Best thing is to remove both
front forks completely from your bike. This will make the
work on the fork much easier. There are a few steps you have
to do before we can begin with the actual mod:
1. Remove the
front brake caliper and brake hose from the fork leg. Hang
the caliper on a rope on your steer or something, so that
it does`t hang on the brake hose itself.
2. Remove the
front wheel. (put some wooden blocks under the engine block)
3. Remove the
front fender (see image 2).
4. Remove the
bolts securing the fork brace (the plate which holds the forks
together and where the fender was attached to) and remove
the brace:
Image
2
The bolts with
the blue arrows are the ones securing the fork brace to the
forks, the ones with the red arrows are the bolts securing
the fender to fork brace.
5. Now you
can loosen the fork cap bolt (see image 1) a little bit.
Just loosen them, don`t remove them, and make sure the fork
will not leak oil because of this (it`s not bad when they
do, after all, you`re going to refill them anyway, but it
gets messy when they leak oil).
6. Loosen the
upper and lower fork tube pinch bolts. These are the bolts
on the clamps which actually hold the forks:
Image
3
7. Carefully
pull each fork leg down and out of the upper and lower fork
bridge clamps (and with most models also out of the headlight
mounting bracket). It may be necessary to rotate the fork
tube slightly while pulling it down and out.
Now that you
have both forks taken apart from your bike, you can start
with the mod. At this point you need a bench-vice to put the
fork in. Always work on one fork at a time. This will make
the work easier and well-organized. Put the fork in the bench-vice,
with some rubber between the bench-vice and the fork, to protect
the fork from scratching. Tighten the bench-vice to prevent
the fork from rotating in the vice when you remove the fork
cap bolt. Keep the fork in the bench-vice until you let the
oil flow out of it (but this is described on page 2, so keep
it in at this point). So the fork stay`s in the bench-vice
for the next three pictures. Now get the right wrench and
remove the fork cap bolt (image 4). Before you start, you
could put on some gloves. The oil on the spring and the other
parts coming out of the fork are pretty slippery and oily,
which can be pretty though to remove from your hands afterwards.
Image
4
Watch out:
when the cap bolt is almost completely turned out of the thread
of the fork tube, it will be thrown of the fork with high
velocity by the fork spring. Same goes for the spacer and
the spring seat. Try to prevent the cap bolt from destroying
the inner thread of the fork tube (because it is pushed out
by the fork spring) by pushing the cap bolt down when it`s
almost out of the thread. This will also prevent the cap bolt
from flying away.
Now remove
the spacer and the spring seat:
Image
5
Again, watch
out for the spacer and the spring seat. They are thrown out
of the fork tube with high velocity.
Explanation
continues on page 2:
