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Bad Day Wrenching on the GS

Started by joefromsf, February 22, 2004, 11:53:42 PM

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joefromsf

Just need to vent a bit, as I had a bad day working on the GS.   :x  :x  :x

I had been doing lots of work on the bike over the past month and things had been going real well and today I was going to replace the front fork springs with Progressives and also replace the fork seals. So I did a search on this forum for advice and printed off several threads with good info. The only thing I was nervous about was getting the allen bolt off of the bottom of the shock without an air gun. After 4-5 hours I only managed to get one off.

First we tried the one person compress, one preson unscrew. No luck

Then Sherry came up with this idea for a fork compressor which worked for the first one we tried, but not the second. Although it proved 50% effective, be careful trying this at home as you have a potential missle if anything slips. We used goggles and also had a nail in the board to keep the bottom of the shock from walking. This was the right fork and the screwdriver was threaded through one of the brake mounting holes.



Here is how we rigged the cam straps for the left fork:



The good news what that now we could look at the first one and at least see what we trying to work with (that 12 point socket like thingamajig). Then we tried the broomstick method that someone mentioned, but couldn't get it to grip the thingamajig. Looks like I am going to have to find someone to help make the special tool mentioned in this forum (bolt head welded to a rod).

Then to top things off, I also managed to strip the head on one of the bolts holding the brake disk onto the front wheel. Oh well, at least I already have some recent experience extracting stuck bolts.

Hope you all had a better day than me.
--Joe

'04 Suzuki V-Strom 650
'93 GS500

yamahonkawazuki

well at least when you getter finished you'll be
Jan 14 2010 0310 I miss you mom
Vielen dank Patrick. Vielen dank
".
A proud Mormon
"if you come in with the bottom of your cast black,
neither one of us will be happy"- Alan Silverman MD

JamesG

You need an impact wrench, either electric or air (perferable). It makes removing both the fork bolts and rotor bolts much easier and sometimes possible...
James Greeson
GS Posse
WERA #306

Jace009

that sounds like one of my days :o ....I broke the bolt that held the brake rotor on too cause I wasn't pay'n attention to my trusty owner's manual. They should only have about 30ft/lb....Which is not all that tight more or less snug. The key I found out is to make the all the same tourque specs. I had to drill and tap out the hole in the wheel before I got the rotor back on and the GS running agian.

Warlocke

I did the same thing when I installed my progressive springs. Then I found the tool online at Bikebandit.com...
It looks like a black pipe with that socket on the end. It is out there I would recommend anyone working on their seals or springs invest in it.... :thumb:


joefromsf

Life is good again.   :cheers:

Took the front wheel to a MC repair shop and asked them to extract the stripped and stuck disk rotor bolt. $15 for extraction and $2 for new bolt. Money well spent, IMHO.

Then I attacked the front fork disassembly again. Here is the no-weld fork tool that I made from $8.00 in hardware from Lowe's Home Improvement Center:



It consists of one 5/8"x16" hex bolt, one 5/8" lock washer and two 5/8" nuts. The bolt HAS to be at least 16" long and you need to really tighten the nuts against each other at the very end of the bolt. You will also need a 15/16" socket.

If you can find a bolt 18" or longer then you may be able to omit the nuts, washer and socket and just grip it with vise grips. The longest I could find at Lowes was 16" and it is galvanized. The longest they had in stainless steel was 10".

Note that I originally thought I could use the cheaper 10" bolt and just use a 6" extension on my socket, but I found out the hard way that the 15/16" socket will only fit into the shock tube about 1-1/8".

Here's the sort of exploded view of the shock pieces and tools used:



Note that you want to insert the bolt head end into the tube first, not the end with the nuts.

For the curious, here is a picture of what you are trying to grip in the bottom of the tube with the tool:



Keywords for future searches: front fork forks allen bolt tool seal seals spring springs

Moderator EDIT: Tweaked the URLs for the photos so they would display more reliably.
--Joe

'04 Suzuki V-Strom 650
'93 GS500

Kerry

EXCELLENT info, Joe!  TOP NOTCH!

You're right - life IS good again.  Especially for the "timid" among us (me included) who haven't screwed up the courage to take on that "spinning bolt" problem.

You did a great job of showing us how simple it can be.

KUDOS!
Yellow 1999 GS500E
Kerry's Suzuki GS500 Page

kyzee

Quote from: JamesGYou need an impact wrench, either electric or air (perferable). It makes removing both the fork bolts and rotor bolts much easier and sometimes possible...

I concur to that...! An impact wrench really makes my life easier.

BTW very good infor you put out there joe.  :thumb:
It is not good enough to say that we are trying our best. We must succeed in doing what is necessary.

Dragonfly

Hey! Thats is going to be a HUGE help. Thanks for posting it.
I am doing my springs in about 2 weeks.







Micah

Kerry

VARIATION ON A THEME

Richard and I wanted to get together this weekend to fix a leaky fork seal and replace his fork oil with 15-weight.  So, I got to thinking about joefromsf's cool fork disassembly tool.

I have more experience with 5-minute epoxy than with the 2-bolt, 1 lock washer method that Joe used, so I planned to buy a 16" bolt and a single nut (I already had the epoxy at home.)

But when I got to the hardware store this is what I found:



Yikes!  The first extra inch (over 9") costs $1.10.  The jump to 12" costs another $.60 per inch, and the last 4 inches cost $.33 per inch.

Wait a second - didn't Joe say that 16" was the minimum length anyway?  I considered my options and went a slightly different route:





The coupler cost $1.79 (check the Specialty Hardware aisle).  I accidentally bought 10" bolts, so the whole tool cost me $9.70 with tax.  If I had bought 9" inch bolts the total would have been $7.36, not counting the epoxy.

Richard and I used the tool today, and it worked like a charm.

Thanks again for the inspiration, Joe!

EDIT: Changed links from sisna.com to bbburma.net
Yellow 1999 GS500E
Kerry's Suzuki GS500 Page

Jared

Wouldn't  a nice piece of All-thread work just as well as long as you Double nut both ends??? (Maybe tape or a piece of tubing around the threads as not to scrape the inside of the fork...)


I take the forks to my local guy and slip him a few bucks on the side-cheaper than te normal rate--I bring the seals and oil. He does them for me-often while I wait -or he waits til the service manager is away....Hehehehe

Anyway.... necessity is the mother of Invention.
When the 2nd Amendment is lost, the rest will soon follow.

Torque is LBs-FT Damn it.
Yeah that was me.    One of my rides

CasiUSA

Yah, looks good. You might also wanna put some locknuts on that coupler, stupid vibration loosens everything :thumb:

KevinC

I've never had a problem with the damper rod bolts on any bike, if you just take them out before you remove the forks from the bike, or remove the caps.

The spring pressure stops the damper rod from turning, and the triple trees and bike do a surprisingly good job of holding the forks....

Edit: Actually the way I usually do it is to take the fok legs out with the caps still. Grip the lower lightly in a vice on the square bit around the axle, with the fork upside down. This makes it easy to get the damper rod bolt out. I usually just use an allen key in a pair of vice grips for leverage.

Stand the fork legs in an old margarine container to drain the oil.

Slide the fork tube back in the triple tress and clamp them to get the cap off.

I have an impact driver, but I've never used it on forks. Just did two sets this afternoon actually.

richard

Kerry and I avoided the neccessity of using locknuts by the simple expediency of using 5 minute epoxy on both sides and under the coupler...  it's not going anywhere anytime soon, that I can promise you. =]
Richard

'96 GS500

Great news! I just saved a bundle on car insurance by switching to a motorcycle!

Argon5W

We used a method similar to KevinC's and just used a socket drive allen wrench and a breaker bar.

Consider having some of the holes welded shut on the damper rod.  We weld them shut then grind them smooth.  Change the fork oil and upgrade the springs and you have suprisingly good set of forks.  We have also tried emulators but you had to disassemble the forks to adjust the properly and they didn't work any better than the forks with modified dampers.
"There are only three true sports: mountain climbing, bull fighting and motor racing. The rest are all games."
Ernest Hemingway

www.svtwin.com

pixelmonkey

this tool is a MUST build if you ever do fork seal replacement!!!

thanks GStwin.com !!!

chris<pixelmonkey>:D

Mandres

Awesome post, thanks for the info guys!

Bobbleboy

hay great tool

If i want to convert from inches to mm, how big is the head, on that hex bolt 5/8=15.875mm is there room for a 16 mm hex bolt, and length is over 40 cm.

1 inches = 25.4 millimeters 16 inches = 406,4 mm

More in ? about the hex head in mm.

Doubt the local hardware store has 5/8 hex bolts

Thanks

André S Hansen
GS500E 1996
Denmark Metric Country

average

Wow, so you have to disassemble the entire fork for just the seals?  :o Mmkay....... :mad:
R.I.P
Rich(Phadreus)
90 gs5 04 Fairings(that's right)
LP flushmounts up front  shortened turn signals
Kanatuna rear wheel swap
Kat FE

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