About to replace fork seals for first time, tips? Advice?

[Anonymous]

Im leaking gobs of goo from my front forks an 82 GS650E, as a result I'm about to replace the seals and have never done so before. I dont have the seals just yet cause the suzuki shop isint open yet, so Im just trying to prepair myself for the inevidible frusteration and busted blood vessels.

I have the claymer manual for the bike but nothin beats experince from others. Do any of you have any tips on changing the fork seals? Or is what the manual stats perfect? I dont think Ive ever been able to actually follow a manual with any type of repair, its allways like "step 1. Unscrew this, step 2 unscrew that step 3 Remove the bla bla".... WELL the bla dosent just REMOVE.. oh wait there is a picture good.. Then they show you the black and white picture that was taken in the dark and all you can see is some gray and a finger. You know how it goes.


:EDIT: I found http://www.dansmc.com/forks.htm this dude rules. In order to save ya'll some time I guess I would like to know if you have a better way or something you would like to add to that.

Justin

[SqDancerLynn1]

That is actually a very good explaniation on how to replace the seals.
USE the OEM suzuki seals The only thing I would do is remove the allen bolt before you remove the fork tubes from the tripple trees, it can be a bit%h to get out sometimes

[Anonymous]

The manual is good.

The manual is good. Just make sure you don't over look the section where it tells you to use a tool to hold the damping rod while you loosen the allen bolt from the bottom. Most people make thier own holder with some 3/4 nuts jambed on the end of some threaded rod. Without it you will likely resort to damaging means of getting the bolt out like an impact wrench. YIKES!

[Mr. Jiggles]

Replace the bushings while you have the forks apart.

[Anonymous]

Thank you guys for your sugesstions especially SqDancerLynn1
I had no problem removing the Allen bolt with the information you gave me. For some reason it took me like.. 8 hours to do... Mind you I took my time and tried to make sure I did everything right a few times, nothin like having to do it over and over again. And I didnt have all the tools,mainly a tool to remove that Evil cerclip and I didnt know how to remove the dust cover heh.. I didnt want to rip it or anything the book just says remove, but dansmc said to gently pry it off with a screwdriver which I was reluctant to do at first but it all worked well.

I had a hell of a time getting the Seal to seat properly. Damn suzuki just says install with Suzuki tool 6354641321 NEXT! I ended up going to the hardware store and getting a fiberglass plumbing tube/pipe and used it as a seal driver.

One odd thing though, I filled the forks, spring removed, and compleatly colapsed, with exactly 190 cc's of 15w fork oil and it never measured up to 7.9in like the book said, it was more like 210 cc's. I took a straightened out a coat hanger and measured 7.9in on it and marked it with a napken and taped it to the hanger with duct tape and used it as a dip stick. I used the napken cause it was hard to tell if the oil level was actually reaching the original mark.

I still have to put the tire on and air up the forks some, book says to put 25 psi in it then drain the air till it reads 7.1 psi. So thats what I'll do tomorrow.

Looking back at it, it wasent that hard, but I would wrather pluck every single one of my pubic hairs out one by one with a pair of tweazers then do that again.

Which I'll probably have to do cause I nicked the inside of the oil seal with a screwdriver, when I tried to drive it in with a socket and hammer the first time it went in totally crooked, I poped it out with a screw driver and made a tiny nick:/ We'll see what happens.