Ok, Time for Secondary Clutch 101 Hyjack then.
I did my bearings on my Apex GT last night. And like the photos above, my bearings looked great until I got the old grease out to realize, you are not actually looking at the ball bearings. You are looking at the casing over the balls! That's news to those of us that have never actually replaced the bearing, as we have probably never seen one.
When I put new grease in there, I did the WD40 trick and compressed air/then wiped. With the needle attachment, I started going in between what looks like the holder of each ball and filling with grease. I could feel the needle sliding into small holes as well. I did see remnants of the old grease when pumping in the new stuff. Especially on the bottom, so I started at the top hoping to pump out WD40 and old grease. Moving the shaft/track would force more out. I wiped and continued until nothing but new grease was coming out. Sort of like what we do to get water out of the hubs on our boat trailers.
My question about the secondary. Should it be able to slide in and out on that shaft just slightly? I have always heard of doing an alignment and shimming. But should it move slightly. It seems that my secondarys as far back as my SRX always had a bit of play. Is that normal? And is that why there is always a bit of grease on that splined shaft? (as shown above) I had wiped quite a bit of it off thinking my bearing had probably been blowing grease. But if the clutch was meant to slide, then having grease on those splines would be important.
Thanks guys. Semi-hijack over.
