; essentially relying on the difference in the expansion rate between aluminum and steel to do the job. He puts them in the oven, turns it on, gets a couple beers, and sits down in front of the TV. After a while, a "Clunk" indicates that the bearing has fallen out of the case and onto the bottom of the oven.

Since "All Else" had failed, and since my wife was away for the weekend, I decided to give it a try. I found a short piece of pipe, with a diameter larger than that of the bearing, and set the hub up on top of it inside the oven. Then I turned the heat up to 325, and went into the Den to get on our computer and do some Surfing on the Web. Now some months ago, we had removed the battery from our hallway Smoke Detector because my wife thought that was a rather rude way to have us called to dinner. So it was quite a while before I noticed that I was smelling something "funny". So I left the computer and ran into the kitchen where it REALLY smelled "funny", and threw open the oven door.

After the large cloud of thick, acrid, black smoke rolled out, I could see what happened: The grease in the bearings had liquefied, and run down the inside of the hub until it hit the bottom of the oven, where it sat, bubbling and smoking, apparently only seconds away from becoming a miniature Naplam Bomb.

What followed next was like a scene from a Three Stooges movie, except that there was only one of me: I spun the dial to shut the oven off, turned around, jacked open the kitchen window, then grabbed two of my wife's dish towels out of the drawer so that I could take the hub out of the oven. When I grabbed it and picked it up, large globs of the remaining blackened grease, about the consistency of pancake syrup, poured down out of the hub and onto one of the dish towels, which naturally, was white. Emphasis on the "WAS".

Well, the hub was hot, and I couldn't let my efforts go to waste, so I quickly (Hot ! Hot! Hot ! ) carried it out and set it on my Black & Decker Workmate. This time, when I stuck the jaws of the puller in and tightened it up, the bearing "gave" a little. One whack on the slide and that sucker popped out just like nothin'. Once one bearing was out, the internal spacer just fell out, and getting a grip on the other bearing was a snap. Once again, one jerk on the slide hammer and the other bearing was out, too.

At that point, I set down the bearing puller, left the hub on the workbench and went back into the kitchen to try to mitigate the damages. I opened all the doors and windows, and turned on the ceiling fans. Then, I went looking for the can of Oven Cleaner. When my wife returned Monday afternoon, the stench of burning grease was hardly noticeable. Of course, I had to explain that one of her dish towels, the one that had gotten spattered with gooey black grease, had gone on to "A Better Place". Like the trash can.

Epilogue: I finished polishing the hub, and the new bearings are sitting in the Freezer, waiting for me to take the hub into the garage and give it a good coat of clear lacquer, after which I will just "drop" them into place with no trouble at all. Yeah, right. Stay tuned.