scratched pointy forks, is there an easy repair?

My wifes `05 sv650 was leaking fork oil from the seal on 1 leg only. I decided to change both sides while Im doing the job.


All appears to be ok, refit new seals, measure the correct height of oil etc, yet get back from a 5 mile test ride and its leaking the same amount of oil from the same leg.


There do seem to be lots of vertical scratches on that leg after closer inspection, but not deep, like a human hair I suppose.


Has anyone had any luck removing scratches with a very fine wet and dry paper and metal polish? any other methods or is it a job for the professionals?


Thanks, Lee

[Jayneflakes]

Hi Lee, to my knowledge sanding or polishing out scratches that are deep enough to allow oil past the seal wont work. The amount of material you would need to take off will reduce the diameter of the fork tube.

Some one I know repaired a similar problem by filling the scratches with epoxy resin and then sanded that back, but I am not sure if it is such a good idea.

Your other option would be to have the stanchions ground down and re-chromed, which can be an expensive option. However if you go down this path, a coating of titanium nitride improves the looks and is well worth the investment because it is a finer surface for the seal to work on.

Good luck and hope that you get it sorted... There is always the Gixer fork upgrade though!

New stanchion from Wemoto is a £112!, If you changed the seals your self a stanchion change should not be a problem.

[andrewsmith]

It can be roughly redone with araldite, but it's more for big chips

Rechroming is more expensive than new stanchions. Go for the Italian ones on wemoto as I had no issues once they were bedded in

cheers for the replies, fork now pssing out oil so not sure if its seal, scratched or both. £112 doesn't seem as bad as I was expecting, and an easier get out than trying to remove scratches.

[Bibio]

as a last attempt i would try 1200 wet'n'dry with some autosol. go round the tube not up and down. take the stanchion out to do it.

£112 each from wemoto.

£165 a pair for rechrome from Pitted Forks. you could also try Dynasurf as well. try doing a search on Google and phone around. BTW there are a lot of people offering the service but get it done by someone else.

It seems a fair number of people replace their stock forks with USD forks from other Suzukis, what do they do with the stock forks? I'd look for a good used fork, or set.