Wheel bearings too tight?

[Big Black Hawk]

Hello everyone ive been lurking for awhile now and have a question. How tight should the wheel bearings be when spun with your hands? I have a severely beaten 2020 hawk with ~900 miles on it I just bought for $300.

My first step was to replace tubes, chain and sprockets and when checking out the wheel bearings they are VERY hard to turn with my finger although they do spin fine with no notch/ noise. Is this normal?

Also are the sprocket bolts normally torqued down so much? I broke a socket (and almost a finger) trying to get them off and im starting to suspect red Loctite was used on original installation.

[Ol,fart]

Originally Posted by Big Black Hawk

Hello everyone ive been lurking for awhile now and have a question. How tight should the wheel bearings be when spun with your hands? I have a severely beaten 2020 hawk with ~900 miles on it I just bought for $300.

My first step was to replace tubes, chain and sprockets and when checking out the wheel bearings they are VERY hard to turn with my finger although they do spin fine with no notch/ noise. Is this normal?

Also are the sprocket bolts normally torqued down so much? I broke a socket (and almost a finger) trying to get them off and im starting to suspect red Loctite was used on original installation.

If it didn't have red locktite it should ! every bolt on these bikes should . there is nothing they can't shake loose.
the wheel bearing are sealed on both sides. makes them a little resistant.
but there are two things from china I never trust at all - bearings and anything electrical.

[Megadan]

it's very common for the Hawk rear wheel bearings to be installed poorly and they get locked up. Ideally the bearings should spin freely. I generally just install good name brand bearings from the start to avoid potential issues.

[franque]

Additionally, the sprocket bolts have no bearing on how tight the bearings will be. Maybe the axle was over torqued?

[JerryHawk250]

You can remove the plastic ring that covers the bearings and clean the bearings out real good with brake cleaner and repack with grease. Then snap the cover back in. This is one of the first things I've done on all my China bikes.

[Dusman]

Whatever you do, do *not* use red loctite on any of those bolts. That is made for high heat situations, most of which is not applicable to your Hawk. Use blue loctite and that will suffice. I have @ 10,000 miles on my Hawk, and have marked all relevant bolts that have been loctited with blue loctite, and none of them have ever moved.

Also, your axle nut should be torqued to 35 ft-lbs, not the 65 ft-lbs that is commonly recommended. 65 ft-lbs will eventually cave in your swingarm.

Just use the CSC TT250 maintenance tutorial. It has the accurate torque values for all of these common maintenance procedures: https://cscmotorcycles.com/tt250-tutorials-videos/

[Megadan]

Agreed. Medium strength thread locker is all you need (blue). I've also never had a single fastener on my Hawk come off that had blue installed.

[Oddball Matt]

Just to add a detail; there are (at least) two "blue" loctites.

242 is meant to be used on clean-on-clean surfaces and will suffer if there is any impurities on the threads.

243 is more forgiving and will still glue the threads down even if there`s some oil or other crap left between. But regardless which you use it is a good practice to clean the surfaces before applying the threadlock.