Help! Swingarm question

'07 TE250. I took off all of the suspension linkage and the swingarm to do cleanup and greasing of the bearings that don't have grease fittings.

Upon reassembly, even after tightening the swingarm pivot way-stupid tight, the swingarm still has about a 1/16" of side-to-side movement. I didn't notice this before I took it apart, but i wasn't looking for it either.

I looked up the microfiche (thanks Halls!) and I'm not missing any parts, heck all I took out was the #53 'top hat' bushings and cleaned up the bearings the best i could while they were still installed in the swingarm.

I suspect that once I tighten up all the linkage and the shock, that it will no longer move back and forth, but it seems like an awful big gap right now. Seems like an easy avenue for water to run into the bearings. However, without the shock in place, the linkage yoke also moves in unison with the swingarm, so maybe it is supposed to have side-to-side movement to keep from binding up.

Does anyone KNOW if this is normal, or have I bound up the works somehow?

BTW, the swingarm pivots just fine and has no up or down movement (slop). i.e. nothing is worn out.

When I took it apart, it was VERY tight. Had to put my foot on a 1/2" drive breaker bar to get the nut loose. When I initially tightened it back up, I used the breaker bar, and then (gulp) put a 2' pipe on that for more leverage, thinking surely, this will bend the frame. No dice.

I loosened it all back up, and noticed that when you move the swingarm side-to-side, the large linkage arm (#4 on the fiche) also moves with it the same amount, soooo, maybe this is by design afterall...

The only thing I took off was the foot-long bolt, it's nut and flat washer. Once that was off, pulled the swingarm rearward, and removed the top hat bushings (one each side) exposing the twin needle bearings on each side of the arm. I even put the bushings back in the same side they came out of...

This is an incredibly simple design w/ very few parts, which is why it seems so odd that it "doesn't look right".

I took it back apart, and here's what I found out:

After pulling the swingarm away from the frame, I pulled the top hat bushings out of the s-arm itself and "installed" them w/o the swingarm. They fit perfectly. So what's happening is, when you tighten the swingarm bolt, it tightens up these top hat bushings (which are wider than the swingarm yokes) and these are your 'pinch points'. The swingarm assy is narrower than the bushings, so it is free to move left-right. There's no way you could ever tighten it up enough to take out the movement, as the bushing is considerably wider than the rest of the pieces. When everything is tightned up and ready to ride, the s-arm no longer moves.

I don't like it, but that's what it is.

thanks for the follow-up report... nice to know