25mm Ohlins heim bearing solution

As you would know, Ohlins do not make a 25mm heim bearing for the old lower eyes, they only have 25.4mm (1inch) heims and 25mm vulcanised bushes which are not all that great for a long travel bike with the shocks angled forward.

With a lot of research i have now found a 25mm bearing to suit!

I searched for many manufacturers of 25mm OD heims but i could not find any. After playing around with White Power shocks for sometime, i knew that they used 25mm heim bearings in both the OEM KTM, Husky, Cagiva, Husaberg, ATK etc and all the aftermarket shocks from around the late 1980's onwards when they changed from the 26mm GE15 to the special 25mm bearing. From my research it seems WP/KTM have these bearings specially made for them so they are the odd size of 25mm to try and force owners to buy the genuine bearing and charge heaps for them. There are several types of WP 25mm bearing, but the cheapest is
part number 4681.1027 - heim joint KGW 1525
This is available from any WP suspension dealer or KTM dealer. They are quite expensive but are a quality bearing.

I found that these were still a bit too expensive for me and from some more research i found that several aftermarket companies are selling shock bearing kits for KTM's, Husabergs etc that use the 25mm bearing. I ended up ordering a KTM upper heim bearing kit for 02-08 models and i found the bearing was indeed suitable for the old Ohlins twinshock eyes.

The kit i got was an ALL BALLS brand kit

The bearing in the kit is actually a KML GE15C which is normally 26mm OD but they specially grind them down to 25mm for KTM/WP shocks to be sold in the All Balls kit.

http://www.kml-bearing.com/products..._bearing.jsp?bearing_no=GE15C&cat_id=13010201

This is a good bearing because it is a 'maintenance free' type that you dont have to constantly oil and grease because it has a special PTFE lining inside the outer race.

The bush ID's are 12mm and fit in the 15mm ID of the bearing. If you need 8 or 10mm ID then you can fit a tube inside the 2 spacer bushes to reduce ID to 8 or 10 or you can get some 8 or 10mm bushes from the Ohlins single shock spares range that are used in the 26 x 15mm bearings.

This here shows 3 kits from Pivot works and lists some dimensions.
http://www.pivotworks.com/index.cfm...8&modelid=&modelyear=&categoryid=50&enter=Go!

and this is whats in the 3 kits
http://www.pivotworks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cProducts.view&productid=1500
http://www.pivotworks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cProducts.view&productid=1501
http://www.pivotworks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cProducts.view&productid=1502

You can also see what goes where if you download the PDF documents for those 3 part numbers.

The Allballs kit comes with seals which have a little lip that is ment for the WP shocks but i think they will still work on the Ohlins. If they dont you can use the normal Ohlins o-ring seals or any 17 or 18mm ID x 3 or 3.5mm thick o-ring.

The kit comes with c-clips but they are only for WP/KTM shocks.

The All Balls kit part number is 22-95059
The individual part numbers are

bearing - 40-5434
seals - 40-4168
clips - 40-6010
bushes - 40-1126