Nightmare fork oil seals

[Anonymous]

If anyone tells you its easy to replace oil seal in yer fork hit em just replaced oil seals in a gsx 750es. Got the manuel got the tools got the oil seals already to go removed fork stripped em down but could I get them split could I ~~~~~~*******~~~~### tried drilling em as in a previous forum no go ended up getting blow lamp out heat up bottom of fork around seal but not getting heat on the chrome part they praticly fell a part easy except the seals were the wrong size had 1/2 hour to get new seals before bike shop closed but now fitted and working great.

[redliner1973]

Dang! Thats a LONG sentence!! :twisted:

[Anonymous]

Hey im into bikes not speling :P

[Anonymous]

yeah, but if you want people to help you out then you have to be understood. i got kinda lost in all that.

[Mr. Jiggles]

I think that you came to the wrong conclusion - Getting the correct seals is HARD while replacing them is relatively easy.

[mcycle-nut]

I think that you came to the wrong conclusion - Getting the correct seals is HARD while replacing them is relatively easy.

Getting the seals isn't really that hard, although there is a time factor involved. One must first dismantle the forks, remove the fork seals and THEN wail down to your friendly motorcycle shop. He can then read the size that's printed on top of the seal and you're off to the races. Oh, and don't forget the new fork oil! 8)

[saaz]

I put new seals in last year, bought new ones then found I had some new ones in the packets hidden away I must have gotten a few years ago. I may as well redo the spare forks I have lying around just in case....

[KennyJ]

I rarely disassemble forks to change seals. I just take the springs out, compress them most of the way (leave about 2 inches of travel, fill them to the top with ATF, put on the caps and bleed any air out (works easy if you have air caps), take out the retaining circlip then put them in the press and start "pressing" them out. The forks will "press" out the seals with hydraulic pressure. ATF is realtively cheap, and a great cleaner.

When the seals are out, I partially fill the leg with cleaning solvent/kerosene and pump them out. Do it 2 or three times, until the fluid is clean, then let them dry (sometimes overnight, sometimes and hour). Put the new seals in (carefully with a punch, or a piece of PVC pipe), and reassemble the whole mess.

Works for me...
Kenny

[mcycle-nut]

I rarely disassemble forks to change seals. I just take the springs out, compress them most of the way (leave about 2 inches of travel, fill them to the top with ATF, put on the caps and bleed any air out (works easy if you have air caps), take out the retaining circlip then put them in the press and start "pressing" them out. The forks will "press" out the seals with hydraulic pressure. ATF is realtively cheap, and a great cleaner.

When the seals are out, I partially fill the leg with cleaning solvent/kerosene and pump them out. Do it 2 or three times, until the fluid is clean, then let them dry (sometimes overnight, sometimes and hour). Put the new seals in (carefully with a punch, or a piece of PVC pipe), and reassemble the whole mess.

Works for me...
Kenny

I gather that won't work for me because I've got the anti-dive partially dissasembled. Instead of breaking the brake line (no pun intended), I took the top off of the anti-dive unit. That way there is less mess and hassle not having to deal with bleeding the brakes and everything. If I do it your way and the anti-dive is apart, won't I blow the guts out of the anti-dive unit?

I'm having a real bitch of a time getting the forks apart. The allen bolt WILL NOT come out! I guess the next step is to (shudder 8O ) take it to a shop. Oh well, a good friend of mine owns a shop so it won't be too bad. It just bugs me as I have done fork seals before, but NEVER have I had seized allan bolts on the bottom of the forks! I mean this is getting silly, I swear the Craftsman allen wrench is gonna break it bends so much!
Maybe an impact gun will do the trick. I've got one, but it and the compressor are pretty wimpy, and I still have to buy the bit. :?

[QuaiChangKane]

I rarely disassemble forks to change seals. I just take the springs out, compress them most of the way (leave about 2 inches of travel, fill them to the top with ATF, put on the caps and bleed any air out (works easy if you have air caps), take out the retaining circlip then put them in the press and start "pressing" them out. The forks will "press" out the seals with hydraulic pressure. ATF is realtively cheap, and a great cleaner.

When the seals are out, I partially fill the leg with cleaning solvent/kerosene and pump them out. Do it 2 or three times, until the fluid is clean, then let them dry (sometimes overnight, sometimes and hour). Put the new seals in (carefully with a punch, or a piece of PVC pipe), and reassemble the whole mess.

Works for me...
Kenny

I gather that won't work for me because I've got the anti-dive partially dissasembled. Instead of breaking the brake line (no pun intended), I took the top off of the anti-dive unit. That way there is less mess and hassle not having to deal with bleeding the brakes and everything. If I do it your way and the anti-dive is apart, won't I blow the guts out of the anti-dive unit?

I'm having a real bitch of a time getting the forks apart. The allen bolt WILL NOT come out! I guess the next step is to (shudder 8O ) take it to a shop. Oh well, a good friend of mine owns a shop so it won't be too bad. It just bugs me as I have done fork seals before, but NEVER have I had seized allan bolts on the bottom of the forks! I mean this is getting silly, I swear the Craftsman allen wrench is gonna break it bends so much!
Maybe an impact gun will do the trick. I've got one, but it and the compressor are pretty wimpy, and I still have to buy the bit. :?

I recently helped a buddy change the fork seals on his '99 VFR800. One of the damping rod bolts had been Loctited at the factory (????). I actually snapped the head off of a hardened allen key trying to get the bolt out, and we ended up stripping the bolt head out before we gave up and took it to a shop. Factory spec for this bolt was supposed to be 12 ft/lbs....

What made it such a bear on the Honda was that the axle clamps are only single-sided, so you either have to use an allen key through the 3/8" hole in the bottom of the clamp, or get an allen socket with a looooong shaft in order to remove the damping rod since socket bodies are too large to fit through the hole. Even with a long-shaft allen socket, you run the risk of twisting off the shaft if the bolt is stuck.

With mine (and other GS's?), the axle clamps are two-sided, so they're removable. This allows you to use an allen socket for better leverage and control. If the bolts were stuck, I'd bolt the fork tube to a board on my bench through the caliper mounting holes for extra leverage, using an allen socket and ratchet. At this point, if you end up stripping the bolt head or snapping the allen bit out of the socket, then you know it's time to take it to a shop.... ](*,)


-Q!

[Anonymous]

The allen bolts were loctited into the bottom of my 400s forks. Luckily I was able to pull them apart and put them together rather easily, I didn't even need the special tool to hold the insides. If you look at the factory manual for these bikes you'll see that just about everything had loctite on it at some point...but my bike was restored or rebuilt at some time so I rarely run into it.

Steve