Achilles’ wheel

When a small job turns into a big one…

On my trip to the MO-KAN Guzzi Rally I wore out the rear Pirelli that was on the cast V7 Stone wheel. That tyre lasted all summer and seemed to work fine. When I got home I put the bike on the centrestand, removed the left muffler, a lovely carbon fibre Agostini, and detached the bottom of the left rear shock. I removed the wheel and took it to my good tyre guy, who installed a new Michelin Classic Road, that company’s latest non-radial.

I asked him to seat the tyre (it’s tubeless) and then release enough air so it would retain about 20psi. That way, I figured, I could squeeze the wheel back into the swingarm and reinstall it. You could say I was somewhat over-confident.

I tried to coax the tyre into the gap between the left side of the swingarm and the inside of the final drive, but I was unsuccessful.

I let as much air as I dared out of the tyre and I still could not get the wheel back in the swingarm.

I removed the six Loctited bolts and took the brake disc off the rear hub. At that point, I could get the wheel into the swingarm. It was time to deal with the rubber driveline shock absorbers. On small-block Guzzis, they fit into recesses in the hub.

On many bikes they are attached to one side or the other of your rear wheel, the sprocket or the hub. The Guzzi ones are merely perched in the hub. They await an opportunity to fall out, the six of them, as you try, for the fifth or sixth time, to install your wheel.

There was no way, no goddamn way, that I, with the help of my friend Tom, could get the little, accursed rubber ‘cushions’, for that is what Guzzi calls them, to stay in place when we tried to mate the hub with the final drive. I tried double-sided tape; wouldn’t stick to the rubber. I tried some ultra-sticky grease on the ‘cushions’; they fell out anyway.

I decided to do the job the hard way. I’d remove the final drive from the right side of the swingarm and driveshaft and mate it with the hub off the bike – so I could see everything really clearly.

I removed the right-side Agostini muffler and released the right-side shock absorber from its lower fixing place. I unscrewed the four nuts and slid back the final drive. I used that sticky grease I mentioned above to lube the splines on the final drive and the driveshaft.

I leaned the wheel against a wall and ‘offered up’ – as they used to say in workshop manuals – the final drive flanges to the hub with the axle inserted. The flanges slid right in. I wrapped a bungee cord around the hub and final drive to make sure they stayed mated. I left the axle in place through both pieces to encourage the pairing.

The wheel went easily into the swingarm via the right-hand side. All I had to do now was line up the four bolts and the splined sleeve at the front of the final drive with the driveshaft and swingarm, and the job was as good as done.

That took about four hours.

You have to line up the splines in the stub that sticks out of the final drive with the splines on the driveshaft. You have to line up the bolts on the final drive with the holes in the right side of the swingarm. You have as many operations to choreograph as the director of a ballet troupe.

I had to use a scissors jack to lift the swingarm, just forward of the joint with the final drive, perhaps three-eights of an inch. I had to manage to get the bike into gear (remember, the rear wheel is not connected to the transmission) so I could line up the splines and slide the driveshaft together.

Eventually, after an eternity of trying and failing, I got ’er done, as we say here in some parts of This Great Country. The new tyre looks round and black and shiny. I cleaned my Agostinis while they were off the bike and they just glow. My right thumb is discoloured and swollen and has lost some mobility. My arms are masses of bruises.

The old ‘cushions’ looked a little tired so, early on in this three-day operation, I impulsively ordered a new set – six new molded rubber ugly things that were going to take a week or 10 days to arrive. A week during which I’d be without my bike.

Including shipping charges, those six rubber molded pieces, each about the size of my thumb beyond the first knuckle (before the recent swelling), cost me $120, almost £88. I used the old ones this time; I’ll use the new ones someday.

The rubber molded pieces of junk have a Guzzi Breva part number. That means the rear wheel and its system of removal and attachment have been the same since at least 1999 – perhaps much longer. Maybe the new V7 850s are the same. Shudder.

What does that mean to you? If you’re an urban rider and you get your work done at your dealer or at an independent mechanic’s shop, not much. But if you travel or if you are the sort of fellow who likes to think he can do his own work on his own bike…