Aprilia Futura – Removing and re-fitting the rear wheel

This is a basic guide to removing the Aprilia RST1000 Futura’s rear wheel. Full instructions can be found in the owner’s manual.

Place the bike on the centre stand on level ground and remove panniers if fitted.

Undo the rear wheel dust cover. You can use a pin spanner to do this.

Undo the rear wheel retaining circlip then screw the dust cover back in a few turns and withdraw, bringing with it the castellated nut.

Take the 22mm bit from the toolkit and fit it into a socket. Place into the centre of the wheel and turn anti-clockwise. This should be very tight. If it isn’t, see the loose rear wheel page.

Undo the nut and withdraw the collar from the wheel, noting the position of the woodruff key. The wheel is ready to come off now, but will probably need a little encouragement from a soft mallet.

Installation is the reverse of removal, paying attention to a few very important couple of things:

• Don’t lose the woodruff key.
• Make sure the wheel locates correctly onto the three locating pins on the hub. Especially check this if someone else has your wheel off – for example when fitting tyres.
• The rear wheel nut should be done up to at least 180Nm of torque but this may not be enough to prevent it coming loose and some people have done it up to 200Nm.
• The castellated nut will only go fully on one way.