I found my strap wrench Sunday and decided to try and accomplish next phase of the front forks. First problem was that strap slipped even after cleaning, etc. So I sliced two holes in appropriate places in strap and threaded in a big hose clamp. I used a cut up credit card to pad the part where the hose clamp could have marred the chrome part. (See pics)
Once I unscrewed the chrome part (seal cover) from the painted part (bottom fork case), the right fork pipe came right out of case, but left one only came about half way then jammed pretty tight. No amount of tugging, twisting, penetrating oil or whatever had an effect. So it was tractor jack time again. (see pic)
Trying to figure out why fork tube was so tight coming out leads me to conclude I probably screwed up and bent the bottom case a tiny bit when it was clamped in the vise. “But I only tightened it up enough to hold it,” he whines. Whatever, the fork tube slides down about 3-1/4” into the bottom case then jams. I hope I can push it down past the tight spot and be ok (I didn’t have to pull all that hard to get it out) since shock action (I hope) takes place farther down in the case. Any expert
opinions?
I’m kind of flying blind here, looking at the illustration in my Clymer book, looks like maybe I just knock out the knock pins (with a drift punch?) and all will be revealed. I’m thinking items #17 and 23, the oil seal and retainer, are up inside the front fork seal housing and will come to light once I get the piston off and can slide it off the bottom of the tube. Am I close?
I’m not going to take them farther apart til I get the parts to rebuild them. I’ve got it far enough apart that I can add bottom fork cases to pile of parts to be painted. But I need to know if I’ve messed up the left case and need to try and find a new one. So again, any expert opinions?
Thanks in advance, JLW
cb-77 restoration
still on front forks
keeping onThanks, Steve, but aren't Mr. Silver's books about doing things the right way?
As far as my front fork problem, yeah, i guess i screwed the pooch on that one, Davo. I'm more used to schedule 40 pipe, I guess. I swear i didn't tighten up the vise that much! I jobbed the upper part into the lower part hard by hand numerous times, pulled it out hard. got it where it would come apart if i had some slack but not when spring was in there. With spring installed I couldn't get enough slack to yank it out. Spring lacks a little from pushing all the way up so fork legs are about 1/2" different in length. So there 's definitely a flat spot down in there. I don't think sticking a socket down there is a very good idea, I could end up with it stuck and no way to get it out. I found a tool that might work at jc whitney, a "muffler and pipe expansion tool." Or I might show it to the guys at the Muffin Shop ("motto: no muff too tuff") and see if they can help. Worst case I think I know where to get another one. Hope you guys are enjoying me displaying my ignorance, I'm not that ashamed of it. One way of gaining knowledge. There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity ya know. On the other hand occasionally I do really dumb things. Thanks, y'all, JLW
making some progressI haven’t been keeping up since my last post, but I have been busy. The fun, taking stuff apart part was pretty much done at that point, but cleaning, polishing, stripping paint, figuring out and finding parts I need, all that boring stuff has been taking up a lot of my spare time. It’s really nice to be able to handle the various parts without getting my hands all greasy. I’ve made a couple of trips to see Mr. Moore in Kerrville, which I’ll mostly write about elsewhere. I really want to thank the two or three guys who referred me to Ed, this project wouldn’t work without him.
Since my last post left me in a bit of a pickle over front fork lower tube, I’ll get to that here. Problem was a flat spot that kept piston from coming out of tube without resorting to tractor jack. I found a “muffler and tailpipe expansion tool” at Harbor Freight, stuck it down in there, and really bore down on it with a breaker bar. That got it to where I could get the piston in and out with only a little extra pressure. Since it’s right at top of travel, Ed says that shouldn’t matter. He also said the problem probably came from overtightening of fender bolt at some point (maybe too-long bolt, or no washer?) That makes me feel better, I didn’t think I squeezed it hard enough in vise to cause the problem. I still couldn’t figure out how to get the piston part off, so I ended up taking both forks for Ed to look at. I just wanted him to show me how to get piston off bottom of shaft so I could replace the seal. “Well,” he says, “these are very early forks, they probably didn’t make more than a few hundred of them this way. You’re gonna have to make a tool to press these pins out from the inside. They're tapered, you can’t just knock them through from outside. And if the pins get boogered up in the process, you’re gonna have to make some new ones. Replacements just don’t exist.” Make a tool? Machine new pins? Oh, my. We talked over alternatives, none very appealing, for a while. “Lemme try something,” says Ed. He took a long-nosed skinny punch, held the end on the end of pin down inside the piston, and gave it a whack. The pin flew out and landed somewhere on the back of the bench. Wahoo! “These have been out before, I didn’t think it would knock out so easy.” He got the next two pins out and found and replaced the seal while my friend Charlie and I started going through the many baking pans and baskets full of miscellaneous small parts and what have you at the back of the bench. The pin is about the size of a big grain of rice. We had to come back after dinner (shrimp and pasta, wonderful, thank you, Lori) and finally found it in the last pan we emptied out. Dodged a bullet there, I really didn’t want to get all strung out fixing or replacing those front forks. My original idea was to just get the engine rebuilt and transmission fixed, do a little sanding and rattle-canning on worst painted parts, put it back together with new tires and battery, and ride, ride, ride. But after seeing an example of how good the engine’s going to look when Ed gets done with it, I just can’t stick that work of art into a cruddy looking bike. Ed’s offer of the use of his sandblasting equipment helped make up my mind. At this point about half the painted parts are blasted and primed, and I’m taking another load of stuff to Kerrville later this week to work on. The chrome is another story, I’m just gonna have to live with some “patina” on rims, etc. Some of the other cruddy chrome parts, like brake and shifter linkages and exhaust pipes, would look too fake painted silver, so I’m leaning toward flat black for them. I’ve finally decided to spring for a pair of beautiful, expensive, rebuilt, rechromed shocks Ed showed me. (They’re a birthday/Christmas present to myself, I just turned 65 yesterday.) Old shocks are shot anyway, and I can put metal shrouds on new ones and paint them blue. I always disliked the ugly black plastic ones I installed for some unremembered reason back in antiquity. I’ve got a good painter lined up, a friend who I knew was a house painter but didn’t realize also has equipment and experience for this sort of work. He’s never done a bike, but has done trucks, cars, a tractor, and the wood and metal parts of a bowling alley. He says he won’t charge me extra for watching/helping. Still debating over Imron or some slightly more affordable but still good two-part paint. Probably go with the Imron, what the heck, as Ed says, “It’s only money.” I think they call this “mission creep” in the military, or the “money pit syndrome” in real estate. I bet plenty of you guys are familiar with the phenomenon. I’ve been watching ebay for other bits and pieces, scored a great deal on a rear fender in excellent shape, only one small dent in addition to the one they all have under the seat. My old fender had a big dent and crack that weren’t apparent until I removed the taillight bracket. Bike had apparently been rear-ended right on taillight. I vaguely remember replacing the taillight lens. My friend Charlie thought he could fix it but ended up blowing holes in it. Oh well, he’s new to welding and needed the practice. I’ve missed out on a couple of other bargains in the last 30 seconds, ebay can be frustrating! Got a good seat pan from Ed to replace my rusted out one. I got a new seat cover from Canada, not quite the shade of blue or texture I remember, but it’ll do and look much better than original plan, which was to fix it with duct tape and ride, ride, ride …at least I was planning to use black duct tape, not silver. So all in all, things are progressing. Oh, my “what not to do” tip for this post: Those cheap blue disposable painters’ gloves work fine for painting, but stripper will melt them quickly, and that stripper really burns! I discovered too late that my Home Depot sells gallons of Bix heavy duty aircraft stripper for about what two quarts cost from the local paint store. Gotta quit for now before I get the carpal tunnel ache. I’ll keep on posting and enjoying keeping up with everyone else’s projects. It’s really cool being part of a community with this shared obsession. Thanks, Lee
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