Post by anon on Feb 1, 2007 19:25:59 GMT
From: Muddy Rutter Sent: 25/02/2003
Morning Campers,
I recently replaced the fork seals on my '95 900S and it were a sod of a job. I'm pretty good mechanically but this job earnt every one of its four out of five 'Haynes spanners' difficulty rating. The actual job is fairly straight forward but undoing the damper rod nut is a pain unless you can conjure up or buy the Yamaha special tools.
Taking the forks off is pretty straight forward (see Terry's article here) and I believe that Trev said that he got his resealed for about £80 after removing them from his bike. The only problem with getting them done by a dealer is that you cannot check for wear yourself.
Keith has also been playing with fork seals and he posted this useful URL recently for a company that repairs forks, but he has not used them: www.allbikeengineering.co.uk/
One final point is that if you decide to do the job yourself I would suggest that you spend the money on some decent seals. Yamaha orginals are about £17 and one of the catalogues was selling super-dooper ones for about £25. There is a possibility that patttern seals (Busters) could be inferior or old. I used to fix washing machines once upon a time and some of the pattern rubber components were rubbish.
This page is quite useful:
www.dansmc.com/forks.htm
Regards
Nick
From: del mar Sent: 03/03/2003
I too had a go at Fork Seals this weekend, and can offer the following advice.
It is not that hard a job, follow the steps in the Haynes manual.
I bought my oil and seals from local dealer, and said that if I ran into difficulty with the damper rod would he undo it, to which he said yes. The manual does state that with the spring back in place you can tighten the damper bolt so you may be able to undo it this way also, as this is a reassembly point I had not read it by then.
Once I had the oil and springs out I took it to the dealer who undid the bolt, and I then started taking the forks apart. The bushes looked ok, no pitting scratching etc, so I cleaned all the parts and then put them back together.
Fitting the upper bushes(?) - The manual recommends a special tool or piece of pipe, which nobody has, but you can make one from a length of plastic pipe. I used an empty mastic tube. You need at least 5inches, this way your hand won't hit the guards. Cut it longways and then wrap it around the upper tube, so it is a close fit but not tight and then wrap it in tape. This now gives you a free sliding piece of pipe with which to wack the bushes and the seal into place. As it is plastic it won't damage anything.
NOTE - do not allow the upper tube to be driven down with the "tool", this drives the plastic oil lock into the bottom of the upper tube, esstenially locking the forks, i speak from experience!! Hold the upper tube with one hand to stop it from moving while you wack the seal with the "tool" in the other.
Then replace the spring and cap, without the oil in, this allows you to tighten up the damper bolt without having oil leak everywhere. Once tight undo the cap and remove the spring, spacer etc and fill with fluid to the correct height.
I tend to be heavy handed and not that patient, but it is a job I would certainly do again.