rear linkage bearings

[Motumatai]

From my observations I believe Honda, KTM and Beta must only own one pot of grease in their factories, where it gets past from technician to technician, who is permitted to hold the pot in one hand over the parts that require greasing, mumble some holy incantations, and then pass it onto the next technician. Somehow those holy incantations permit a light vapour of grease to flow from the grease pot to the parts requiring lube. It must be the truth, as all brand new Hondas, KTM's or Betas I have ever owned have only ever smelled of grease, or had the faintest trace of lube on all moving linkages and exterior bearing surfaces

[aj_mariner]

^^

[Lonesome Dave]

++2 ^^ Spot on, no grease just the smell of it!!

[braindead0]

Is there a big enough price difference from stock to go elsewhere?

If you live in a big enough town with a proper 'bearing supplier', in my experience the bearings and seals from there can be 10x or more cheaper than going OEM. Nearly all bearings are standard items manufactured by a few suppliers. The OEM's get them from a middle man, then add on more profits so by the time you get them they've been through distributed + OEM.. just makes no sense unless you have to.

[moto367]

Is there a big enough price difference from stock to go elsewhere?

If you live in a big enough town with a proper 'bearing supplier', in my experience the bearings and seals from there can be 10x or more cheaper than going OEM. Nearly all bearings are standard items manufactured by a few suppliers. The OEM's get them from a middle man, then add on more profits so by the time you get them they've been through distributed + OEM.. just makes no sense unless you have to.

You've had better luck than I have. The times I've tried finding cheaper options the quality just wasn't up to the oem's even though they were manufactured my the same company. In this case, NSK. They make several levels of quality and the price is in accordance with that level of quality. So they may be available for a few dollars less, I've just come to the conclusion for me it's not worth the time and effort to try to track down comparable parts when they are easily available from the dealer.