V Star 650 Spline Lube

One of the drawbacks to owning a shaft driven bike is that if your final drive fails it is EXPENSIVE! Unlike a chain, the only way to fix a final drive failure is with a new one or replacement parts which usually need to be ordered. That is one bad way to end a road trip. However, properly maintained they should last the life of your motorcycle.

One reason I like shaft driven bikes is that the drive train doesn’t need a whole lot of maintenance, much less than chains. That does not mean they need 0 maintenance, however. On a V Star 650 there are several sets of splines that need to be lubed with a high moly content grease.

With an 8000ish mile trip coming up I decided it would be best to check and lube all the splines so I wouldn’t have any surprises and have a catastrophic breakdown 1000′s of miles from home.

TIP: If you dont have money to spring for a real bike lift you can easily make due with a wooden poor mans bike lift like this.

First I took out the four bolts holding the final drive to the swing arm. Make sure you keep track of which one goes in which hole, this makes the alignment process during reassembly much easier.

Next loosen up the axle. These are really torqued on there and can be a bitch to loosen. TIP: Use this old mechanics trick in a pinch. Lock two combination wrenches together for more leverage.

Now to remove the rear wheel and drive assembly remove the rear bolts on the fender stay where they attach to the frame. You can then loosen the front ones and lift the whole fender. Tightening the front bolts back down should hold it, some people recommend bracing it with something but I’ve never had a problem with the fender falling.

I’ve crudely circled in red on this parts list the parts that need greasing. The one with an X next to it is the one that seems more prone to failure, notice that it can’t be bought separately. I’ve thoroughly cleaned off any existing grease on these parts and put on new Honda Moly 60 paste. Be sure not to get any of that on your skin, it wont come off. Another more expensive alternative that works well is Krytox.

These are the problem splines right here. Luckily mine have plenty of grease on them still after 30,000 miles. Mama Yamaha has gotten better about greasing these properly from the factory on later model bikes.

Heres what the splines look like cleaned up. You can just make out a bit of wear on the load bearing sides of the splines but otherwise these are in nearly brand new condition. This is how they should look.

If the splines are left dry for too long they could wind up looking like this. Unfortunately PianoV from the V Star 650 forum found this out the hard way, here are pictures of his splines and the coupling that goes with them.

These were just about gone, I’m amazed they still worked at all. Once all the splines are gone the drive shaft will just spin without budging the rear wheel.

The splines on this one are well worn also but not near as bad.

Be sure to clean and regrease the hub splines too!

Another example of what could happen if these parts are not maintained. This is Starship01′s clutch hub, the part that attaches the final drive to the wheel hub.

Now is a good time to clean off all the gunk and brake dust out of your hubs and shine up your wheels while you have easy access!

Next just follow the steps in reverse to reassemble and put back on the bike.

Make sure you put the bolts that hold the drive to the swingarm back in the same holes they came out of. Whenever I’ve done this everything aligns perfectly.

Check the gap between the hub and the wheel at the 6:00, 12:00, 3:00 and 9:00 positions, it should be even all the way around. If not you may need to follow these steps to properly align the drive.

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