Final gear Oil leak

[ofstone]

It was a bautiful warm sunny day today so i started up the V for a big ride together with friends.
After about 70 Km, I noticed some strange beheaviour of my rear wheel when taking some nice bends in the road.
We stopped at an small bar along the road to take a drink, and i saw some liquid going from the center of the wheel to my tires!
And this liquid was smelling like gear oil, It came from the center of the rear wheel over the spokes and on the tire.
That oil was lubing my tires instead of the gear teeth!
I cleaned of most of the oil and drove back home (still 50 km's to go) but beeing careful in the corners of the roads.

So i am affraid i have to open up the final gear again.
A couple of weeks ago i also had an oil leak, and i replaced the big outer oil seal. As what i suspected during the rapair, that was probably not the one leaking, but since the oil seal that is leaking is aperantly not availale anymore, i did not replace that one.
It is the seal inside the final gear behind the needle bearing(also not available anymore) wich you can see when the big cover is removed.

Has any of you have some experience in replacing that seal and needle bearing without the use of special tools and totaly have to remove the drive-shaft?

I also wil check some other sources than yamaha for the bearing/seals but the needle bearings yamaha uses are big trouble to find as i experienced with the drive shaft needle bearing about a year ago.

There should be a compagny who can get all the old drawings from yamaha, so they can get us al spare parts we need (of course for a reasonable price).
Parts are really getting hard to get over here in the Netherlands. Also there are not a lot of V's on the junkyards here to get good parts from.

Suddenly i was realizing: How much of the totally sold Visions back then are stil driving/excisting today?
I now now 2 other people in the netherlands (via the internet)wich also have a vision. But in the last 2 years i never have seen another vision than the bike i have. They really are rare here in the netherlands.

[EH]

Hello ofstone, If you end up removing that needle bearing send all the information from it to this forum and I will try to locate replacements. There is a bearing supplier nearby to me who are relentless in finding bearings so I'll bet we can locate something. As far as the leak goes, how much oil did you lose? Is the vent atop the gearcase clear? A plugged vent can cause fluid loss due to heat expansion in the gearcase.

[louthepou]

If it gets to the point that you need the rear "hub" or gear housing, some of us likely have a few spares that leak less than yours and that would be willing to take off from the swingarm If that's possible (I assume) (I could take a look at the spares I have).  Shipping the whole swingarm overseas would probably be excessive, but just the housing may be not too crazy.

Louis