Back to stripping the bike and my attention turned to the forks. When I bought the bike the previous owner said he investigated them as they only have a spring in the right fork he wanted to see if he could fit one to the left fork. He concluded that he couldn't. I can't be sure who but someone who had previously been into the forks had failed to use the correct sized socket on the top bolts as they were damaged. Not hugely but enough to annoy me, the trouble is they are no longer available from Yamaha. So the first thing is to see what the bolts are by removing them, this needed to be done anyway as I need to take the forks apart.
And this is where I hit a problem. My god were those bolts tight, not even my big breaker bar could shift them. So the rattle gun came out again. Unfortunately the previous damage to the bolt head on the right resulted in the first attempt being a failure as the socket didn't seat properly almost rounding the bolt off. Thankfully the second attempt succeeded. However on the left the smoke coming from the tube after taking the bolt out indicated a problem, the thread inside the tube and on the bolt had stripped. I have a plan for this though.
Anyway frame off.
And I thought I'd use a bearing puller to take the races out of the head. Worked fine and was a little easier then the old hammer and punch.
I did use the hammer and chisel on the lower race, first time I've done one of those. Not to bad you just have to get over the fact you're smashing a great big chisel into a yoke.
So that just left the forks to strip, the left without the spring.
And the right with.
Now I did my investigation of why you can't have a spring in the left, its because the fork lower doesn't have a spacer for it. This spacer is welded into the leg. Why Yamaha decided only to do one is something I can't understand as I doubt that adding the other spring would have bankrupted the company.