2006 GS500F Fork seals bleh...

[jfinstrom]

So I decided to save $700 (what the dealer quoted me to do springs and fork seals) and just rebuild my own forks. I read a bunch of posts that said yeah quick 45minutes and on the road. Well not so much.  Just a rough walk through of the process......

-Remove the front lower faring.
-Remove the Front caliper let hang
-Remove front tire
-Remove Fender (top plate + 4 screws to the forks)
-Loosen both clamp bolts. (one hex one nut)
-Slide dampener out
-put it in a vice and pull top (carefully spring will put an eye out)
-Remove from vice dump oil old springs/washers etc
-pull dust seal discard
-use metal punch and pop a hole through seal and remove ( it is recessed and on mine was a pita to remove)
-add a little of the old oil to the new seal and slide it down the tube
-use blunt object to tap it in... some suggest a pvc pipe, I wasnt that prepared so I used a large Allen wrench and tapped it in.
-Lube and put in new dust seal
-measure and cut new spacers (new springs were longer)
-Dropped a washer down tube
-Dropped in new spring ( RaceTech springs from bike bandit)
-dropped in another washer
-dropped in the spacer
-Added Fork oil ( stuff must have gold flakes $14/qt)
-added one more washer then screwed in cap (not as cut and dry lots of pressure compressing spring etc)
-Put the fork in the clamps and tighten the nut and hex bolt
-Repeat on fork
-Put the fender, tire, caliper, faring back on
-In my case replace the odometer light must have jarred it a bit much (194ll from pepboys remove two back screws and trip Knob)  you probably wont need to do this
-Say a prayer then test drive... Total time was more like 3-4 hours as I am a total newb and cost was $200 (100 for seals 100 for springs)

[marc]

Going to do the same job in 10 days.

Just ordered a couple of sets of seals + wipers.

Marc.