| Author | Message | |||
     Xbob |
anyone had their forks anodized? who did it/does it? thanks. | |||
| Eboos |
Ask Al at American Sport Bike. I remember him telling me he did it once. | |||
| Blake |
 Al's Black Anodized Forks A couple other BadWeBrs (BadS1, Renter, and Damnut) have also had their forks anodized. See search result numbers 1, 2, 4, 12, 14, 15...
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| Blake |
The Google Search (link atop every page) works pretty good too.  | |||
| Al_lighton |
It is a LOT of work. Your forks are already hard anodized, inside and out. In order to anodize them a different color, you need to remove the anodize that is already there. It is NOT a trivial task. Hard anodize is, well, hard. One of the hardest substances, actually. Anodize is essentially a controlled oxidation of the surface of the aluminum, forming essentially the equivalent of Corundum (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corundum), I think (note: I'm no chemist, I don't play one on TV, and didn't even stay at a holiday inn last night). You can't remove it by chemical means, you have to remove it by mechanical means, which means carefully sanding it away. But after you get through the hard anodize, you're into soft aluminum. So you need to sand it with a grinder just long enough to get through the surface coating and then immediately stop. It's painstaking work, done in very small areas at a time. After I'd stripped the forks of the anodize, I polished them to a mirror shine to get a consistently smooth surface everywhere before giving them them to the hard anodizers. They seal the tube ends (since you don't want to re-anodize the hard anodize on the inside sliding surfaces) and do the HARD anodizing. The result is what is shown in the picture Blake posted, which looks fabulous, much nicer than powdercoating. You need to specify HARD anodize, not just plain black anodize. Forks get a lot of abuse, and they'll pit from road grit if it isn't hard anodize. Al | |||
| Damnut |
I did a lot of research on anodizing vs powdercoating before I started blackening my bike out. Actually I sent my forks out to be powdercoated. I wanted to get them anodized but it was too much of a PITA to remove the sliders from the bottom part of the fork(where the axle goes through) I also had my triple trees, front fairing support, primary cover, timing cover and a few other things done the same way. The thing that was told to me was you cannot have any other metal other than aluminum in the batch that you anodize or it will ruin the tank of fluid that they dip the parts into. If you do have something anodized make should you have it done in a hardcoat. I believe that they call it type 3/hardcoat anodization. I did the powdercoating because I got a deal from this place down the cape because I am letting him post pictures of my bike on his website to show his work. | |||
| Xbob |
how hard is it to take the forks apart to have them done?? do i need any special tools? | |||
| Damnut |
Not that hard to take apart if you have the service manual but I wouldn't recommend putting them back together. I had my local guy do it. Just to be safe. | |||
| Diablobrian |
You guys do realize that Al really simplified the process down a lot right? He was trying to respond without over-complicating it or writing a HUGE post (I'm guessing)  While you are removing the hard anodizing the factory puts on you have to be careful to keep the fork tubes round, concentric, and not remove too much or too little material and take them "out of spec" either too large for the triple clamps or too small for the triples to grasp. I don't think I'd try it without a suitable lathe and a spec from the anodizer on how thick (in mils) their hard coating is so I could take proper measurements in the critical areas to avoid trouble during reassembly. BTW spreading the clamp open to accept the tube or over tightening the clamp to "make it fit" are both very hard on the cast clamps and can lead to failures due to stress cracking. | |||
| Bads1 |
There also has to be a company that will do the whole process including stripping the forks of the original and then with the new. That is the question... who will do the whole thing....I'd be interested. | |||
| Xbob |
thats what im looking for also. anyone??? | |||
| Damnut |
easier to have them powdercoated. If you do have them anodized, I wouldn't worry too much on how many mils the anodization adds to your fork tubes. My powdercoated tubes fit right into my triple trees without a problem and I'm pretty sure that powdercoating goes on a lot thicker than anodizing. | |||
| Bads1 |
Powder coating cannot offer the look i'm after. | |||
| Damnut |
The major problem I ran into was separating the bottom(yellow arrow) from the sliders? (blue arrow)  The slider needed to be removed from the bottom in order to have them anodized. The powdercoater could do it without removing them. | |||
| Bads1 |
I don't need the bottom done though. | |||
| Damnut |
Powder coating cannot offer the look i'm after. I'm sorry but I am only providing information because I went through all of this last winter. I spent ALOT of time researching my options before I decided to PC. I'm just saying that having them anodized is a real PITA. There are a lot of things that you have to do before you can have them done. I'll stay out of this post now. | |||
| Xbob |
damnut can you post a better picture of your powdercoated forks? or email me one? thanks. | |||
| Bads1 |
Dammut I thank you for your info seriously I do and your forks and bike look great but I'm after the look of anodize and not black either.The closest you can get with powder coat is using the candies that they offer but even then its not what I'm after. | |||
| Damnut |
Xbob....... No problem. I will get them and post tomorrow. Bads1...... no problem. Like I said I went through all of this last year and I'm just trying to help out a fellow BadWebber with some of the info that I have. I don't know what your after and can only give advise on what I experienced. If you need any help on anything let me know. The anodizing is a GREAT look don't get me wrong. That was my first choice to have done and I really wanted it but the guy that was going to do it was saying "you have to do this, that and the other thing" before I can touch em. Great look but for me it was too many hoops to jump through to get what I wanted. Like Al said, alot of prep work but damn does it look good!!!! I hope you guys get the look your after. I'm sure it will turn out well. | |||
| Xbob |
thanks. i look forward to seeing the pics. i want mine anodized also, but am willing to look into powdercoating them. thanks again. | |||
| Damnut |
I went to take some pictures but it is pouring out today and I can't get a good picture right now. I had to wipe the forks down (forgot to put the cover on last night) so the picture doesn't look good. I will try again tomorrow or grab a drop light and take some pictures if it isn't sunny out. Here is one of them:  | |||
| Xbob |
how lone ago did you have that done? does it seem to be holding up well?? thanks. | |||
| Damnut |
I had it done around at the beginning of this year. It is holding up really good. No chipping on the forks at all. I had it done in a semi-gloss and it matched the Villian wheels perfectly. I can take some better pictures but have to wait until I get some sunlight. The main thing with the powdercoating is you have to find someone that is good at it. Anyone can powdercoat steel and make it look good but aluminum out-gasses when they heat it up and can cause pockmarks in the finish. The guy that did mine had to do my primary cover a couple of times because of that. He did everything else in one shot. here's a couple of more pics. the last two are from when I was rebuilding the bike.    | |||
| Xbob |
thanks for the pics..bike looks good. what kind of grips you got on your bike? | |||
| Diablobrian |
Those are the Buell traction grips. I LOVE mine. They are barrel shaped and feel good to me, but I understand people with smaller hands don't like them as much because of the bulk in the middle. |
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