'07 Fork Oil Change

L

leapoffaith241

New member
That's the method we used with the old air forks, which was a piece of cake, but there is no Schrader valve for the new forks, so I don't know how you would apply a vacuum to suck the new fluid in. If you used vacuum to remove the old fluid, how would you hold it while transferring the drain tube into the new fluid container?
 
This forum has complete details on how to do it and it covers the valve thing too.

http://www.hdtalking.com/archive/index.php/t-758.html
 
I originally thought this article only applied to the older air shocks. Then read the rest of it and found he referenced the newer style also. Seems really easy but I wonder how accurate a fill you would get.
 
It does cover the old and new style forks and its all there. There has been some recent posts in that forum about the accuracy. They guy who runs the forum who showed others this method says he gets it all back in minus 1/2 ounce, then he added that he also adds a 1/2 ounce more than the HD manual states so it stiffens up the ride a little.

So if your putting in a 1/2 ounce more its safe to say your going to get it all in. You just measure what you drained out with the vacuum, turn the valve so the vacuum stays, switch out your cup with the measure amount and let it draw it back in.

Says it only takes 20 min to do. The forum is free, join it and read all the posts on it. Lots of very good self help tips there that others don't have

Im on 4 forums all together and they are all great, but none of the others have a library like that one!! and its free too
 
I'm thinking this method might work, but also believe by the time you buy all the necessary parts you could have removed the top plug a dozen times.
 
This is exactly what I was thinking. For anybody else who has built shocks you know the whole 11oz will fit w/out ever pumping them. My guess is that if your bike is on the ground the weight is compressing the shock not allowing it to all fit.

If the bike is in the air and the legs are fully extended it should be the same as when you are building them off the bike and should accept the whole 11oz.

Am I missing something?



.
 
Actually, I don't know if the entire 10.8 oz. (11.1 for RK's) will fit all at once while the bike rests on the ground since I didn't try it. I just thought since the fairing models have the damper installed that it might not allow the oil to drain down quickly, and that pumping would speed up the process. RK's may not need to insert the new oil a few oz. at a time, if indeed the fairing models do.
 
When doing a previous fork oil change I refilled using the 'wet fill' amount of fluid. I was curious how far down the strut that amount of oil would be.

Soooo, using a pencil as a dip stick, I stuck the pencil into the fork tube - and dropped it. Into the tube!!! AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!
 
I've got one even better than that. Once on my old RK I used a regular wood pencil as a top-dead-center indicator--i.e., I poked it down the sparkplug hole while rotating the engine by hand. Well, the pencil jammed and--you guessed it--a good 2-3" section of the pencil fell into the cylinder. Alarmed, I called a friend knowledgeable of these things and he said, "Just crank it up, it'll get chewed up, and you won't even know it was there." I did that and he was right. I heard nothing and there were no issues after the fact. BTW, the metal part of the eraser was not inside the cylinder, just wood and graphite.

How did you get the pencil out of the fork?
 
Back
Top