Rear wheel spacer grooves on swingarm?
 

Hello. Long time lurker here.

I recently bought a well traveled gen 1 KLR 650 and I'm working on it whenever I have spare time.

I have little to no mechanical experience so sorry if I'm way off diagnosing the problem.
Working on the rear wheel, swingarm, etc I noticed this issue:
Seems that the spacers in the rear wheel axle have been spinning and made a bit of a groove on the swingarm

Im afraid the wheel will want to set into the grooves and **** up the chain tension/wheel alignment

I was thinking of maybe filing it down flat. I shouldn't have to file off too much material.

All advice is welcome.

You could try dressing it back but you may end up going thin on the material and weakening it. I think my preference would be to get some stepped (top hat) spacers turned up to spread the load on the face of the swingarm. Combined with light dressing that should do the job.

As Tomkat has said - smooth the burrs off and spread the load.

The other question is why was the spacer spinning. Without further information I can't figure out the cause but, as the damage is on the outer face, I assume that the axle was not done up tightly enough leaving free play - that would also mean that the wheel alignment could create an interesting ride.

If you are stripping it down have you thought about going the next step and changing the swingarm out for a secondhand one - that way you can be sure of the condition of the bearings, lubrication etc because you have rebuilt it yourself.

Thanks for the replies.

Update:

Realized one thing. The klr has sleeve/slider like chain adjusters that go over that area. So the only way those grooves could have formed is if one of the previous owners rode it without them. Ill attach a photo of the adjusters.

So for now I just slightly filed the area to get rid of the burrs and ordered new outer chain adjusters since the old ones are in a bad shape.