Total Motorcycle Community Forums

If you own a yamaha V-star you should read this.

Here is a link that should be of interest to you (I think) http://www.650ccnd.com/shaft2.htm THis gives you instructions on how to grease the spline on the yamaha shaft drive. VERY IMPORTANT!. Many people are having expensive problems with these bikes because (so it would appear) Yamaha has either used a poor quality lube or many simply slipped through from the factory without having been properly lubed. I hear that the 1100's are having similar problems.

One of our local riders has 17k on her bike and it just failed on her. Naturally the warrantee was good till march and this happened in July. She was able to get Yamaha to cover the parts however and only had the expense for the labor. Yamaha is fully aware of the problem. That doesn't mean they are doing anything about it.

Puts a little doubt into the shaft drive aficionados.

How often do you hear:

Shaft drive is superior to chain drive.
No maintenance needed on the shaftie.
No regular lube

The shaft looks like a little more fun to lube than a chain.
Seen some broken BMW shafts around the net too.

I always thought I would prefer a shaftie, but I am beginning to appreciate my chain a little more. I didn't need to desassemble the bike to clean and lube my chain. And I can tell just by looking if the dealer lubed it or not.

The shaft looks like a little more fun to lube than a chain.

Gaaa!! conjures up images that blind my mental eye

The shaft splines are easy to lube - Just put some good quality grease in there whenever you change your rear tire ... That's alot less often then messin w/ a chain isn't it!

Apart from these Yamaha Problems (Which seem to stem from the factory) I'd wager that 99% of shaft drive problems occur because people don't properly maintain them - or the tire change places don't bother to relube the splines when they take off the rear wheel. S'why it's important to do your own maintenance!!!

"Here" being on this forum.

Ran out last night to move my '05 Yamaha V-Star Custom 650 to comply with alternate side of the street parking - and found it was handling pretty crappy. Then the light bulb went off and I pulled over.

Sure enough, the rear tire was completely flat - and, I AM SO HAPPY to have found these posts, which give me some idea how to replace it.

One or two quick questions:

The current tire is a Bridgestone G546, 15/MC, 170/80 ... I would be quite happy to replace this tire with one of better quality. Possibly just a bad "break", but I think tires should last more than one year and one month. Any suggestions for other manufacturers / models?

From the manual, and the excellent web site referred to earlier in these posts, getting the rear tire off looks pretty straight-forward. My general plan is to:

a) Order a tire online, and when it arrives ...
b) Pull the rear tire off the bike
c) Remove the rear drive (It looks like the rear drive can be removed without pulling the bearings.)
d) Bring the tire with the rear wheel SOMEPLACE where they will mount it.
e) Lubricate the spline and coupling
f) Reinstall the wheel as desrcibed on the website (http://www.650ccnd.com/shaft2.htm)

Does this make any kind of sense? I am assuming the local repair shop will be able to mound the tire on the rim if I bring only the wheel in, minus the rear drive.

Thanks!

-Larry

This is exactly what I was talking about in my thread "To all XVS65 owners." Now everytime we change a rear tire on this V-Star, we go ahead and tear down the shaft drive housing to grease the shafts. Good job posting this link as I had no hits on mine !!