Vintage BMW Motorcycle Owners

I am upgrading my steering head from ball bearings to tapered roller bearings. While doing a dry run to verify fit I noticed the stem for the fork doesn't draw up enough to properly engage the "Steering head safety washer" for the damper. I verified both races bearings are seated. The ball bearing went all over the floor during disassembly, so I can't compare stack height.

Thanks
Paul

The tapered roller bearings are a special size...Vech offered these through his site which are now at MaxBMW. Hopefully you are using the right bearings.

I purchased the bearings from Max BMW, part number "31 42 2 000 000"

A silly question, but:

You DID remove the lower ball race from the base of the steering stem, didn't you? If not, then that is why it appears not to fit.

I sold, and personally installed LOTS of the tapered 31 42 1 000 000 tapered bearings for over 20 years and I never encountered any problems with them. The only time a customer complained to me about them, was that he did not realize that there was a ball race at the bottom of the steering stem, (that he failed to remove) and he installed the tapered bearing on the stem, above that race, and that WAS the problem.

All the old ball bearing races were removed. I will get in there tomorrow and take another look.

I just replaced the ball bearings with tapered bearings in my R69S. No issues.

After taking it all apart and reassembling it, I found the "Adjusting Washer" was in the wrong location. It all looks good now, thanks for all the feed back

Paul

germancarguy wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:31 pm

After taking it all apart and reassembling it, I found the "Adjusting Washer" was in the wrong location. It all looks good now, thanks for all the feed back

Paul

Exactly where did you put it? Just curious.

Below the Fork yoke

#1 ??
https://www.bmwclassicmotorcycles.com/p ... -damper-i/
Tommy