Rear Wheel Bearing parts list

[SpidyJ]

Anybody have a list of parts for this job?

[F6Dave]

Assuming you're just replacing the one that fails on occasion, all you really need is the bearing, though you might as well replace the dust seal while you are at it.

The left rear bearing is a 6204-2RS.  The 2RS means rubber seals on both sides.  When it failed on my '98 Tourer at about 52K miles, the dealer tried to sell me one with the seal on only one side as he didn't have the correct one in stock.  Instead I went to NAPA and bought the 6204-2RS for $17 (it's a standard automotive bearing) and it has been fine for over 100,000 ADDITIONAL miles.

I also have a friend who had a dealer replace the same bearing on his Valk.  That dealer also used a bearing with the seal on a single side.  And it failed within a year or so.  Makes you wonder if some dealers have bad parts fische.

Based on my own experience I'm not convinced this is an undersized bearing prone to failure.  Honda engineers were too good for that (these days I'm not so sure).  Since the failures seem more common on '98 and '99 Valks my thought is that there may have been a bad batch from a supplier.

[F6Dave]

Out of curiosity I looked at the parts list on HDL for the 2000 1500 Goldwing.  It uses the same bearing.  I'm now curious if the Wing has had similar failures.  If this bearing was undersized, surely the problem would have shown up on the heavier 1500 Wing after 12 years of production.  With Honda's unlimited mile warranty and all those high mileage Wing riders it seems like there would have been lots of claims.