Since the fork bridge will be here in a few days it’s time to break the forks apart. So outside we go to take advantage of the sunshine. Here’s a shot of the triple-tree or steering assembly. You can see that the covers (the things the yellow reflectors are attached to) are quite rusty. I’m not sure how to refabulate those two pieces, but it does mean that the fork tubes inside are gonna be rusty. When things rust they end up being larger that they originally were. So getting the tubes out sometimes takes some hammerin’.
Fork & steering stem
Sometimes you wish you had 3 hands. It would make some things easier. PB Blaster soaking the upper fork tubes for two days was almost as good. Rust has swelled the tubes, you gotta swing a hammer (and maybe a drift tool), and you might also want to spread the pinch places apart at the same time. It took some time but I got both tubes driven out.
Then you can remove the caps at the top and pull out the springs. A 8mm allen wrench in the bottom removes the drain plug. The gray oil/water comes out as things drain.
Note rusty tubes and headlamp ears
You see the shiny cap on each fork lower section? This covers a dust seal and the all important fork seal. They are inside that shiny piece, and when you read the shop manual and review the parts fische, it all sounds so damned easy. Just grab your snap-ring pliers and out it pops.
You can kiss my you-know-what. It ain’t happenin’ that way baby !! I’ll bet Honda has a $700 set of snap-ring pliers engineered just for this specific task. My ordinary set has about 5 different sets of tips, but it must be missing the “Honda Fork Seal” tip.
Today is a new day. I’ll get those darn seals out, and I’ll do it without using hammers or ruining those shiny seal covers. This is why people hate those Haynes and Clymer manuals. They say things like “dismantle the forks and replace the seals on the top of the fork lowers”. They neglect to warn you that those 14 simple words will translate into 14 HOURS of frustration. There should be a big warning on the cover of shop manuals, “Only Mentally Depraved Individuals Should Believe The Simpliticy Implied By The Descriptions Contained Herein”.
August 18, 2010 at 1:15 am |
Pure awesome. I am semi-restoring a CL200 right now myself. By semi-restoring I mean just trying to make it pass inspection and not look like complete crap.
If you don’t mind sharing your wisdom, how did you get the oil seals out? I can’t figure out if those pretty shiny metal things need to come off to get at the dust seals and circlip or not.
Any advice?
August 18, 2010 at 2:33 am |
Yea, the ‘shiny things’ need to come off. It takes a strap wrench to remove them without farking them up. There is a snap ring (circlip) on the inside of each seal to hold it in and they can be real difficult to wrestle out if the chrome covers are not removed, but a strap wrench is cheap at the local autoparts/tool store. Lots of times a leaky seal is just dirt and grime that has accumulated on the rubbing surfaces and lots of them will not leak if cleaned up real well, but they are cheap to replace.
Glad to hear you are cleaning one up. This one is looking pretty OK to me, but I’ve had to slack off working on it. I am going to starting working on it next week and proceed to finishing it, so I should start reposting on it pretty soon.
Good Luck!