wfooshee
O, Woe is me!!
Update: parts got here last week, couldn't get to it for one reason or another, so today I finally tore the forks down.
Amazingly enough, the one with the good seal had a LOT more oil in it. How odd!
Another strange discovery is that a leaky seal apparently goes both ways; the inside of that fork was NASTY!!!!! There was grit on the spring, and I had to build a rod contraption to run through the tubes to get grit off the tube walls. Still working on the bottom of the outer tube.... I was hoping to be done with this by this time today, but this extra careful cleaning is interfering with my carefully laid out schedule! :angry:
I had another delay when one of the damper bolts refused to break loose. My air at home is pretty low capacity, only a 5-gallon tank, so the impact wrench would run 5 or 10 seconds before there was no air, then I'd wait a couple minutes for the compressor, kick for 5 or 10 seconds, repeat. I ended up running the fork over to my ex-bro-in-law's house (still best friends, and have been since junior high, so a little thing of his sister divorcing me is no big deal) to use his big tank. Still took nearly ten minutes of good hammering before it came loose, but loosen it did.
So here it is about 90 minutes from sundown, and I've just gotten both forks broken down and started cleaning. No ridin' today! Tomorrow might be iffy, too, depending on how I feel about getting that one set clean enough. :glare:
Here's the bad oil seal:
I have a question, too, which comes from never having personally been in a bike fork before. (I've changed oil, but not pulled the tubes apart.) The washer that goes in under the oil seal comes flat. The ones that came out of my forks are coned. Is that from the hammering to separate the fork tubes, or is something else going on? Also, the one from the right tube (bad seal) is bent, but I think that was from not being real careful separating the tubes. The seal cocked a bit instead of coming out straight.
Amazingly enough, the one with the good seal had a LOT more oil in it. How odd!
Another strange discovery is that a leaky seal apparently goes both ways; the inside of that fork was NASTY!!!!! There was grit on the spring, and I had to build a rod contraption to run through the tubes to get grit off the tube walls. Still working on the bottom of the outer tube.... I was hoping to be done with this by this time today, but this extra careful cleaning is interfering with my carefully laid out schedule! :angry:
I had another delay when one of the damper bolts refused to break loose. My air at home is pretty low capacity, only a 5-gallon tank, so the impact wrench would run 5 or 10 seconds before there was no air, then I'd wait a couple minutes for the compressor, kick for 5 or 10 seconds, repeat. I ended up running the fork over to my ex-bro-in-law's house (still best friends, and have been since junior high, so a little thing of his sister divorcing me is no big deal) to use his big tank. Still took nearly ten minutes of good hammering before it came loose, but loosen it did.
So here it is about 90 minutes from sundown, and I've just gotten both forks broken down and started cleaning. No ridin' today! Tomorrow might be iffy, too, depending on how I feel about getting that one set clean enough. :glare:
Here's the bad oil seal:
I have a question, too, which comes from never having personally been in a bike fork before. (I've changed oil, but not pulled the tubes apart.) The washer that goes in under the oil seal comes flat. The ones that came out of my forks are coned. Is that from the hammering to separate the fork tubes, or is something else going on? Also, the one from the right tube (bad seal) is bent, but I think that was from not being real careful separating the tubes. The seal cocked a bit instead of coming out straight.
Last edited by a moderator:
