No, no... NEVER ask an oil question here....

[werase643]

nothing? I guess I'll just have to take them off and figure it out. After wrenching today though, I'm pretty unhappy with how frustrating this thing is to work on. Not looking forward to it.   

I know one person in Roanoke VA with a GS....and he works for BOB.....you him?

[ecpreston]

I know one person in Roanoke VA with a GS....and he works for BOB.....you him?

Nope! Now you know two! 

Thanks for the reply Todd, I plan on attacking it this weekend.

[ecpreston]

Thanks for the help guys! I got it changed out today. Looking at the top of mine, since a 19mm wrench obviously isn't going to accomplish anything, nor is there clearance for a breaker bar:



I realized breaking the fork caps loose wasn't going to happen without removing the handlebar or partially removing the forks. So Todd's method wasn't exactly going to work. I started considering the nice writeup here (http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=25706.0) and figured, why even take off the front wheel and remove fender, fork brace, and all that? I'll just drop that whole assembly.



If you have a way to get the front end high enough off the ground, I highly recommend it. Being rather new at all this, it took me more time to get the bike up and down than it did changing the fork oil. A proper lift would have made this an hour job.

1) Lift front end up.

2) Remove brake caliper and hang out of the way.

3) Undo speedo cable from the top, either with your fingers or the pliers in the toolkit.

4) Loosen pinch bolts on upper and lower triple clamps, pull entire front wheel/fork assembly out.

5) Use impact wrench* to loosen fork caps, then unscrew by hand the rest of the way.

6) Drain oil. Pull out spacers, springs, and washers so you can hold the assembly upside down and pump forks to help drain.

7) Fill with 382ml fork oil in each fork. I wasted a lot of time here trying to measure the oil level and make sure it was right. Unless I misunderstood the Clymer, it said the oil level should be 25mm (~1 inch) down from the top with the fork bottomed out and the spring out. I double checked the graduated measuring cup I was using and my methods, but I was finding this to me more like 3 inches. Maybe they meant the spring should be in?

8] Re-install springs, spacers, washers, tighten caps as much as possible by hand.

9) Re-install wheel/fork assembly. You can halfway install and use this as a chance to tighten the caps just a touch more. Tighten pinch bolts, re-install caliper, connect speedo cable, you're done!

*Thinking a bit more about it, even without an impact wrench, if you have caps like mine, you could lower the assembly out of the upper tree, but use the lower pinch bolts to hold it again. Then you could loosen (and tighten again when re-installing) the caps with a regular breaker bar or wrench.

[galahs]

Why did you need an impact wrench to loosen the top fork caps 

[ecpreston]

Because I have one!    It was just easier than trying to figure out some other way to keep the shafts from spinning. Using the lower pinch bolts as I only now thought of would have worked great.