A-Arm bushings

FakeName

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Nov 6, 2018
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I just bought a 100% original 1991 Blaster from the original owner. This thing has led a ridiculously easy life and I'd venture to guess it has maybe 20 hours on it, at the most. I was told it has hardly ever had a wrench turned, and I believe it. The 61 year old guy I bought it from purchased it new 27 years ago and has only used it to poke around some trails on his property. I suspect it has maybe splashed through a few puddles but probably never seen mud and has probably hardly (if ever) seen wide open throttle.


I have given the whole thing a very thorough inspection and the front wheel bearings, swingarm bearings, and axle carrier bearings are all tight. Steering is tight, ball joints are tight, tie rods are tight. The only thing I can find that has a detectable amount of slop is one of the upper A-arms. Both lower arms and one upper arm are tight with no play at all, but the right side upper arm has a slight fore and aft movement if you manipulate it just right. The slight movement it had almost made me think it may have been loose, but that was definitely not the case.


I'm guessing this is a pretty common wear point on the Blaster. Is there a recommended upgraded bushing, or is an OEM replacement just as good? I do not intend to add long travel or extended arms at any point, I just want to tighten up this slop. I also don't really feel the need to replace the bushings in all 4 arms, but wouldn’t mind ordering a complete kit and just replacing them as needed in the future.


As a side note, I tried pumping some fresh grease into each of the zerk fittings but they didn’t seem to take any….grease just ended up oozing out of the nipple. I can tell these have been greased before as there was some excess poking out at each end of the arms but I couldn’t seem to get any fresh grease in there. Am I doing something wrong here? Maybe my grease gun is acting up.


Any advice for a Blaster newb is appreciated


Thanks
 
Try moving the ball around on the grees zerts thay may just be cloged with old grease from sitting i got the 100% delron bushings thay ware way better than the oem parts you can find em on ebay there no plastic added to em excuse my spelling lol
 
I found a pivotworks kit on Ricky mountain that says it replaces the bushings with needle bearings. Anyone have any experience with this?
 
Believe it or not grease will dry out. You could disassemble it and clean all the old stuff out. Might consider all bearings.
Front to back play could be worn pivots, or sloppy factory tolerance.

There are three kinds of bushings available. Stock plastic/ Derilin, bronze, and needle rollers. The rollers are VERY popular for J-arm Banshee uppers.

BTW, nice score !! :cool: How much?
So jelly :rolleyes: