Forks

The front forks on the AR were looking pretty tired, so I decided to rebuild them.  When I took the bike apart and set the forks aside I applied a coat of Krud Kutter to the uppers because they had some scratches that had begun to rust.  The mottled look of the uppers is from the dried Krud Kutter.  It did a great job of getting rid of the light rust though.

First, I removed the top caps and emptied out the old fork oil.  I don't know what color it was when it went in, but it came out a dark and nasty brown.  It also stunk to high heaven.

The oil seals were actually in decent shape but a ton of dirt and grime had gotten under the dust seals.

According to my service manual a special tool is required to disassemble the forks.  This tool is basically a long shaft with a T-handle and a tapered square end.  Since I didn't have this special tool I got a 3/8" square rod and ground down the end to a point.  I actually ended up grinding it "sharper" than in this picture.

The tapered end gets jammed into the top of the "piston and cylinder unit" down inside the fork so you have something to hold onto while you loosen the Allen bolt on the bottom of the fork.  I had good luck with the first fork by pressing the rod end hard against the wall while I loosened the bolt with an Allen wrench.  The second fork decided to be difficult.

For the second fork I had to use my hand impact driver.  This neat little tool is for removing stubborn bolts and screws.  You hold onto the outer sleeve and hit the top of it with a hammer.  The inner core has a bit on the end and is splined such that the impact force is transferred in a downward and counterclockwise motion simultaneously.  This impact force is more than can be generated by a constant force from turning an Allen wrench.  It took a bit of hammering but I broke it loose.  I learned later that applying some heat would have been a good idea.  What a n00b.

With the fork disassembled you can see the cup at the top of the "piston and cylinder unit" that the special tool gets jammed into.  Evidently a lot of forks work this way.  I don't know why they wouldn't put at hex head down there instead.

To get the old oil seals out of the lowers I had to apply a bit of heat with a heat gun.  I was then able to pry them out with a screwdriver.  In a bunch of pieces.

Accept for a few scratches the uppers were actually in pretty good shape so I decided to clean them up a bit and go with them.  I got them damp, shook on some Bar Keeper's Best Friend and gave them a light scrubbing.  Not bad.

After stripping and powder coating the lowers I was ready for reassembly.

I ordered some new oil seals off of ebay.  The rest came from a local shop:  New 5w fork oil, Loctite for the bottom Allen bolt, and liquid gasket for the bottom gasket.

Note to the world:  Use the liquid gasket liberally.  I assembled the forks a couple of times only to have the new oil leak out of the bottom.  That is not especially fun after you've applied Loctite to the bolt and left it to set up.  I had to heat up the bolt with a propane torch and then whack it with the impact driver to get it out again.

My service manual was invaluable through this whole process.

The service manual said I needed another special tool to install the oil seals.  But I just used a large flat head screw driver to gently seat them into place.

The service manual specified 83 - 91 cc of oil.  That seams like a large range.  I went with 90 for no other reason than its nice and round.

There they are fully assembled and looking the business.

Shock cleanup: Part Two

This is the rear shock after being relieved of thirty years of grime and grit.  Way better than it was when I got it, but still not great.  I decided to remove the spring so that I could give it a nice coat of gloss black powder coat.  Disassembling the shock would also let me clean up some of those other hard to reach cracks and crevices.  But disassembling a shock like this is no easy task.  The spring must be compressed so that you can remove the retaining ring.  Then you can release the spring and remove it from the shock.  Easier said then done.  The spring holds a lot of energy so I needed a way to do this "safely".

A quick look around the garage yielded three lengths of threaded rod and hardware that I got from my grandpa as well as some aluminum stock left over from another project.  Throw in a 2x4 and you've got the makings of a spring compressor rig.

I cut the aluminum bar into 3 four inch pieces and drilled holes for the threaded rod in the ends.  I drilled a hole in the 2x4 just smaller than the adjustment ring on the bottom of the shock as well as three smaller holes around it for the threaded rod.

I arranged the aluminum bars in a triangle around a loop in the spring just above the retaining ring that I needed to remove.  The rods and shock were then fed through the 2x4 and held in place with washers and nuts.  These top nuts are what I would use to compress the spring.  Tightening the nuts caused the aluminum bars to move up slowly, thereby compressing the spring.  I alternated between the three nuts giving each one a few turns at a time, pulling up each corner of the triangle slowly and evenly.  As the force built up the aluminum started to bend and make strange groaning noises.  At this point I wished the triangle sides were steel instead of aluminum and that I was wearing shoes instead of flip-flops.  As I slowly cranked on the nuts I was sure that something was going to break, sending the shock flying at the floor and then back up to disfigure me and my garage.

But she held together.  Once the spring was compressed a couple inches I could remove the retaining ring you see at the bottom of the picture.  I then reversed the process by loosening the top nuts to slowly let the spring relax.  This let me remove the spring and the plastic sleeve halves.

A little Aircraft Remover and some time with the wire wheel got the remaining crud and paint off the spring so I could powder coat it.

The plastic sleeve halves were really scratched up so I hit them with some fine grit sandpaper to smooth them out a bit.  Then I used some Armorall to "bring back the black".  I used a scrubbing pad and the wire wheel to clean up the metal shock body and retaining ring.  There are still some gouges and scratches in the metal but it doesn't look too bad.

After everything was cleaned up it was back into the spring compressor rig for reassembly.  This time I was slightly safer as I slid rod through the clevis so that I might be spared in the event of catastrophic spring compressor rig failure.

Here is the final product.  I am really happy with the way it turned out.

Powder Coat

When we moved into our house I noticed two outlet boxes in the garage with wires sticking out.  I didn't give them much thought until I started thinking about installing a powder coat oven in the garage.  An oven needs a 220v outlet.  Four element wire like this is common for 220v wiring, but there were no 220v breakers in the panel.  When I went up into the attic I could tell that the wire from these boxes went in the direction of the breaker panel, but it wasn't going into the box.  Curious.

Then I pulled off the wood above the breaker panel.  Aha, the previous owner ran wire for 220v, but stopped short of pulling it in the box and wiring in a breaker.  Thank you "Sparky".  All I had to do was pull the wire into the box, wire up the breaker, and wire up the outlets.  Sweetage.

I needed 220v to install this.  The free oven I scored from someone at work.  Why was it free?

The story is that a drunken roommate came home hungry for pizza, and during the process of making it managed to crack the glass top range.  But the oven still worked.  When they heard I was on the lookout for a cheap oven, they hooked me up for free.

It was free, but it did need a good cleaning.  It might have been fine for baking edibles but I am going to be putting my motorcycle parts in there.

Is it bad that the only oven I've ever cleaned in my life is the one in my garage?

The 220v outlet is awkwardly high on the wall so I had to modify the oven's plug to come out higher in order to reach.  Once my oven was squared away it was time to get a gun and some powder.

Powder coating works by applying dry paint to the part and then baking it with high heat to cure the finish.  The paint gets an electrical charge as it leaves the tip of the gun while a wire lead from the gun gives the part an opposite charge.  This causes the paint to "cling" to the part prior to baking.  The resulting finish is really hard and durable.  Most powder coat guns require an external air compressor to shoot the paint, but I found one, the Craftsman Powder Coating System that has the required air compressor built in.  People online say that it works pretty well and I was able to score one for a decent price on eBay.

Eastwood is basically the go-to place for powder.  I ordered one pound of their gloss black.

Eastwood sent a free sample of Five Hour Energy with my powder.  Thats weird.

I used a washer as my first test piece.

Here it is hanging in my super high tech paint booth.

Here is the washer after its been sprayed.  It goes on looking matte black and becomes glossy after baking.  You can see the alligator clip hooked onto the hanger.  This is what charges the part, causing the powder to stick.

After spraying it goes in the oven for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Not bad at all.  After this success I stripped the parts that I had already spray painted and started powder coating them.  I used high heat masking tape, silicon plugs, and tin foil to protect the surfaces and threads that I didn't want to get powder coat on.

The parts look awesome.  It seems like a lot of trouble to get the 220v outlets, the oven, and the gun but after seeing the finish I think it was totally worth it.