| Author | Message | ||
     Stevem2 |
I had rebuilt japanese forks in the past, but the Buell non-inverted seemed to add a bit of a problem and had me skiddish. I had to get to the steering head bearings, so the forks were off, so I decided to rebuild them. With very few exceptions, the job was a piece of cake. The manual instructions are pretty good. The old seals come out with a bit of slamming of the tubes against them. The actual re-install of the seals probably requires the inertial seal installation tool that fits inside the lower tube and drives the seal with its own weight. I did replace the upper bushings, but none had any appreciable wear after 23k miles. The only thing I would caution against is the oil draining. Best to pull the spring, then invert the shock and hang it or put it in the vise to drain for about ten minutes. Also, be careful to slowly pump the damper tube...the first one still had oil in it and oil pumped out everywhere. Same thing when re-filling. Pump very slowing a few times and oil will again come out the vent holes when bled. The last point is that I found that a socket and wrench helped to compress the upper cap during reassembly to get it started. I used 16 oz of oil in each shock, then measured down in the compressed shock, no problemo. All in all, it went very easily with the only special tool being the driver. |
