I tried an impact wrench. Nope.
I soaked everything with Liquid Wrench, left it overnight, and then tried my impact wrench. Nope.
I started having doubts about the tire. The bike is 37 years old, has < 20,000 miles, and I bought it used in 2023. By mileage alone it could, conceivably, be on its second tire. That’s terrifying! No motorcycle tire that old is remotely safe. But why was it so hard to break free? Every time the tire is changed, the axle nut has to be removed. It absolutely can’t have more rust and corrosion than accumulated since that most recent tire was installed and God I hope it wasn’t decades ago! When I bought it, 3 years and several thousand miles ago, I’d checked the tread was adequate, but not if the tire dated to the Paleozoic! I was having excess drama and I started having dark fears.
What the hell had I been riding on?
The only way out was through so I decided to go to town and buy whatever size impact wrench I need no matter how much it cost (mine is pretty weak). Many of YouTube videos (including for more common Shadows) show people attacking their rear hub with beefy torque wrenches. So, that’s the next step I supposed. I’d either twist the nut off through pure brawn or simply tear the bike in half. It is what it is.
But I’d also lurked in on-line forums. And their information was entirely different. Lots of people have trouble just like I’d encountered. They all uniformly said “no” to torque wrenches. That was not the way. Instead they talked about breaker bars and their favorite “cheater” to put on the handle to get more leverage.
I don’t know why but that’s how it was. Videos had impact wrenches, text was all about breaker bars. A clear binary choice; as if the various forms of media had a secret meeting 10 years ago.
Reluctantly, I went to town and bought a Craftsman 1/2″ breaker bar. This pissed me off because I’d dropped well over $40 on a crude hunk of metal made by a company that had its heyday a generation ago. I was sure it wouldn’t work. I also bought an extension so the breaker bar wouldn’t swing loose and hit the plastic “bedonkadonk” if it suddenly broke free. That’s another few bucks.
I asked everyone if the low quality impact socket I had was loose tolerance. I thought maybe I should get a regular 6 point socket meant as a hand tool instead of the deep socket impact from some Chinese factory? Nobody seemed to know what “tolerance” meant. They didn’t really understand my question. The problem was solved in that there wasn’t a single 6 point 27 mm socket in the county. Can’t buy what ain’t there.
Back at my garage I tossed down my wife’s yoga mat on the hard cement. I was going to give this a serious try, the floor was hard, and she hasn’t done yoga in a while. (Side note: to my surprise she wasn’t mad when she saw it. She’s awesome like that!)
I got the lever in the optimal position and pulled as hard as I could. Nothing. I tried several times, with and without taps from a hammer. Nothing is what I expected and it’s what happened.
Damn. Obviously the tire had last been mounted when Clinton was president. It was rusted on so hard I’d need Thor to move it.
But the text stories had all been clear. This can be done.
Steady Curmudgeon. Breathe. Try again.
I gave it another go. I strained everything I had. “Something’s going to give” I thought, “and it’ll probably be my shoulders”. But life is hard and you gotta’ try as hard as you can.
There was an almost imperceptible shift. At first I was like “that’s it, my arm is fucked”. I stopped immediately. But my arm was still in its socket… so that’s nice.
Time to inspect what had happened. The nut hadn’t loosened. The whole damn axle had spun!
There’s a pinch bolt on the opposite side of the nut. It’s specifically there to pinch the axle so it doesn’t spin willy nilly. I hadn’t loosened it because I wanted it to hold. It had moved. Just a smidge.
See that hole on the end of the axle? When I took this, and the axle was still practically welded in place, it was vertical. It had moved a fraction of a degree.
I got out the “emergency toolkit” wrench and tightened the pinch bolt. There wasn’t much give, but I tightened to the full strength of my hands on the smaller wrench.
Then back on the other side of the bike, I pushed on that breaker bar. Bit by agonizing bit, the nut freed. Finally I could spin it off.
I was completely exhausted.
I slapped the bike’s bedonkadonk from the yoga mat; “was it as good for you as it was for me?”
After I got the nut completely off, I went back to the pinch bolt and loosened it. In fact I fully removed it, and just threaded it on a little to store it (so I wouldn’t lose it). You don’t have to do that but I wanted to be sure.
Then back to the yoga mat. I threaded the nut on to protect the threads and tapped the nut with a mallet. This drove the axle out the other side of the bike. After the He Man battle of torque death everything went smoothly. The axle slid out with hardly any drama at all.
I did it! Look at that axle, sliding out smooth as butter!
Once you get that axle out, the wheel hub slides off the splines of the shaft and there’s nothing left to do but muscle the tire out of the tight confines of the swingarm / bedonkadonk.
The brake mechanism popped right off so I could inspect the brake drum (on the hub) and pads (on the mechanism).
Carefully, I set it down. I was bushed. Sometimes breaking a single 27 mm nut free is all a man’s got in him.
I inspected the old tire. I compared it to the tire I’d bought. Remember, this particular model is very finicky about tires and this particular year is the most finicky of that model.
I’d bought the wrong size!
Mother fu*****!
Breathe Curmudgeon, you’ve gotten pretty far for a dumbass, you’ll get the rest of the way there.
But not today. I closed the garage door and went into the house for an ibuprofen.
This is what it looked like when I left. Note the brake pads in their assembly with the axle jammed in it so I don’t lose it; lower right. Note my wife’s yoga mat, which more or less gave its life for the project, on the bottom left.
More to go… the bike ain’t rolling yet!