Beware Your Own Hubris

After changing the leaking fork seals in the right leg and leaving it two weeks, with no oil escaping I felt quietly confident that stripping the left leg so I could service and give it a lick of paint would take less than an hour. It would appear I underestimate the number of ways I can be wrong on any given morning.

The fork came out of the leg easily enough, bottle jack under the sump and the bike became tripod. Fork into the workbench, ratchet strap to keep it secure and use the long 6mm allen key to undo the retaining bolt then... ah. Bollocks! Houston, we have a problem...

That wasn't quite how I had planned this to go. I'd given the socket a good baste of Silkopen over the preceding few weeks but my guess is the 6mm ball socket on the end of my 300mm long allen key wasn't the best of ideas. Luckily in the village we have the Perranwell Classic Car Garage (who will hire you a Morgan for the day to tour around Cornwall and it's brilliant fun!) and after a quick cycle down there, Darcy one of the very excellent mechanics there leant me a flat faced 75mm allen key.

Sadly, despite the new flat key fitting much better than my ball headed one, the socket head was beyond redemption. Dilemma time, leave the fork as it is, it's not leaking but I bet the oil is the same consistency and colour as my four year old's snot, or try and get the knackered and seemingly stuck fast bolt out. Considering the tools and skills I have available to me that might involve drilling and possibly knackering the fork leg. Time to cycle back down to the garage to return the allen bit and ask a professional for their opinion.

The obvious answer is to hammer a torx bit into the remains of the allen head and use an impact driver. Darcy took the fork off me and in a few seconds presented me with this.

Thank you very much sir! I managed to cycle back up to the house holding the fork upside down as it was no longer oil tight. The stuff that drained out looked just like the other leg and convinced me that this would be a worthwhile endeavour. Despite draining it as much as I could the foul smelling green ichor was still occasionally dripping out so I fixed an old glove around the bottom whilst I used the bearing puller to help remove out the top cap. Last time I managed to fish out the retaining circlip in the few seconds, this time it took a good few minutes of prodding, poking and general swearing to get it out without damaging anything.

Once out I started disassembling the seals and it was obvious this leg was in a much worse state than the other, presumably as it wasn't getting covered in oil at every extension and compression.

Prying off the dust seal was hard enough, the retainer came out with little difficulty despite the scale and corrosion. The stanchion slipped out eventually leaving the oil seal and bushing behind although thankfully bringing it out enough to start attacking it. Getting the old oil seal out involved violence. Eventually it lost the fight, but not until I'd had to use the hammer and cause a little damaged to the outer surface of the stanchion. Not that you can really tell amongst the pitting and stone chips...

The internals seem to be a little less corroded than the other leg although the inner retaining bolt has certainly seen attention from someone less gentle than me in the past. I used a brass rotary brush on the internal seal lips this time which took a tenth of the time as opposed to the pick, emery paper and brillo pad I used last time. Same result though, and I did a better job of removing the flaking paint from the outside too. If I had more time I'd pop them in the media blaster but this is the LDU so after a good clean and masking off the brake mounts it had an hour or two in the airing cupboard to warm up then a visit to the Ultimate Mega Ossum Pro Spray Booth 2000™

The name is a bit of a work in progress.

With the grey primer and adhesion promoter, and the same can of satin black I've done a much better job of this fork leg compared to the first, but it's neither here nor there. So long as it goes back together correctly and is oil tight when I make it to John O'Groats is all that matters. Does look nice now though.

Unfortunatley I finished spraying the leg yesterday and today I'm in Aberdeen, about to get on a ship for two weeks and earn a living.Today was certainly not a waste as I had a very long chat with a few friends about how difficult and awkward fund-raising is and that's helped my confidence with the other half of this job a fair bit. So, if you're reading this and enjoying it may I please ask you to have cast around for any spare change you might have and pop it in the Cancer Research fund-raising page at:

https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/spikesldu

And if you could then forward it on to your friends who might be generous and interested in the LDU challenge I'd appreciate very much indeed. Thank you very much.