Fork Seals? Been there, done that. Thanks Rick!

With the help of this forum, especially some great encouragement from Rickomatic, I finished replacing my fork seals yesterday. I cheated a little bit. I was able to score a another set of forks for my bike for $30 on flebay. I figured that way I could get the seals installed,. and if I totally screwed up and ruined the forks, at least my bike would still be operational

Thanks to all of you out there that have contributed to the "How-To" sections, and offered a few tips along the way, I am up and running on the new seals and they are leak-free! I was able to learn more about my bike and save $200 off the cost of having my dealer doing the job.

Thanks again,

Andrew

 

Andrew,
You have just fulfilled the purpose of this site! Great job on you and congratulations to all involved!

 

I'll bet if we were to be able to tally the Net savings in Labor Costs using $65.00 per Hour as the average Labor Rate ... we have probably saved our Membership ....

Um-teen Dollars.

Um-teen being a lot,, but I don't have any idea how much ... just that its more than $5,000.00 (easy)!

 

That's not cheating. That's thinking ahead. When I first tore into the carbs on my 750, I first bought a spare set to practice on so I knew what I was getting into.

I did my fork seals on the 750 as well, and as you no doubt noticed, they're not that difficult.

A metric buttload?

 

It was a lot easier than I expected. Knowing what to except going in made the job a lot easier.

 

Hmm... You and I have the same bike and I need to do mine. Any special tools or tricks?

 

Two things really come to mind.

1)Remove the damper rod bolt from the bottom of the fork tube before removing the circlip and stop ring. That way you don't need a special damper rod holding tool to keep the rod from spinning.

2)Using a bar clamp to compress the stop ring works great for getting the circlip out.

And more than anything, be patient. It takes time, but it really is not all that difficult.

 

When it comes time to remove the internal parts ... SLIDE them out of the Tube on to a clean towel or rag on a flat surface.

Don't "Dump" them out.
Slide them out slow and collect each piece in the order that they slide out of there.

The end of the Damper has a series of washers and an Oil Lock Piece.
Make a drawing or take a snap-shot of how the order is for reassembly.

 

Man, I'd give my left nut for a proper garage. I get to do sh*t like this in the boiling hot sun out in my driveway.

 

Hehe I did mine on the back deck, had a few beer while at it....
only special tool I used was a piece of ABS drain pipe left over from my kitchen renovation, perfect size for a seal driver to set them in place.

Should've been watching e-bay to scoop those fork tubes, mine are pitted and I think it's starting to effect one of my seals :/