Lately, my '01 Bandit 1200 has been giving a slight chatter with hard front braking just before coming to a complete stop. At speed, it's not noticeable at all - just at a few mph when coming to a stop.
I'm planning to replace the head bearings and I thought I remembered that there was a change from ball bearings to roller bearings in the later years. Sure enough, Ron Ayers shows a different part number for '03 and up and describes the later years' bearings as "tapered bearings". I last replaced mine with All Balls Racing brand when I swapped the forks for Hayabusa USDs several years ago.
Anyway, I started digging and found the dimensions of the stock bearings are 25x47x15 and 30x55x17. Ron Ayers and BikeBandit show them for over $30 apiece and backordered. I can buy NSK brand tapered roller bearings in those dimensions from Amazon for less than $15 apiece and have them in 2 days. For reference the numbers are 32005XJ and 32006XJ.
Does anybody have any experience doing this? I can't imagine there is anything special about the OEM or All Balls to justify the price.
