[MVBoogie]

I, like probably most of you, have been reading about the hub failures on the MV’s and was questioning whether I should spend the money and do a Mitchy Hub upgrade on my bike. I am a spirited rider and and the thought of going down due to a failure finally got to me and decided it would be cheaper than skin graphs so I purchased one. I just installed it and thought I would do a thread with photos on the replacement of said hub.

I have a two car garage, my space is limited so I do not have a lift. My first issue was how to hold the bike up while doing the change over. No center stand on the bike and can’t hold it up with my rear Pit Bull stand since that’s what I am taking apart. What I did was mount my travel shoe on a piece of plywood, reinforced underneath with 2 x 4s, and put an eyebolt on both sides, rolled the bike in and strapped it down. I usually do not tie my bikes down by the handle bars, but the straps do not have much tension on them. Just enough to help keep the bike balanced.

Then up with the rear end, wheel off, then lowered the bike down onto a piece of oak resting on the rear suspension. Beautiful. Now onto the operation.

[MVBoogie]

Loosen the pinchbolts and take off the over tight chain. (I figured that you all would see that the chain was on to tight so I thought I would head off some comments on that)

Remove retaining clip, sprocket nut and sprocket.

Remove caliper.

Remove axle and rotor assembly.

Remove c-clip and caliper bracket.

Extract the hub.

Clean parts.

[MVBoogie]

Now is a good time to do a side to side comparison of the two hubs. Although I am not a mechanic, I am very mechanically inclined so take my comments with a grain of salt.

The CRC hub is a cast piece, weighs 2.3 pounds with bearings that appear to be light weight. There have been some comments on this site that if you over tighten the hub pinch bolts that you can distort the shape of the hub, I can see how that would happen. There are two bearings inside (appears to be a small roller bearing and a needle bearing) and a spacer that that’s between them that is loose when the axle isn’t in it. Overall my impression is that the hub is pretty lightweight for a bike of such HP.

The Mitchy Hub is appears to be machined out of a solid block of metal, weighs 4.2 pounds with what appears to be two sealed heavier duty ball bearings and a sealed needle bearing and a spacer that is securely in place. Over all impression is that the Mitchy Hub is a rugged and should easily handle the power that the MV produces. The hub fit perfectly into the swing arm. I did remove the label from the hub before installing.

[MVBoogie]

The reassembly is obviously the opposite of disassembly so I will show some pictures in order but won’t bother with describing the steps. I will say that everything was torqued and adjusted to factory specs. The operation took about three hours excluding the making of the shoe holder and placing the bike into it. Took it for a test ride for about an hour and everything felt great.

Cost of the project was about $800. My personal feeling is that the Mitchy Hub is well worth it just for the piece of mind. I am 56 years old and don’t bounce like I used to.

Next project will be to address the heat issue. I have already purchased the pump upgrade, Engine Ice coolant and Muzzy fans. I still need to find a switch for manual fan operation.

Hope all this helps.

Barry (MVBoogie)

[gotojoe]

Nice work...Very informative.

It's great that you kept a "log" too... ; )

joe

[mitchy]

Barry,nicely done and thank you for the thread and purchasing one of my hubs,you will be very happy with it.Its all about piece of mind reguarding failure of the original unit.Just 2 points I would like to add.1/ I suppy an Oring with the hub that slides over the axle before installing to ensure no water ingress occurs and 2/ The axle should be coated with a light smear of anti sieze mainly on the wheel side where the 2 ball bearings are.Thats all and thanks again.

[Donsy]

Good job Barry, great post man.

[MVista]

Originally Posted by gotojoe

Nice work...Very informative.

It's great that you kept a "log" too... ; )

joe

Say it isn't so Joe -

Fantastic post! I guess I'll be doing that in due course, so it will be a nice resource to have.

Thanks

[MVBoogie]

Thanks for the comments and Mitch, sorry I didn't mentioned those 2 points. I did do both of them on this upgrade and agree both are very important. Thanks again for your help.
Barry

[NZJimmy]

I installed a Mitcy hub last year just for piece of mind like you. I was surprised at how easy it was to install. Now I can twist that throttle through the twistys and not panic about the back end. Thanks again Mitch fantastic job.