Today’s mission was to replace my old torn fork gators with some new ones, and change the fork oil while I was at it.
Two detach the forks, the two bolts in the yoke must be undone. The lower bolt clamps the fork and only needs to be loosened, while the upper nests into a machined groove in the fork, and so must be removed completely.
The wheel is now removed by undoing the axle nut and sliding the axle out. The brake and speedometer cable must also be removed from the drum brake assembly to allow them to be threaded out of the retaining bracket in the from fender.
From here each fork is clamped in a vice using aluminium soft jaws, and the cap removed using an Allen Key.
Note: A simpler solution here would be to loosen the caps with the forks still clamped into the steering yoke.
With the fork now open, the springs can be removed and the dirty fork oil drained. The fork can be further diassembled as this point by removing the socket bolt in the bottom of the fork, however I decided against this as the bolt is threadlocked at 20Nm and so would likely be a hassle to remove.
A small amount of new oil was added to wash out any residual dirt, before they were filled to the specified 83mm from the top when fully compressed.
The springs can then be reinserted with the tightly wound side facing down, and the caps torqued in to the specified 20Nm.
The new fork gators can now be installed, making sure to include the locking band before reassembly. Mine were designed for a larger fork diameter, and so at some point I will need to fabricate some spacers to properly seal them.
The forks can now be reattached to the steering yoke, and the bolts done up to the specified 68Nm.
Finally the wheel can be reattached (again 68Nm), and the brake and speedometer cables reattached.
