Front wheel went swimmingly. The bearings in it were original equipment so I had a little trouble getting the old ones out, but persistence paid off and they came out without any real issue. The replacement set went in without a hitch and I had the front wheel back on within half a hour.
The rear wheel--
It's been five years since I took the rear wheel off; I had to re-learn how to do it, but I got it off easily enough. Moved over to the workbench with it, and found that the replacement set of bearings wasn't even close to being correct.
The front wheel uses 6302 bearings. That's what's in both kits. But the rear wheel has three bearings total: on the side with the brake drum it's a 6303-z; on the sprocket side it's a 6203-z; and then there's a third one in the actual sprocket assembly. I forgot to write down the size, but it's still sitting on my workbench, so I can get it at my leisure. None of the three is the same size as the front wheel bearings.
Of course.
I thought about what to do. "Well," I said, "it's not as if I can ride the bike anyway." Decided to leave it disassembled, and see what it'll cost to get a set of bearings from a supply store instead. But the bike was in the middle of the garage and I didn't want to leave it there, so I figured I'd use the scissor jack to lower the rear end onto a mover's dolly and scoot it off to one side.
I needed more hands than I had, with the result that after I'd flipped up the center stand, and while I was trying to position the dolly under the bike, it fell over onto its right side. I righted it, but now it was resting on the exhaust pipes on the floor and I had no way to both pick it up and get something underneath it. I also couldn't both pick it up and put the center stand down.
After looking over the mess and trying to figure out what to do, my eye fell on my shop crane. Its minimum capacity is 1,000 lbs, with the boom extended all the way. Perfect!
...all I need to do is to extract it from the pile.
And so I started working. Got the crane out, but didn't stop there; dug into the pile and started chipping away at it. All the old Saturday Evening Posts went into the trash, mold, mouse droppings, and all. With that shelving unit at the back of the garage cleaned off, I looked behind it, found the remnants of the croquet set--two mallets and one stake--and some other miscellanious junk, most of which went right into the trash. I moved some things around until I had room to move the lawn tractor forward about four feet (!) and then set to righting my motorcycle.
The shop crane easily lifted it--the bike is short of 500 lbs--and I got it onto the furniture dolly and moved to where I'd wanted it. I was going to leave it, but I decided I didn't trust it and lifted it again with the shop crane to set it on its center stand. I still have plenty of room to work on it, and it's no longer in the middle of the garage.
I got rid of all the empty cardboard boxes in the garage. I swept up at least a pound of dirt.
And while throwing away an old cash till from the paint store, something went ting! and dropped out of it.
It was a dime. A 1907 Barber dime.
Now, forty years ago, I found a 1903 Indian Head penny in that drawer, but back then it never occurred to me that more change could be stuck in the thing. At the time I was into collecting coins and I was thrilled that I'd found such an old coin!
But there was a dime in it, all this time, as well!
It's not particularly valuable--about $25--but it's damned cool all the same. And I decided that because I was throwing the old drawer away, I'd make sure there was nothing else in it, and disassembled it.
And wouldn't you know it, I found two more Indian Head pennies? One was minted in 1893; it's worth perhaps $20 because it spent nearly all its life trapped between two pieces of wood and is in really nice condition. The other was minted in 1904, is in similar condition, and is worth probably $10.
Today I got paid for cleaning the garage: $0.12 in antique money worth $55. Not too shabby! A nice keepsake to remember my maternal grandparents by.
But that wasn't all I got out of my hard work today; no! I got room back. Get a load of this:
That's the view from the SE corner after I pulled the Jeep into the garage and closed the door.
That's from the SW corner, by the front door, showing that there's maybe 6 inches between Jeep's rear and the garage door, but it fits.
NW corner this time, looking back at the SW corner. My workbench is on the other side of the Jeep from where I'm standing.
NW corner looking towards the SE corner. The remaining pile is visible across the back wall of the garage. It has taken me a lot of labor to reduce it to that size. Someday soon it will be even smaller. That will be a great day; but I will take today's success and relish it, for I have emerged victorious.
I filled the spare trash barrel, but most of that was the old magazines. This is really just the result of more efficient stacking of the junk. I do still want to throw out useless things from that pile, but that was beyond the scope of today's effort--and today's effort had such stunning results I'm very happy.
Even though my bike isn't working. Grumble.
ADDENDUM: The third bearing is 6205. All three look to be standard sealed bearings, so I shouldn't have trouble getting them.
By the time I was finished, though, besides being overheated and sweaty I was filthy. My legs were black with grime, my hands and arms too. I'd taken my shirt off about the time I started cutting apart boxes; it had snagged on the bike's trunk and tore, and its collar was already shot, and it was just as filthy as I was--so on my way into the house I just tossed it into the trash barrel.
Got inside, took off my clothes and sat in front of the fan for a few minutes; then I took a cool shower, and the water puddling on the bottom of the bathtub was black. Once I was clean and the rinse water running clear, I sat on the bottom of the tub and let cool water rain down on me.
I had a headache--I think I may have gotten just a touch of heat exhaustion despite taking frequent water breaks--so I sat here and ate Fritos with bean dip until I'd absorbed enough salt that the headache faded away.
It occurred to me that when I was a kid, I spent all day outside and the heat never bothered me. That's because I acclimated to it; and in winter, I acclimated to the cold, so I never really noticed the heat of summer and cold of winter. But after becoming an adult, I had to work, which means not going outside much--and yeah, you don't acclimate to the heat if you don't spend time in it.
Of course my entire body has stiffened up. That'll go away, too. No problem.