my axle bearings just got SHOT, sounds hard to believe but when i put it on the jackstand i could wiggle the axle about 2in back and forth, put grooves in my axle so now i need a new one (ps please pm me if you have an axle), i just read another post about someones carrier being destroyed, too. Whatsup with all the axle bearings going bad?

 

What yr is your ds?The ones that are going bad are late 04 and the 05s.Any others is
due to lack of maintenance.At least that is the way i read it in past posts.I did mine this spring
because i thought it was time.There was little to no grease on them,but i did have a little sand.

 

I got 4 years outa my stock bearings before something got into a seal and scored, which allowed water in to take out the bearing.

The bearings are tapered, so if the axle nut becomes the slightest bit loose then the axle can wobble a bit. if the axle can wobble, it eventually tears things up. lack of periodically checking the axle nut and snugging up as needed (easily done during routine chain maintenance) is a big contributer to bearing failure. And if a bike is ridden for quite some time with bad bearings, the carrier is next in line. 99% of the time a carrier is trashed, the reason is due to excessive riding on bad bearings, which could have easily been caught by periodic checking of bearing integrity during routine chain maintenance, which for obvious reasons should be done regularly.

 

So the only way to tell without disasembly is to rock the axel when the bike is jacked up on its rear skidplate and check for play?