Fork Seal Advice

My fork seals and oil on the SV need to replaced. After reviewing the manual, it says I also should replace the dust seals, o-ring, and slide metal. Are these really that critical?

Also, in the past on other bikes I have hacked my way through avoiding the special tool (because no one would sell it to me ) but I would prefer to just get the T-handle tool if possible. Any suggestions other than the obvious, the dealer? I have the part # from the manual.

Thanks!

Get some thin plastic, like 35mm film negatives or something, and slide it in under your fork seals. You may be able to fish out dirt and crap which may be the cause of your leaking forks. Worth a try and certainly cheaper than new seals...

i bought the t handle from the dealer and didn't realize the attachment is needed too. the t handle is only $15 but the attachment is $30 i think. i ended up using the angled end of a plastic broom handle

you might as well change everything while it's apart. the parts don't cost that much. you can probably get away with just the seals and oil though

If you have a lot of miles on your bike, it certainly won't hurt to replace the metals. They're probably not too expensive, and when you have the forks apart, they're a cinch to replace (at least they are on other cartidge forks I've done).

Whether or not they are critical is hard to say. As they wear down, you could get scoring on the portion of the tubes where the bushings slide. If it gets bad enough, this allows more lateral movement than you want, which results in greatly increased static friction and an increased rate of wear on replacement parts.

In all, you're probably talking about $40 bucks more in parts, and negligible extra labor to replace the metals. So... if it were me, I'd say if the bike is newish (<5k or < 1.5 years) I'd probably skip the metals unless they were visibly worn. If the bike is 15k+ or 2.5 years+ old, I'd definitely do it. It's too cheap not to at that point, and static friction is never a good thing for suspensions.

There are several tools that are useful for doing forks, but I'm not familiar with the T-handle tool you are talking about. Is it the damper rod holder?

I'd also recommend putting some good 5 weight in there...

radvas said:

If you have a lot of miles on your bike, it certainly won't hurt to replace the metals. They're probably not too expensive, and when you have the forks apart, they're a cinch to replace (at least they are on other cartidge forks I've done).

Whether or not they are critical is hard to say. As they wear down, you could get scoring on the portion of the tubes where the bushings slide. If it gets bad enough, this allows more lateral movement than you want, which results in greatly increased static friction and an increased rate of wear on replacement parts.

In all, you're probably talking about $40 bucks more in parts, and negligible extra labor to replace the metals. So... if it were me, I'd say if the bike is newish (<5k or < 1.5 years) I'd probably skip the metals unless they were visibly worn. If the bike is 15k+ or 2.5 years+ old, I'd definitely do it. It's too cheap not to at that point, and static friction is never a good thing for suspensions.

There are several tools that are useful for doing forks, but I'm not familiar with the T-handle tool you are talking about. Is it the damper rod holder?

Click to expand...

It's got about 10K on it, so it sounds like it's probably worth doing the whole thing. It's about 3-4 years old.

I have attached an excerpt from the shop manual showing the tool.

When I did them on the FZR, I couldn't get the tool from the dealer, and my clymer showed a method using locktite and an air driven impact wrench to work around this problem. I wasn't real keen on it, but it seemed to work okay, and my buddy had done the same thing on his with no obvious ill effects. I really hate cutting corners on something so critical as the forks, though, so I am hoping they can get this guy for me...