Grease The New Bike?

I have an 04 220r and one of the very first things I did was take completely apart the rear suspension and steering assembly... The rear suspension looked almost dry with only the smallest trace of very light grease and the front steering was about the same... I really slathered on the waterproof marine grease and put it all back together with quite a bit more peace of mind...

If your 05 already had alot of lube in the right places, maybe Kawasaki has been reading the forums and decided to remedy this flaw in their assembly process :)

One thing I still can't get over though is the amount of slop there is in the rear suspension linkages... not the main swingarm pivot, just the dogbone and associated links... I've been planning for a while to manufacture some custom delrin sleeves for the bolts to really tighten things up in that area and was wondering if there might be a niche market for a sleeve kit for just this purpose... I know I would buy one in a second if it existed somewhere...

I have an '04 that I got last summer and just got around to swapping the springs. When I did that, I couldn't believe the stuff that came out. My bike is never in the water, but the so-called "oil" in one fork leg looked like the glop dripping off of one of those swamp things in a cheap B movie. My steering head bearings were well lubricated though. I have heard the same thing from other owners too, one leg looks pretty good, the other one is filled with toxic waste. I did the rear suspension as soon as I brought the bike home, and it was dry. I would say to change your fork oil now, even if you don't swap springs, but it's actually harder to do the oil than the springs, so you might want to consider having the springs on hand too.

Good luck with your bike,
Mike.

Colorado Mike, I had my forks redone by Fredette. Within probably 8 to 10 hours of riding my gold valves looked like they were sitting in toxic sludge. I wonder what the quality of the oil is that gets used in suspension components.

BTW, have a happy Resurrection Day (oops....was that a religious comment?).

If you have a lot of slop in the Unitrack knuckle..I'd suggest looking at how it's put together.

With the bike on a stand you can take a 2x4 (or some other lever), place it under the rear wheel, move it up and down...and you should see nothing but suspension movement in the Unitrack area.

If someone put the pull rods back on without making sure the bolt shoulders were through the rods? There's some slop for 'ya!

My 2002 KX 125 came greased fine from the factory, steering head, and rear suspension.