Fork oil swap.

[steveR]

£110 for changing your fork oil.I have just bought a litre of 10w fork oil,cost £8.00.Pulled the forks,drained them overnight,filled them with diesel to flush them,drained them overnight again,filled them up with fork oil,pumped them a few times,checked the levels,job done.O.K. it took a couple of days but only because I let them stand draining for so long.How long do you think they let them drain for in a shop?Five minutes?An hour while they go and do another job?I changed the steering head bearings at the same time,total cost for parts was £23.00.

God no! I did it myself a fortnight ago!! Flushed them out properly and left each fork to drain thoroughly, ran some fresh oil through and then drained it out again after a good pumping, oooh err Missus! Not a big job once i had a bit of time....

[steveR]

Going by memory the air gap is 141mm, I would certainly have a go at altering the gap by a few mil. you don't know until you try.
Think most people have said those springs are an improvement

I would assume that they are better than the previous 9 yr old springs anyway Any suggestion as to the quantity of oil to try removing.....?

[trophydave]

God no! I did it myself a fortnight ago!! Flushed them out properly and left each fork to drain thoroughly, ran some fresh oil through and then drained it out again after a good pumping, oooh err Missus! Not a big job once i had a bit of time....

Ooops,I didn't read the date on the original post.I still say to £110 for a fork oil change though.

[steveR]

Ooops,I didn't read the date on the original post.I still say to £110 for a fork oil change though.

As did I!! IAH, real labour was no more than an hour, tops. More time is spent finding the spanners etc...

[steveR]

In the end I went for a spring AND oil swap, using hagon springs.

But jeez it is a hard, jittery ride now. I used 5wt oil as supplied by Hagon with a tiny drop of SAE 10 blended in, as there was barely enough 5 supplied. I have used the Hagon recommended air gap of (I think 140mm) and am now starting to think that the springs maybe too much! Nice when braking mind

However, I am sure I have seen something about fine tuning the forks by varying the air gap and I am now wondering if that may be an option?? It is an easy enough job to pull a few cc's of oil out of each fork, but I am reluctant if it is not going to do any good....

Just found this document on setting up suspension. VERY useful

Setting up yer sussies!

And this one for calculating how much fork oil to remove to get a given drop in airgap.

Calculator

My calculation if you are fine tuning the airgap, is that 1cc = 1mm of fork tube, based on the ID of the tube being 35mm.