I'm in the process of tearing down my new '85 250ES to the bare frame. Well, it turns out that you need some special tools to get the swingarm off. There's a castellated lock nut on one side of the pivot that takes a special socket, and both sides of the pivot have an "internal" 17mm hex bolt. Rather than pay big money for these tools and wait for them to get here, I made my own.
The 17mm internal socket was a piece of cake. I just found an old socket and welded it a bolt with a 17mm head. Please ignore the hideous weld. I ran out of shielding gas for my MIG so I dug out my spool of flux-core wire. I haven't used that nasty stuff in years and I guess my gas technique doesn't translate well to gasless. Anyway, the fact that the bolt I used has a tall, flanged head helps the tool to work better. It prevents the head from tilting in the pivot bolt.
I wasn't as confident when I started to make the special socket for the castle nut. I started with a 27mm impact socket that I got for $4 from Harbor Freight. I measured the nut and determined that the four tabs needed to be 10mm wide, 5mm deep, and spaced equally around the socket. I scribed out the lines, then rough cut it with an angle grinder with a 4" cutoff wheel. Next I dressed it up a bit with my dremel tool, then I finished it with a hand file. It took a bit of test fitting, then filing, then fitting, filing, etc.
When I got it done I put in on my breaker bar and it worked perfectly.
Total cost was $4 and about an hour.
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