fork help
 

so ive been doing my own suspension setups this year. ive done some reading and ive been doing whats felt good for me. but i ran into a snag. ive got race tech springs and heavier fluid in my forks. and the left hand side fork i can only adjust the big nut, the little screw goes about a half turn in and jams up on something. i wont touch it for now as its prime riding season and the bike handles good but i wanna play with it more next year so over the winter ill need to get this sorted out. what are my options?

can i hang the bike from my rafters in my garage and pull just one fork tube out and have it serviced? can i do the same thing but undo something and see if something is jammed up or if i pop the cap off the top will the spring and the fluid and crap fly out? if its an easy fix ill gladly do it on a weekend but right now it hasnt bothered me as the bike is still feeling good, but i know i can make it feel better. but i dont want to have too much down time

also what would happen if i were to turn the rebound down more on one fork than the other? i can guess that it may cause some excessive strain on that fork and cause some damage but id rather ask to be sure

While no expert, I think I can help with some of this.

if you strap the bike to the rafters and remove the front wheel you should be able to remove one fork without too much hassle. Just don't forget to remove the wire lock ring at the top first. (it's basically what I did to do my fork swap)

Also having different adjustments side to side while odd shouldn't hurt anything. The new R1 has the feature of one side doing compression while the other does rebound..
http://www.yamaha-motor.com/sport/pr.../features.aspx
"Suspension includes SOQI front forks which use one of the tricks developed for our winning MotoGP® bikes: independent damping. The left fork handles compression damping and the right side handles the rebound damping."

Of course I am just a monkey with a wrench and not an expert.

If I'm not wrong by the photo of your bike, you have some crash sliders on?
If so I placed race stands front and back,then placed car stands under the crash sliders,then raised the stands so they were just underneath the sliders.lowered the front race stand so the front sat on the car stands,then took away the front race stand ,and there you have it.
Mine has been sitting on the jacks for over a month,have taken whole front end off,and she is steady as a rock.
Also as a precaution have placed a trolley jack underneath the sump as back up.
If you like send me your email address and I can send you photo's how I did it.Have tried to place photo's before on this site and never seems to work.

cheers

Or there's always this:

http://t-rex-racing.com/imgs/large/blasftt.jpg

yeah ive already got a front and rear stand, 2 rears infact, dont want another front :)

thanks for the info, i think the jack stand idea sounds the best and the easiest aswell. ill have to make up some platform to put my stands on to get them the height i need. will i need to remove the fairings to get the fork out or can i reach all the bolts by just shoving my hand in there?

I took my fairing off, it gave me better access,also less chance of damaging it,as already mentioned.

cheers

You don't have to remove the fork leg or the fairing to deal with an issue with the rebound adjuster. After you've made sure that the motorcycle is supported properly, remove the front wheel to get access to the allen head bolt at the bottom of the fork. Remove the bolt using a 6 mm. Allen key. It can be a bit stubborn. Make sure there's container under the fork to collect the suspension fluid that will come out. Use a 24 mm. socket to remove the big bolt at the top of the fork. It's alloy so be careful. Figure out how you're going to deal with the oily mess that results when you pull out the cartridge and spring. Lift out the spring and cartridge. You can remove them separately or together. Do whatever you planned to do to sort out the problem with the rebound adjuster.

I have this stand, and it's great. From the reply, I'm not sure you saw that this is a triple clamp stand, not just a normal front stand, so you can use it to remove the front forks since it holds the front end up by the triple clamp. Using this stand would be way easier than any other method, and it's not that expensive (although I guess more expensive than propping it up with car stands if you already have them).

+1 to evines

I know I always hate when my rebound & compression are wet......;)

Ahh the speeling policy have arived :D

dampening
Main Entry: damp·en
Pronunciation: \ˈdam-pən\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): damp·ened; damp·en·ing \ˈdamp-niŋ, ˈdam-pə-\
Date: 1547
transitive verb 1 : to check or diminish the activity or vigor of :

Now that we have that out of the way.

There are many short cuts to every job.

This one in MHO requires removing the fork leg from the bike to do right, others may choose and recommend doing it otherwise. To each his own.

In order to properly fill the fork with fluid after it has been repaired, oil is poured in, after cycling the fork to bleed all air out, final level is set by measuring the air gap distance from the top of the oil to the top of the fork tube, held straight up, no spring, fully collapsed
Trying to refill with oil and properly measure it with the fork leg installed would be problematic. To each his own. many don’t bother to measure and just pour some oil in, if that works for you..,, go for it.
I'll keep doing it the way I was taught, IN fact I have two sets of forks and two shocks to service tonight... None by the way are installed in a bike...
:D

Speeling policy??? umm ok, actually it's more of an improper terminology thing.... If I was hung up on spelling I would have pointed out your use of "fearing" to describe body work where most of us use the term "fairing"....

You owe me a new keyboard now as I spit stuff all over it with that comment.....lol ;)

The last reply was misspelled with purpose,, .. But no matter, please feel free to disregard my posts that have misspelled words, or words you don't understand, I really could care less. :lol:
The information is valid.

To the OP: the recommendation stands, remove the fairing, remove the fork leg, make the repairs, re install.

Each reader receives the info available from the various posters and makes his own decision on what info will work best for them to accomplish the task at hand.

Cheers.... I just got done valving two shocks.. charging them, and putting them in a shipping box..

Work is done for the day.... time for a beer.. You all enjoy your night.

I need to ride down to Kempner and get E. Marquez to give me a hand with mine!

PM me, we'll set it up.

haha this post has gone well. thanks for all the tips. the thing that annoys me is that the suspension was upgraded over the winter and before them every adjustment worked on my forks. both of them. so i was hoping something had slid out of place in the left side fork and was keeping the screw from going in.

ive seen those stands before and theyre great. right now i just cant justify spending more money especially since i have 3 stands and if need be have the ability to hoist the bike off the ground. but in the future im sure ill end up with one of those stands :)

this has just become a winter project, lucky me. thanks again for the help guys. :)

I don't think you need to take the fork off to fix your problem. It's just a function of how many turns you put on the adjuster and where it was set before you installed the cap. Turn them too many turns in and you run out of adjustment capability. I'll have to look to see if I can find out but this will be a fifteen minute fix if it's what I'm thinking you did. Hawkrider knows off the top of his head so you could PM him.

As far as hanging the bike up, I've done the, but usually I just use a floor jack, the kind on 4 wheels you slide under an auto axle. I have square piece of rubber on it, slide it under the engine and and jack it up from the right side, I slide piece of wood under the exhaust pipe on the right side so that if it leans it will rest on it On the left side, I put wood locks under the kickstand(which is down of course)to keep it from tipping that way. Takes me 3 minutes now after a little practice. You need to remember to remove the blocks from under the side stand before lowering. You can lift the back or front or both by placing the jack a couple inches either direction. Totally stable once you know the drill.

Will do

If its on a 15 min fix imall set. I know when I got thebike back the suspension was completely backed out and I get less than 3/4 turn from it before it bottoms out on something. I'll pm him today and see what he says.

yeah, let us know. There is a specific procedure Hawkrider replied with to install the caps to be able to adjust properly and it's not written in the manual that I could find, and I haven't been able to find it or where dumb-ass would have written or saved it.

https://www.superhawkforum.com/forum...der#post202206

#39
I think this is what you need Uchi. i did it on the bike no problem.

Sweet thanks buddy. I'll take a peak in there in a minute. I'm just ducking work right now lol.

Exactly, I'm pretty sure this is Uchi's problem. You have to preset the adjusters in 2.5 turns then screw down on the damping rod until seated. Then after tightening the screw you can back the screw off - that will give you the correct 2.5 turns of adjustment. This is probably the most common mistake made by folks who work on their forks for the first time.