In the midst of all the upgrades to my bike I finally got around to checking the splines. I opened them up and lo and behold - nothing but Martian dust! which is a pain to scrub off your skin.... I didn't post any pics since I believe that there are plenty enough to go around. But this just goes to show that the dealer is not to be trusted when it comes to splines. I specifically asked my guy when he mounted my tires if he had lubed them, since they would clearly be exposed with the tire off. He was adamant that "sure we lubed them." Rat bas***ds... The O ring and the splines themselves were still in good shape though. Anyway. For all you newer folks, the process is really very straightforward and simple. It sounds difficult but actually didn't take that long to complete (I wasn't really keeping track and I don't count time spent looking for the damn wrench that was RIGHT HERE a second ago....). Again I offer my thanks to the group wisdom. I used, as I believe many of you also have, Fergy's write up as my lead for getting it done. The link is thoughtfully placed in his signature, so any post by him also includes a link to the process for spline lube. Here's the link JIC - http://pages.tstar.net/~fergy/writeups/final_drive1.html.

It is amazing how many times it has been reported that someone asked their dealer/shop to lube their driveshaft splines and later found them untouched.

I think we even had one case where the splines failed, (stripped out) and the dealer ended up replacing all the needed parts and eating the labor too because they had been asked to to lube the splines and appearently didn't..

(as a note here, make sure you keep copies of all work done by your dealer, and if something is not written on the work order , make sure it gets on there if they said they did it..)

KM