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- Joined
- Nov 7, 2007
- Messages
- 2,071
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- Location
- Antelope Valley CA
- First Name
- Scott
- Last Name
- Brown
I removed my forks yesterday morning and tore them apart to install the new Race Tech compression Gold Valves and straight wound fork springs on my 1250S Bandit.
Removing the forks is not hard to, and the entire process took me about 1 1/2 hrs to remove them from the bike and completely disassemble the fork tubes. The forks have a little over 18,000 miles on them and I was surprised that the oil didn't look that bad when I drained it out.
Once the forks were off the bike I found out that I could remove the cartridge assemblies from each fork tube without having to completely disassemble the fork tubes, as after seeing how clean the oil looked when I drained it out and the fact that the seals are still in excellant shape and mot leaking, I saw no reason to replace them at this point and I will probably change them at the end of next year.
Just to let everyone know that once you have a the forks off the bike and the oil drained and the cartridge assemblies removed, the time required to remove the dust wipers and seals and install new ones only take about 10 minutes at the most providing you have a seal driver, of which I already have a custom machined one made out of aluminum.
With the cartridge assemblies removed from the fork tubes you will want to pump the damper rod back and forth until all of the oil is removed from the cartridges before removing the compression valve body.
Once you have done that, all you need to do to remove the compression valve body is to push the valve body into the cartridge tube about 1/4" then using a small spring hook, grab one of the ends of the steel wire snap ring in the end of the cartridge tube and remove it, making sure that it does not fly across your garage as it's small and will be hard to find if it does.
Now you screw the 8 mm bolt that you removed form the bottom of the lower leg into the threads on the cartridge valve and use it to pull the valve out of the cartridge tube.
The stock compression valve assembly is on the left and the Gold Valve compression valve assembly is on the right, and if you look closely you can see the #55 oil bleed hole I had to drill thru one of the ports on the Gold Valve per Race Tech's instructions.
I always make all of my own custom tools when working on my bikes, and I have made many different ones over the years and I made up two custom tools yesterday to help me properly work on my forks.
The first tool I made yesterday was a split aluminum clamping block to hold compression valve body so that I could remove the loctited screw that attaches all the parts to the valve without damaging the outside of the valve body, and I simply clamp the block in my bench vise to easily and securely hold the valve body while I worked on it.
Once you have assembled the compression valves with the new Gold Valves and valve washer stack, you can install the valves back into the bottom of the cartridge tubes and install the wire snap ring. the cartridge assemblies are now ready to install back into the forks.
I found the installation of the Gold Valves to be a very easy and straight forward procedure providing you have the proper tools and experience in performing this type of work.
The next part of this project involved installing the straight wound Race Tech fork springs that are replacing the progressive wound stock fork springs.
Installing the springs was very easy to do as I already had the fork tubes off of the bike to install the Gold Valves, which required me to remove the fork springs to begin with. There is absolutely no spring preload to speak of on the stock fork springs, so removing the forks caps was very easy.
Once the fork caps were unscrewed, you will need to screw the preload adjusters in far enough into the caps so that you can get a wrench on the flats on the bottom of the adjuster so that you can get a 14mm open end wrench on it to hold it while you use another 14mm wrench to loosen the locknut on the end of the damper rod.
Once you have removed the fork cap from the damper rod, you remove the special dished washer, spring spacer and then the fork spring from the fork tube.
The new straight wound Race Tech fork springs are about 3 7/8" shorter then the stock fork springs and require new longer spring spacers. Race Tech supplies a piece of aluminum tubing to make the longer spring spacers, so after performing the calculations I determined that I needed 5" long spring spacers to give me the correct spring preload with the new springs.
I rough cut the aluminum spacer tubing to lenght, then machined the ends square and to the correct length on a lathe and then deburred the ends of each spacer.
Here is a picture showing the longer stock spring and spacer and the shorter Race Tech spring and spacer.
I also went ahead and pulled off the triple trees to grease the tapered roller bearings and I'm glad I did as they didn't have much grease in them. So performing this made me machine up another custom tool yesterday, which is a special spanner wrench for the lower steering stem locknut.
I have machined quite a few similar spanner wrenches like this before and like all the rest I made this one out of steel, and I machined a hex on the end of it so that I could use a 24mm, 1/2" drive socket on the end of it.
I also had to construct a simple but effected frame support out of a 2 x 4, as once I lifted the front of my bike up with my Pit Bull front lift which raise’s the bike with a pin that fits into the hole in the bottom of the lower triple tree, I needed to have some kind of support that I could place under the front of the frame to lower the bike onto so I could remove the Pit Bull lift and remove the lower triple tree from the bike.
It's raining here today so I am going to spend the day putting the forks back together and back on the bike, and it's supposed to clear up tomorrow so I should be able to take it out for a test ride.
I have done all of this type of work before on many other motorcycles so it comes pretty easy to me, but all of these things I did can easily be performed by anyone who has good basic mechanical abilities and the right tools and a factory service manual. Just take your time and don’t get in a rush.
So within the last week I have completely serviced the front and rear suspension on my Bandit, and I also cut off the reflector lugs on each fork leg and smoothed the area down which looks a lot cleaner.
Removing the forks is not hard to, and the entire process took me about 1 1/2 hrs to remove them from the bike and completely disassemble the fork tubes. The forks have a little over 18,000 miles on them and I was surprised that the oil didn't look that bad when I drained it out.
Once the forks were off the bike I found out that I could remove the cartridge assemblies from each fork tube without having to completely disassemble the fork tubes, as after seeing how clean the oil looked when I drained it out and the fact that the seals are still in excellant shape and mot leaking, I saw no reason to replace them at this point and I will probably change them at the end of next year.
Just to let everyone know that once you have a the forks off the bike and the oil drained and the cartridge assemblies removed, the time required to remove the dust wipers and seals and install new ones only take about 10 minutes at the most providing you have a seal driver, of which I already have a custom machined one made out of aluminum.
With the cartridge assemblies removed from the fork tubes you will want to pump the damper rod back and forth until all of the oil is removed from the cartridges before removing the compression valve body.
Once you have done that, all you need to do to remove the compression valve body is to push the valve body into the cartridge tube about 1/4" then using a small spring hook, grab one of the ends of the steel wire snap ring in the end of the cartridge tube and remove it, making sure that it does not fly across your garage as it's small and will be hard to find if it does.
Now you screw the 8 mm bolt that you removed form the bottom of the lower leg into the threads on the cartridge valve and use it to pull the valve out of the cartridge tube.
The stock compression valve assembly is on the left and the Gold Valve compression valve assembly is on the right, and if you look closely you can see the #55 oil bleed hole I had to drill thru one of the ports on the Gold Valve per Race Tech's instructions.
I always make all of my own custom tools when working on my bikes, and I have made many different ones over the years and I made up two custom tools yesterday to help me properly work on my forks.
The first tool I made yesterday was a split aluminum clamping block to hold compression valve body so that I could remove the loctited screw that attaches all the parts to the valve without damaging the outside of the valve body, and I simply clamp the block in my bench vise to easily and securely hold the valve body while I worked on it.
Once you have assembled the compression valves with the new Gold Valves and valve washer stack, you can install the valves back into the bottom of the cartridge tubes and install the wire snap ring. the cartridge assemblies are now ready to install back into the forks.
I found the installation of the Gold Valves to be a very easy and straight forward procedure providing you have the proper tools and experience in performing this type of work.
The next part of this project involved installing the straight wound Race Tech fork springs that are replacing the progressive wound stock fork springs.
Installing the springs was very easy to do as I already had the fork tubes off of the bike to install the Gold Valves, which required me to remove the fork springs to begin with. There is absolutely no spring preload to speak of on the stock fork springs, so removing the forks caps was very easy.
Once the fork caps were unscrewed, you will need to screw the preload adjusters in far enough into the caps so that you can get a wrench on the flats on the bottom of the adjuster so that you can get a 14mm open end wrench on it to hold it while you use another 14mm wrench to loosen the locknut on the end of the damper rod.
Once you have removed the fork cap from the damper rod, you remove the special dished washer, spring spacer and then the fork spring from the fork tube.
The new straight wound Race Tech fork springs are about 3 7/8" shorter then the stock fork springs and require new longer spring spacers. Race Tech supplies a piece of aluminum tubing to make the longer spring spacers, so after performing the calculations I determined that I needed 5" long spring spacers to give me the correct spring preload with the new springs.
I rough cut the aluminum spacer tubing to lenght, then machined the ends square and to the correct length on a lathe and then deburred the ends of each spacer.
Here is a picture showing the longer stock spring and spacer and the shorter Race Tech spring and spacer.
I also went ahead and pulled off the triple trees to grease the tapered roller bearings and I'm glad I did as they didn't have much grease in them. So performing this made me machine up another custom tool yesterday, which is a special spanner wrench for the lower steering stem locknut.
I have machined quite a few similar spanner wrenches like this before and like all the rest I made this one out of steel, and I machined a hex on the end of it so that I could use a 24mm, 1/2" drive socket on the end of it.
I also had to construct a simple but effected frame support out of a 2 x 4, as once I lifted the front of my bike up with my Pit Bull front lift which raise’s the bike with a pin that fits into the hole in the bottom of the lower triple tree, I needed to have some kind of support that I could place under the front of the frame to lower the bike onto so I could remove the Pit Bull lift and remove the lower triple tree from the bike.
It's raining here today so I am going to spend the day putting the forks back together and back on the bike, and it's supposed to clear up tomorrow so I should be able to take it out for a test ride.
I have done all of this type of work before on many other motorcycles so it comes pretty easy to me, but all of these things I did can easily be performed by anyone who has good basic mechanical abilities and the right tools and a factory service manual. Just take your time and don’t get in a rush.
So within the last week I have completely serviced the front and rear suspension on my Bandit, and I also cut off the reflector lugs on each fork leg and smoothed the area down which looks a lot cleaner.
