[Chris Garrett]

I wish the operator's manual had been a little more specific about changing the fork oil.
Bear in mind of course I had never done this before.
1. I unscrewed the little bolt at the bottom. A dribble of fluid came out. I thought: oh yeah, the manual said to pump the fork. I pushed down hard and the fluid squirted a good ten feet across the garage and onto the door of my Grand National.
2. I unscrewed the top filler nut and bang! The spring jumped out and scared the hell out of me.
3. I jacked up the bike, the spring retracted into the tube. I began to fill the tube, pouring very slowly, while I tried to balance the funnel and the bottle. The tube immediately overflowed, down the fork and all over the floor.

What I thought would be a very simple task turned out to be a major cleanup.

END OF RANT

 

[MNellis]

I wish the operator's manual had been a little more specific about changing the fork oil.
Bear in mind of course I had never done this before.
1. I unscrewed the little bolt at the bottom. A dribble of fluid came out. I thought: oh yeah, the manual said to pump the fork. I pushed down hard and the fluid squirted a good ten feet across the garage and onto the door of my Grand National.
2. I unscrewed the top filler nut and bang! The spring jumped out and scared the hell out of me.
3. I jacked up the bike, the spring retracted into the tube. I began to fill the tube, pouring very slowly, while I tried to balance the funnel and the bottle. The tube immediately overflowed, down the fork and all over the floor.

What I thought would be a very simple task turned out to be a major cleanup.

END OF RANT

It sounds like you haven't changed the fork oil in these bikes before. Look at it this way, the next time it will go three times as quickly and will probably be 100 time less messy.

Welcome to the club.

 

[Bird76Mojo]

HOMER!!!

GB :mrgreen:

 

[fasterspider]

I remember my 1st fork seal job, what a mess I made. It was all over the shop on customer's bikes, the walls & floor along with my tool box and my buddie's tool box. Lesson there was to release the air pressure before removing the oil drain plug. I lost that screw & crush washer, luckily my boss had a spare bent fork for that model bike laying around I was able to salvage the screw from.
Now I have fork seal drivers for 33mm forks up to 43mm forks and really nice impact guns and 3/8" drive allen tools that make light work of a fork.
But, most important is I know how to do the job without making a mess now.

 

[dlslick]

I have had bikes that had huge dents in the front fender from the top nuts being taken off without supporting the front of the bike and the triple tree hit the fender. I guess yours didnt fall that far?
Don

 

[Chris Garrett]

I have had bikes that had huge dents in the front fender from the top nuts being taken off without supporting the front of the bike and the triple tree hit the fender. I guess yours didnt fall that far?
Don

Well, fortunately the other side must have held it up. The spring popped out about 4".

 

[benco]

:lol: Thanks for posting this, I also plan on attempting this soon for the first time.