gs1100e: want some advice re: new progressive springs

[ironsheik]

Hey all,
I just installed stainless brake lines and rebuilt the brakes on my 83 1100e (13k miles) while disabling the anti-dive. I think I'm going to add progressive springs since there's still some sag even though the brakes work much better. I imagine I can just pull the caps and springs out while everything is mounted to the bike and replace, right? Should I go ahead and just rebuild the forks while I'm at it? I'd rather not go through all that right now. This bike is CLEAN so I kind of doubt there's any problem with the internals but who knows. Is there any way to drain the fluid while the forks are mounted? I could use my mighty-vac? Thanks for any advice.

Josh

[Nessism]

Not familar with the 1100E forks but my 850 forks have a drain plug for removing the oil with the forks mounted. If yours don't have them, pulling the fork is the only good way to get all the oil out. 13k miles is quite low so you can leave the bushings and such alone on the inside. Install the springs, adjust the sag, install fresh oil, and you are good to go.

Good luck.

[Billy Ricks]

I believe the 1100E forks are very similar to the stock forks on the '85 700. The easiest thing to do after removing the stock springs is to slip the forks out of the triples for the rest of the process. When replacing springs it's always best to replace the teflon coated bushings inside the forks. There are two in each side. Flush the forks with kerosene or diesel several times to get all the crap out of them. Fill them about half full with solvent and pump them a half dozen times or so to get the solvent through the internals. Drain and repeat ntil the solvent comes out clean. Then invert and pump some more to remove as much solvent as possible. Leave them inverted to drain as long as you can. You would be very surprised how dirty fork oil gets.

[Mark M]

Is there any way to drain the fluid while the forks are mounted? I could use my mighty-vac? Thanks for any advice.

Josh

My 82 1100E forks have drain plugs, so yours should too. I would agree with Billy, though. Since you don't know how long that fluid has been in there, a clean and flush would be a good choice. I don't think I would replace the bushings if the bike only has 13K on it, but if the oil is more than a couple years old it should be changed. It is pretty easy to just pull the fork tubes out of the triples and flush them out without pulling the tubes apart. You can also flush with Varsol if you don't have any kerosene available.

Mark

[bwringer]

Last time I disassembled the forks on my 850G was at about 82,000 miles. The original bushings were still in fine shape.

Which is good, because the upper bushings are not available for some reason -- they don't appear on the GS850 parts diagram at all.


At only 13,000, don't worry about them for one second.




I'm pretty sure 1100E forks have drain screws, so changing the fluid is easy-peasy.

To get all the crud out (if I'm not disassembling to replace fork seals), I usually drain the original oil, dump in some cheap ATF, pump the forks a few times, drain that, dump in some mild solvent like WD-40, pump some more, drain the icky solvent, and repeat flushing with the solvent until things are reasonably un-icky. A lot of crud builds up in those forks.