Fork oil, can I do it myself?

How complicated is it to do the fork oil change on a 2000 reg sv650s?...my front forks are soft, lots of dive when I brake hard and I don't think it's been done - bikes done over 18K now.

Anyone recommend the oil and whether or not I should pay a garage to do the work? - also would the springs need doing at the same time?.

Thanks

It's perfectly possible to do it yourself. You don't need to do the springs at the same time, but if you're planning on changing them at all, then you might as well do it then.

You'll have to jack it up, but yeah, not too hard.

[embee]

I would say it's simply a question of whether you have reasonable mechanical competence, are confident enough to do it, have some decent basic tools, and have a suitable place to do it. It's not a difficult job technically.

To do it successfully and drain the sludge out you need to remove each fork leg from the yokes, so supporting the bike safely is the critical issue. If you use a paddock stand for the rear you can support the bike under the engine with suitable jacks/blocks, but take care since this point is quite close to the centre of gravity of the bike and it's not very stable. I used this method but also placed a large bag of sand (40kg) on the pillion seat and placed ropes from the top yoke to the garage roof as a belt and braces approach.

General tips
- loosen the fork caps before removing the fork leg, otherwise it's difficult to hold them.
- do one at a time, mark the yoke and stanchion with felt tip so you can put them back in the same position
- sort out somehwere to drain the oil into and prop the leg upside down to drain before you take the spring and washer/spacer etc out. Don't wait until you have a handful of oily dripping bits and pieces to start looking round for a tray. Note the order for the spring/washer/spacer
- there's a little pre-load on the spring when you remove the cap, quite easily held by hand but be prepared for it.
- take care with the speedo sensor, it's relatively delicate
- decide what oil viscosity you want, 10W does for lighter riders and stock springs, 15W stiffens it quite a lot. I'm 12st, use std springs and ended up mixing 10W and 15W (= 12.5W )
- refill by measuring the oil level in the upright fully compressed leg without spring and spacer etc. Hold it in a soft jawed vice or workmate. IIRC the std level is 102mm for a K1 curvy. Manual says 92mm for K3 SV650, 94mm for K3 SV650S.
- resist the temptation to push the stanchion hard down into the slider because it will stick really tight. If it does stick, you simply need brute force to pull it out again, but easier not to do it .

If you are lazy and have a mate you can do what me and jordan did and not bother disconnecting the brake and speedo cable. Cable tie the front brake on and then remove the whole wheel and forks in one go. Drain the oil and replace.

Even lazier, use a siphon tube and then you don't have to touch the fork clamps on the yoke. The downside is that you won't get all the old oil out.

I am 12st and I have 15w oil filled to a fully extended for air gap with springs IN at 150mm. That's on the hard side!

It's a K4 btw.

I syphoned mine out recently was easy enough once i'd got a long stiff tube from B&Q. I zip tied it to a stick of bamboo but couldn't get all the oil out so you don't know how much to put back in. I used the bamboo like a dip stick and marked up where the oil came to before i messed with it. Next time i might flush out the sludge with new oil, stir it up and syphon again. Took forever to syphon out my thick gloupy oil! Also wish I'd used 15wt oil insted of standard 10.

I packed 18mm depth of 35mm (i think)washers (B&Q again) in the top there too using a washer from sv's with preload adjuster as first washer (£2), with the 15wt i'd take a few mills off this.

Only took an hour and Im chuffed with the improvement