play in rear wheel

Can anyone tell me how much slack or play there is between the rear wheel and whatever ingages in the rear housing .I seem to be able to turn the wheel around 4 ins in normal rotation before it catches this is with out the bike running just wanted to know if any bearings were worn or do they all have this play there is also a definite clunk when the rotation has taken up its slack very confused

You do not describe age of bike/miles---maint. history. Yes there is some free play. Worried, take to Honda dealer---bring money.

While I don't have the amount of miles under my belt as does our esteemed Mr Grinsel, I think that 4 inches of movement at the outside circumfrence of the rear wheel is pretty much normal. HTH

Tim

Sounds like the splines on the shaft or in the wheel have broken lose or rusted away. First thing would be to remove the rear wheel assembly and check this. If no rust or broken splines on the shaft or in wheel. Clean both. Check for play on the shaft.

Remember, before you put the wheel back on the shaft, grease the shaft and the splines in the wheel hub. You should do this every time you take the wheel off the scooter.

There's only 1/2 inch play when rotating wheel in forward- reverse direction on mine.
Have you always had 4 inch play?Why did you check it?Is it not running right?
I have a Vespa that has about 4 inch play and is normal.If had reverse it'd be a different story.
The play your saying is when drive shaft contacts gears and has nothing to do with wheel.

Thanks all for info no bike not running right at all ive renewed the fork oil springs and new seals the belt original honda was done at 22000 now it has 33000 full honda service history ive changed the rollers to 21 g and 24 g mallossi rollers.the swing ihavent taken above 90mph because of a terrible vibration coming right up through the whole bike even the mirrors are vibrating there is no side to side play at that speed like tank slapping just feels like the bike is oscillating up and down .I did take the front wheel weights of but this did cure the front wheel slapping from side to side at 30mph sorry this is a long post but thats why I checked the play in the back wheelbecause I thought this was causing the weird oscillatings

Did you messed with the head set bearing ?Now have taken wheel weights off.They need balanced to eliminate that being the culprit .
How old are tires?What mileage on tires?Was it ever wrecked?

Out of balanced wheels will do what you describe .
Drain the rear end to see if any metal chunks come out.

If it rode good before messing with forks I'd say yah got something messed up.Out of wack.
Or your varo weight combination isn't right.

I don't know if you did all this at once or not.The right way is to make one change at a time.That way your not guessing what's not right.

Tyres are avon vipers I run 33 front 36 rear tyres are almost new I havent checked the rear drive oil yet is this 10w 40 to replace I will balance the front myself to see if this eliminates cheers

Any particular reason you're running 33psi in the front tyre when the Rider Handbook and the sticker on the Silver Wing recommends 29psi ?

Yes meldrew I found the steering to be really heavy like I had apunture at 29 so experimented with 33 but wondering if I should go back to all factory specs and start from scratch I like the front to be quicker steering we have had two silverwings before and one had 72000 on the clock and handled lovely you dont think it could be the 20w oil in the front forks

I've no idea mate, poncing about with the oily bits has never had the slightest interest for me, I do the basics and that's it.

What do you mean by "heavy" steering? The geometry on these bikes is different from some other scooters, so at low speed, turning the wheel lifts the scooter vertically a bit - something that could be mistaken for a problem (literally "heavy" as you lift the bike) but is not a problem. Nothing you do can change this.

Also, this is a heavy bike so it needs good cornering techniques. Lighter scooters can be thrown into turns with body weight shifts - this bike needs to be (counter) steered. If you find it's slow leaning over, make sure you aren't just throwing weight around (I only say this because when I moved up to the Wing from a 250, I learned really quickly where I got lazy with my riding technique).

Does your bike shake at low speed with your hands on the bars? It doesn't matter if it does with the hands off the bars.

At higher speed, a shake may mean a head bearing is loose. If someone adjusted it to make the steering lighter, this could almost certainly cause your problem. I think that's what someone did to our '07 Wing - they thought it was hard to steer, so they loosened (!) the head bearing. Fortunately the high speed shake they caused scared them enough to not get enough miles on the bike to damage the bearing.

You need to take care of the front wheel problems. It needs to be a good tire properly balanced. That front wheel has a bit of a strange procedure to install it on the front forks. Did you follow the service manual properly here?

If this started when you messed with the forks, you did something wrong with the forks and I'd go back to looking at that job really carefully - perhaps enlisting a professional's help. Steering and tires are areas where a professional can really pay off.

Thanks for the advice I will look at the front wheel again and maybe take it out to get balanced professionally when I installed the front forks after rebuild I put the nut on the right hand side of the wheel as you look down on it left hand side if you were sitting on the bike torqued it down to spec then ran but front brake on bounced the bike up and down several times to settle the lower fork legs then torqued up the allen bolts nut sid first is this correct cheers for advice hopefully done it right

That sounds like the right front wheel procedure, although I'm doing that from memory.