Grease nipples

oexing

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VOC Member
There are various maintenance free teflon based plain bearings available, like Permaglide by SKF. Also IGUS rounds and bushes made from clever "plastic" material I chose for the Brampton bushes. These can be made on the lathe and line-reamed for perfect alignment in girders. For the swing arm bearings I had spherical plain bearings acting on hardchrome ball sections - extremely pricy - but in the end kept the Timkens - ahh, FAG. In the link below the Chinese brand of spherical plain "teflon" bearings to replace Timkens, same sizes in metric system, European brands available at three times the costs.

Vic
plain bearings
 

Desmond

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VOC Member
Everyone has been most helpful. Vic---thank you for the details along with photos of new type seals. Cyborg said that there were 9 nipples. I count 11. Overall, I think I am best advised to disassemble and grease things like brake spindles by hand so as not to have acce4ss go to the brake linings. The speedo might be a little different. I thank everyone for their input and guidance.------Desmond
 

Cyborg

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I got the #9 from the spares book. I checked again and it appears where I went wrong is (my apologies)…. there are 9 of 459 straight nipples, 1 of 537 65 degree in the RFM, and I’m assuming number 11 is the one in the speedo drive.
I’m still curious about whether or not grease nipples were used on the Lightning/Flash brake plates. None of the photos I have show them, nor does the parts drawing, but the quantities listed are the same for Shadow, Rapide, Lightning etc.
 

Cyborg

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I'm fairly sure H54, Brake Cam Bush in the racing plates, was "Oilite", therefore requiring no grease nipple.
Yes they are Oilite. Each brake cam uses 2 of them with a space in the middle that lines up with where the nipple would go if there was one. The thing that confused me was the spares list with the same quantities for Flash/Lightning.
This may sound odd, but have no desire to actually use the grease nipples, just make the plates more or less the same as how they came from the factory. In other words just install them if that’s the way they were originally built. I’m guessing that because the drawing in the spares book doesn’t show them and they never seem to appear in photos… the quantity listed for Lightning/Flash was an error.
 

chankly bore

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Yup, the Spares List has quite a few irritating errors and the "D" List is worse again. My theory is that the brake cam has a relieved section for grease to sit in so it made no sense to make H54 any longer than it is. Incidentally there is a wonderful company in Connecticut, American Sleeve Bearings, that has an exhaustive list of self- lubricating sintered and SAE 660 cast bronze bearings in Imperial and Metric sizes. Well worth a look. A small point: Greasing point #11 is a formed brass cover on the speedo. drive. It is capable of being greased, but is not a 459 straight nipple.
 
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