Fork Seal replacement tip

[Snow]

Wow, I don't believe I have seen nastier looking forkseals and murky fork oil that is less than a year old... I changed my forkseals this afternoon, thinking that it would be a quick 2-3 hour task...6 hours later I am done!

Here's mah tip:
Trouble removing pesky stuck in 20+ year old fork seals? Forget about that screwdriver, pick up a cheap tire iron! It took me 45 minute of swearing and trying not to gouge up my tube before I decided to try something else.

Well, that something else was a tire iron and took about 10 seconds to remove the rest of the seal. On #2 fork, took about 5 seconds to pop out.

What I did was put the tip of the tire iron in the middle of the fork seal, flip it all upside down so that the iron and part of the tube resited on the ground and made like a big lever.

[sixtysix]

To remove forkseals you just take the bottom bolt out (after spring and seal retainer and oil and other loose parts are out) and then push in the slider and then pull it out hard, may need to do a couple of times, like a slide hammer. Worked that way on the Venture but it has been 6 years since I did the XS, so it may be different than I remember.

[Snow]

Heh, that thought never came over me as when I pulled the bottom retaining allen bolt (and subsequently got soaked in nasty looking fork oil), the bottom tube just kinda fell off the upper - I didn't even remove the uppers like my manual said was necessary... I'm not gonna run into problems, am I?

Of course, I forgot to mention that I bought an air socket wrench specifically for this job, already have a tiny compressor. I was trying to located tools to assemble into the one tool to slide inside the forks, but couldn't find anything and figured it'd be nice to have the tool around. Made removing the bottom allen really easy.

[skids]

=:-) They are fun tools. I immediately took the head off of the parts bike...and now it sits there waiting for valves.

Originally posted by Snow
Of course, I forgot to mention that I bought an air socket wrench specifically for this job, already have a tiny compressor. Made removing the bottom allen really easy.

[sixtysix]

I stand corrected, I just replaced my fork seals today (It only took me 2.0 hours but I still have to finish mounting the wheel.) and the seal has to be pried out like Snow says (mine were leak proof brand so they just fell out, but I replaced them with Yamaha factory ones).

[schpiff]

Seal/bearing puller

A easy homemade tool that comes in pretty handy for pulling seals and bearings is a simple piece of square tubing. Just take a piece of tube (hmm even pipe would work) and cut a notch out of it at an angle (fishook style).
Then either drill ahole on the pulling end to fasten a bolt or whatever thru to tap..or bang on....usually a vice grip works well enough.
We use this method quite regular and have pretty good results.

[nashville_bill]

Could you post a picture or diagram of one of these tools. I used a Dremmel tool to get mine out and have another set to install. Your way sounds easier.

[Snow]

Ok, this will prove I am no artist:



Just make sure to put the end of the tire iron in the middle of the side of the seal and all should go well - I did, however, bend my tire iron a bit, but a set of two was only about 12 bucks:

Dennis Kirk Tire Iron I bought

[nashville_bill]

Thanks for the diagram - looks easy enough. I took a look at your "livejournal" - those carbs are fun, aren't they? Let us know how the brake lines turn out.

[Snow]

Yeah, I think my carbs are emotionally disconnected from the rest of my bike at this point, they just don't listen.

I had planned on riding out to the garage to change the oil and tweak the carbs some more (thinking about raising float height a mm and raising the needle height a notch or two) last night, but as I got soaked enough on the 10 minute ride to my apartment, I didn't feel the need for more punishment.