I decided it had to be looked at having read the horror stories on here but I was pretty confident having insisted on a 12 month MOT when I bought my storm
BUT the vague advisory should have sounded alarm bells !!!!! And is another reason you MUST check these!!!
"Rear suspension bearing has slight free play"
So all the usual stuff:
put bike on bike lift,then use tiedown straps to lift back up and take weight off suspension

off with the wheel (chain and sprockets had it !!!)
off with silencers
off with headers -was replacing them anyway
Then start to dismantle and shock horror!!!! First - the good news was that the bolt that fastens the cushion arm to the swing arm cam undone pretty easy, unlike some others I see on here.
The bad news was that the two needle bearings had corroded and completely disintegrated - see below. So much so that the collar had almost worn right through the bearing outer cover into the casting!!


In addition the needle bearing in the smaller end of the dogbone was also seized.
So all bearings, seals and collars were ordered. In the meantime I bought a used cushion arm from ebay - came and it had been completely refurbished and powdercoated.
So fitted grease nipple to arm and large dogbone end - then new bearings, seals and small collar in

Also refurbishing original arm as below:

Its worth saying that getting the remains of the needle bearings out of the original arm took a lot of heat and patience, but I got there.
Going to rebuild the rear suspension after I do the manual cct s tomorrow!!!!
And on we go