garage follies -- forkin' nut

The day got off to a good start when my rear tire arrived -- again. I say "again", because I ordered the wrong size by clicking the wrong submenu thing and a moment's inattention had me a 15" tire rather than a 17" tire.. DOH!

I called up Dennis Kirk and the nice lady who answered the phone informed me customer service wasn't due in for another half hour. However, she asked if she could be of assistance and I told her of my faux pas and wanted to know how to go about correcting it. She was awesome!

She re-ordered the RIGHT tire for me (heh, take me out of the equation and see what happens?) and told me how to pack up the wrong tire and send it back. The credit card would be billed the balance of the cost of the right tire and that was it. Sweet!

Another thumbs up for Dennis Kirk!! They will see more business from me.

Anyway, that tire showed up today, so I went and got it mounted and balanced on my wheel. I got home and installed it back on the bike. I also changed the oil and the filter while at it.

So far, so good. Any of you who know of me and my experiences with a wrench, know this cannot last.   ;j

Since I was on a roll, I decided to tackle my leaky fork seals and get ready to take apart the forks to put in the progressive forks Mr. Blum sent me some time last year (thanks again Tom).

So I jacked up the bike, pulled the front wheel, and set about removing the dust seals on the forks. The right side -- the one that had been leaking -- came off without issue.Still rolling along ... until ... I suddenly remembered why I HATE fork seals.

The left one ... looked ... AWFUL! It was nothing but RUST RUST RUST! Yeepers!

I hit it with some rust buster and waited a half hour. I went back and sopped it up and fished around for the eyes of the snap rings. I couldn't find them! There was so much rust in there I could see the ring itself but never located the eyes.

A-HA! compressed air to the rescue. I blew out all the oxidized pieces that I was unable to "fish" out, and voila there were the eyes just staring at me.   ; )    I got the snap ring pliers on them and one side came free. YAAAY! but the other just laughed at me.

Dammit! I recall this problem a few years ago, here we go again. However, this time was a much better result as I was able to get it out without it breaking it or having it remain stuck in the recess. Daaannngg, still rolling!

Okay, now down to the bottom of the forks. There is a bolt in the very bottom of each of the fork sliders that needs to come out. Every ...  stinkin' ... bolt on this bike is tightened to German torquing requirements -- Gutentight!

John Fowler who sold the bike to me was a big feller. If he did use a torque wrench, I am just that weak.   ; )

These two bolts on the bottom of the slider legs were no exception. I had a hard time getting either of them to break loose. I crawled under to look at the bolts only to find that they resembled more a star torx bolt pattern than the intended allen screw. I then started knocking the next bigger allen wrench socket in the hole and was able to break *one* of them free.

The one on the other side, not so much. No matter what I did, it didn't budge!

I finally yanked out a drill and figured I would drill off the head of the bolt (actually this was a suggestion from a buddy of mine -- thanks Ozzie). I got close to the recess of the fork leg slider and was concerned I may drill into it, so quit drilling and went back to trying to beat a socket in that would turn it, now that there was a new sized hole to work with.

Well, that finally did it! It came loose and I didn't do any harm to the fork leg sliders. YAAY! By this time, it is late, and I needed to refer to a schematic on my computer to see what all needed to come off the top of the forks, so I called it quits and revelled in the fact that I hadn't broke anything.   ; )