Upside down fork question...

[Sci85]

I also wonder if the bushing is moving on the slider once it's assembled and jamming until there is enough pressure to get the fork sliding. It's time to disassemble and carefully check everything with a fine tooth comb. If you don't have a manual, it's time to get one I think.

[tkent02]

Yeah, me too tkent02. Something is certainly f'd up. I'm thinking something is not assembled properly or possibly an incorrect ID seal?

If you take the fork out of the triple clamp, can you move it by hand then? If so, remove the spring, put the cap back on, and see how easy it is to compress by hand.

Do these forks have preload adjusters?

The seal is fine, with the spring out it slides easily, a little seal drag but about what you would expect for new seals. The suspension guy measured it at two pounds pull which he said is normal. They slide smoothly the whole way, and both sides had the same two pounds pull. They have no preload adjusters, you add spacers on top of the spring. I have tried with no preload, and again with slightly less than was recomended by the spring guy. (ran out of spacers) Near as I can tell it sags the right amount, but with all the friction it's hard to tell. Then the suspension guy put a little more preload spacer in, still no change in the friction.

When you bolt the triples together with the forks and the axle with no springs and torque everything down it gets a little tighter, but still not too bad. When you put it all together on the bike and put weight on it is when it really gets sticky.

I don't get it.

[tkent02]

I also wonder if the bushing is moving on the slider once it's assembled and jamming until there is enough pressure to get the fork sliding. It's time to disassemble and carefully check everything with a fine tooth comb. If you don't have a manual, it's time to get one I think.

The suspension guy put in different bushings although the new ones I put in were fine. He shimmed them into the fork tubes to get rid of a little slop, but it made no difference in the friction.

[salty_monk]

If the sag is right I would look at the compression damping circuit....

Seems like you've tried everything!

[tkent02]

It's not the damping, it's just stuck. Friction or stiction, whatever you want to call it. The fork doesn't move at all until you really lean into it. But once you do force it to move, it moves about what you would expect. Then it sticks there. Same thing while riding, it won't move until you hit a big bump, or hit the brake or throttle. Then when it does move it sticks in the new position.

Tried a lot but not everything yet. I can replace the triple clamps, maybe they are misaligned just enough to screw it up. Actually I have a buddy here with the same bike, I can swap my forks into his bike, or maybe swap his forks into my bike. This would prove if it's the triple clamp or not. The only other part in the equation is the axle, but it is straight as close as I can measure it.

OK, thanks for helping me think of the fork swapping idea.

[tkent02]

OK, I found the problem. A buddy let me borrow his bike for testing purposes, a 520EXC of the same year. Put my forks on his bike using his triple clamps, torqued everything down, the forks move up and down as they should. Nice and smooth. Apparently my clamps are FUBAR.
Off to Ebay.