Fork Seals Questions

[Anonymous]

One of my fork seals began leaking the other night. While looking in the Haynes manual I noted that they advise me to replace some bushings at the same time that I replace the seals. Do I need to? Are they available? Can I remove the anti-dive without expecting any side effects? How do I cover the holes that mounted the anti-dive to the fork legs? Thank You for any help tou can provide! Kelly

 

[Anonymous]

Kelly:

Hi from eastern Colorado!

I just finished reconditioning the forks on my 83 GS750ES, including changing the seals. You are right that the manual specifies replacing the inner (lower) bushing mounted on the bottom of the chromed, upper fork leg. This bushing was in good condition on my bike but that may have been because it was changed with the previous seal change only 13,000 miles ago. I changed it anyway since I had new bushings.

The thing that really surprised me was the worn condition of the outer (upper) bushing that is installed just below the fork seal. This probably had never been changed in the bike's 32,000 mile history and definitely needed replacement, although this is not mentioned in the service manual. Fortunately, I had new outer bushings, also.

So, where does that leave you? If you know your bike's history and know that the bushings have a bunch of miles on them, I would definitely order new ones. If you don't know your bikes history, then it's a matter of judgement and money. My judgement was that, if I was going to spend all that time working on the forks, I was going to spend the extra money doing it right. The parts are available for my 83 GS750ES but take a bit of time to arrive. If I were you, I would check the Bike Bandit site for price and availability. I would also order the "valve" and "valve spring" parts as these are flimsy spring steel washers (i.e. easily damaged) and only cost about 98c apiece on Bike Bandit.

One other thing: closely inspect your chromed, upper fork legs for pits, scores, etc. as these may have been responsible for your fork seal failure (if not through seal old age). If you see problems, it's a good idea to spend some time with wet & dry smoothing and polishing the chrome. Don't want to spend all that time and money just to have another fork seal failure!

Hope this helps.

Simon Waters

 

[Anonymous]

Just did my seals too recently, the common consensus when I was asking the same ?? here and at the shop, is and was.. If it dont look worn, dont replace it. I did not, had 10k original miles. Seals were shot but all bushings looked great. I've had no trouble for 3k miles,
Stimpy

 

[Anonymous]

Don't remove the antidive unit it's part of the fork damping circuit. Just remove the line and plug the hole with something to keep the water out.
Axel