Rear Wheel Cush Rubbers

I replaced a set when I rebuilt the set of sport wheels I have on my GT because I wanted to powdercoat the hubs. It's a total pain in the ass. Let me refraise that, TOTAL PAIN IN THE ASS.

There is no way to access them from behind, so short of trying to cut out the rubber with a hole saw and then grinding through each sleeve with a dremel tool, then prying them out, what I did was find a metal rod that just fit in the center sleeve. Then I packed the cush drive/hub full of grease, put the rod in and pounded them out with a sledge hammer. Repacking more grease as neccesary. I had to heat the hub on most of them, but usually they would start to slowly moveo out with the first couple hits, about 1/32" at a time. Hit, hit, pack, hit hit, pack.....took forever, but they all came out clean.

That said....my stock GT cush drives had a buch of play in them right from the start, with probably only about 2000 miles on them. Before I changed wheels what I woudl do is cut little square pieces of aluminum from a beer can and curve them to fit on the non drive side of the sprocket carrier pegs to take up the slack. Worked great.

I'm not sure how many miles, wheelies, drag races, etc. it would take to actually wear out the cush drives, but I saw no wear on them in either set of wheels (over 38,000 miles on my bike now). They just fit loose. Also, the sprocket carrier pegs get worn, so maybe check that.

I doubt the rubber ever wears, but the steel pins and sleeves will, especially if there is any play. Like Dietrich, my GT had play from the word go and I think that it stems from the exact locations of the pins, relative to the rubber sleeves. If you measure the pins and the ID of the bushes, there is quite a lot of clearance, so I believe that the tightness in the assembly results from each pin being slightly misaligned with each bush, so that when assembled, the bushes are forced over slightly and so tension is created. I know that with my other Ducati, I have to force the pins into the rubbers because they don't line up, wheareas on my GT, I think that the pins and bushes were too well aligned, resulting in play.

One answer to this may be to strike each pin with a copper mallet to move them over a tad, but I don't want to be the guinea pig that tries it! Instead I used some steel shimming, around 5 thou thick and made sleeves to go around each pin. Either way, you need to do something or the wear will rapidly accellerate.