easy fork oil change

[johnnyrod]

Has anyone got any top tips for fork oil changing? The usual thing of removing the forks and tipping them upside down is pointlessly hard work, is there an easier way? Does the sucking it out with a long tube work? I thought about removing the damper rod bolts and letting it dribble out of the bottom, but not tried it yet. Any other bright ideas?

[Viney]

Its not. It gets all the gunge out of the bottom of the fork tubes.

There are other metods, but after tying a few, the dropping of the fok legs is the easiest and quickest way possible.

[Flamin_Squirrel]

You can syphon the oil out as you suggest, however if you've done any kind of milage the oil will have begun breaking down. This will leave a nasty sludge at the bottom, and the only way you'll get rid of it is by removing the forks to drain it out.

[Sid Squid]

On the fork fest day last year one bike was done in this manner, I had mentioned before the start that I didn't think there was much advantage in this method, and I can think of certain disadvantages, by the end of the day all involved were of the opinion that it's no harder and a better job done by removing the forks.

[northwind]

Some of the c*** that comes out of the forks you would not believe... I ended up flushing mine with some spare fork oil and yet more horrible mank came out. That was after only 13000 miles...

Then again, Johhnyrod's got cartridge emulators in- how long since you did that mate? Also, now I think about it, that'd probably reduce the ability to siphon the oil if I understand the fitment?

[johnnyrod]

Alsways worth asking! Thanks for the info. Even my crappy old GSX had fork drain plugs...

Story is, I set my mates' forks up with emulators too, but it was weeks before he actually rode it. Now he finds the oil is too thick (told him at the time) and I'm disinclined to drag my ass from Scunny to Essex just to change some fork oil, so I was wondering if there was a way for the less adept to do it. Guess he'll have to live with it for now.

Cheers guys

[northwind]

Ah,but that's a little different- you'd have had to change the oil when you fitted his emulators right? So what's in there is only going to be a few weeks old. So he could maybe get some benefit from drawing as much as he can out of the forks and replacing it with a lighter oil. Maybe :)

[chazzyb]

What you can't do easily if you don't remove the forks, is get the right oil level. The air gap, determined by the height of the oil, has a very significant effect on the way the forks perform.

Take the forks out. Once you've done it a few times you'll wonder what the problem was. :roll: