OK, let's talk the swingarm thing again and most of my comments will be directed towards the later model carbon arms such as on the 4-5500 and Oz's. the swingarm info for the 857ish bikes is similar but there are some modifications so before you do anything, consult the owners manual before doing anything. The directions in the book are sketchy at best but the basics are there - if you don't have your book, go to the k2 site or daves site and read/download the book and the file that has the specs on your particular swingarm pivot.

First off let me say, never, never, never remove your swingarm unless you absolutely have to. Much of the maintenance is a simple regreasing of the internals and you can normally do one side at a time. By doing one side at a time, the arm is not moved off the main pivot so you don't have to deal with pinching quad rings and all the headaches that goes with reinstallation over the fixed pivot face on the lower triangle. This is considerably easier on the X57 styles as they encompass cups on both sides of each side of the swingarm pivot, holding the quadrings in place. Personally, I think this was the superior design and would have like to seen it carried forward to the later models - but it wasn't.

So - (never, never, never, never, never, never, never ever take the swingarm off unless you really, really, really, really, really, really, really, absolutely have to. such as - for changing a pinched quad ring or you just want to cause you just want to see what's in there and can't stand it anymore and want to spend the next three days in pain an misery trying to get the arm back on without pinching the quads getting the arm back on)

Anytime you start to hear creaking in the main pivot or creaking anywhere for that matter, it's a good time to strip it all down to the bushings, clean her up, give a good regreasing and reassemble. K2 recommends a teflon based grease and you should never mix greases so whatever you use, be sure to clean out all the old grease before putting new in. this applies to forks as well. I use a slick 50, green grease as it's cheap and easy to get in bulk - I grease everything liberally so wear and tear is never an issue and I redo it often.

Start by -

Garage Mechanics Basic Instruction:

1. remove rear wheel and disconnect shock bolt

2. tighten pinch bolt on threaded cup to very snug and loosen on non threaded cup

3. loosen cross bolt, loosen other pinch bolt, unthread cross bolt to end of threads and tap out threaded cup. inspect, grease inside swingarm surfaces and axle/cup then press back in till it clicks in place to hold swingarm in place.

4. take a long thin screwdriver or such and reach thru the just reinstalled threaded cup, thru the bike and press out the non threaded cup. sometimes this get hung up on the large chain ring so wriggle it around a bit and it should come out if the bike is set up properly. if not, grease cup and press back in. if you can get it out, remove, inspect, grease all surfaces and reinstall till it clicks back in place.

(if you've done this properly, you haven't moved the swingarm one micron and are into this for about 3 minutes time investment)

5. reinstall cross bolt, tighten down the threaded axlecup pinch bolt to very snug, tighten cross bolt to specs (till your fingers bleed with an allen wrench), back off that pinch bolt to loose again.

6. adjust swingarm tension with the pinch bolts as per the manual (slow drop with not much attached to it) reconnect the shock and put your wheel back on.

(you should be at 6-7 minutes now if you're working slowly - )

7. wipe off excess grease that got squished out and go ride -

hope this helps

OP

(did i mention to never remove the swingarm? trying to get it back on properly can be pain, misery and insanity - it's worse than going thru a divorce, buying a used car, sitting thru a julia roberts movie, buying a diamond for your wife or watching your tech stocks portfolio - combined) OP