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Well, last night I decided to clean and oil my air filters, raise my needles a notch, flush and bleed the brake system and replace the fork seals and oil. I started at 7 pm, and figured I would still get home in time for a good night's sleep... that didn't happen. Somehow my operation dragged on till 2 am. But I learned some things I thought could help everyone, so I will share:
1) The fork. My new seals are "Leak-Proof Pro Moly" and I am running (approximately) 239 mL of Bel-Ray 15 weight in each side. To get the old seals out, I was not terribly excited about taking the entire damper assembly apart as per my service manual, so I wound up removing the seal retaining snap ring, then applying shop compressed air (90 psi) to the air valves on top of the tube. This worked the seals out within a few minutes, but for some reason, both of them cocked while they were coming out, so I had to remove the air and straighten them. Still, it worked. Even if you don't have an air fork, you can get a good enough seal to do this by just holding a blower nozzle against the fork drain hole (I know, I tried that too).
2) The K&N filters. It turns out that where it warns against over-oiling on the instruction sheet, there is a reason. I oiled my filters like crazy, because I didn't want to wait 20 minutes for all of the oil to wick through and see if there were any white spots left, so I just made sure that I had enough oil to prevent me from having to add any more. BIG MISTAKE. I exceeded the cotton gauze's saturation point by a wide margin, and had oil literally dripping off. After I wiped them down several times, installed them, and wiped them again, I put my gas tank/sidecovers/etc. on, thinking I was ready to ride. WRONG! All of the liquid air filter oil that hadn't dripped off choked my engine, and when I finally got it to start after half an hour of cranking and several bump-start attempts, it would not run without at least half throttle or over 5000 rpm. So this morning I got the exquisite pleasure of sanding down four spark plugs, and now she runs like a champ.
The moral(s) of the story: Although using shop air to pressurize your fork on a normal basis is a bad idea because it can blow the seals, it is a good idea when you are trying to blow them. And, don't over-oil your K&N filters.
1) The fork. My new seals are "Leak-Proof Pro Moly" and I am running (approximately) 239 mL of Bel-Ray 15 weight in each side. To get the old seals out, I was not terribly excited about taking the entire damper assembly apart as per my service manual, so I wound up removing the seal retaining snap ring, then applying shop compressed air (90 psi) to the air valves on top of the tube. This worked the seals out within a few minutes, but for some reason, both of them cocked while they were coming out, so I had to remove the air and straighten them. Still, it worked. Even if you don't have an air fork, you can get a good enough seal to do this by just holding a blower nozzle against the fork drain hole (I know, I tried that too).
2) The K&N filters. It turns out that where it warns against over-oiling on the instruction sheet, there is a reason. I oiled my filters like crazy, because I didn't want to wait 20 minutes for all of the oil to wick through and see if there were any white spots left, so I just made sure that I had enough oil to prevent me from having to add any more. BIG MISTAKE. I exceeded the cotton gauze's saturation point by a wide margin, and had oil literally dripping off. After I wiped them down several times, installed them, and wiped them again, I put my gas tank/sidecovers/etc. on, thinking I was ready to ride. WRONG! All of the liquid air filter oil that hadn't dripped off choked my engine, and when I finally got it to start after half an hour of cranking and several bump-start attempts, it would not run without at least half throttle or over 5000 rpm. So this morning I got the exquisite pleasure of sanding down four spark plugs, and now she runs like a champ.
The moral(s) of the story: Although using shop air to pressurize your fork on a normal basis is a bad idea because it can blow the seals, it is a good idea when you are trying to blow them. And, don't over-oil your K&N filters.
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