I'm gonna admit my ignorance to hopefully help someone else out.


Last week I put new pipes on my bike and changed the fork seals.

The forks were a pain in the ***. I wanted the tubes chromed but price was out of my league at this point so I polished the heck out of them. I spent several nights on the polishing. I get them close to where I want them. I drive 45 minutes away to get new seals because all of the local shops are closed.
When I go to put the bike back together, I find that they sold me the wrong seals.

When I finally get the right seals, I have a hell of time finding something to drive the seals back into place. I break down and go to home depot and get a piece of pvc pipe.

So by now I'm sick of working on the bike and not even reading the service manual anymore.

When I took the fork tube nut off, it literally shot off into a piece of plywood above me and back down. thank god my head wasn't over it. The nut is about 1 inch thick of solid metal and probably weighs close to a pound.

The service manual says to relieve the pressure before removing the fork nut. I can attest to this now. Jacking up the front end greatly relieved the pressure and made the second one manageable.

Like I said, it was my ignorance but when I think of many times I've done things without service manuals, I think it's important to share this.

 

Thanks for the heads up, I've done all my own service work so far but I haven't had to deal with the Forks yet. I'll file this in the back of my brain for future reference.

 

Thanks , toecat , Purdy Funny

 

I was in a buddies garage one time. He took apart his fork tubes and ended up with stiches in his hand. I bought the chrome sliders on ebay and had the dealer put them on

 

Good thing you were't leaning over the nut when it shot off - face shot would've been pretty painful...

 

When I was in my young teens, we used to put .22 caliber shells in a vice and hit them with a hammer ...why? I have no idea! Service manuals are good things though!

 

You too? LoL, stupid stuff we did and survived to tell.

 

Wasn't being ignorant kids great? I really miss that. I catch myself getting onto my boys too much knowing what I did.

I was going to do the fork work myself soon, now I shall reconsider.

 

Like Bucky covington's song, we were born from mothers who smoke and drank! Or something like that.

 

When I was 6, a buddy of mine found a box of his dad's .22 shells and we fired a bunch off by smashing them with a rock. I have a scar on my index finger to remind me of that not so bright idea.