Wow! It was raining this morning (6/21)…
The weather is so abnormal these days—is this what they call abnormal weather?
I’m hoping we don’t get hit with a lot of typhoons this year.
Mountains are dangerous, rivers are dangerous, coasts are dangerous—what are we supposed to do?
We’ll replace the seals without disassembling the fork.
*Normally we don’t do this because it’s a hassle. (Taking it apart is faster.)
While we’re at it, the customer also asked us to fix the light bracket.
It had such a natural bend that I thought, “Hmm? Is something wrong with this?”
We clamped it in a vise and gave it a good “yank!”
I noticed it had a cap-clip design, which I really hate…
So I whipped up something quick to remove it.
I’ve got two hands and ten fingers, but I’m just one person.
And with that, it came off safely.
The usability is really poor… it needs to be addressed, but I wonder if we’ll see another one like this.
I’ve been running this shop for about 18 years now, and this might be the first time I’ve seen this.
Well, oil came out that was so dirty I’d never seen anything like it.
This time it’s just a temporary fix. Next time we’ll need to re-plate it or replace it, or we’re done for.
We filled it with fork oil—almost to the top—and used a special tool to compress it!
Then we gently warmed the bottom case, and the hydraulic pressure pushed the seal out.
*It’s kind of like the old-school method for replacing seals on vintage bikes.
At first it wasn’t coming out, so I got a little worried… but we managed to extract it.
The old and new ones are slightly different, so I went “hmm…”
We checked the width with a depth gauge—OK!
And the outer diameter with the lip—OK! That’s how it went.
The oil seal is now a later version? (compatible?) with a double spring!
It’s actually pretty interesting when you put calipers on any OEM part and look at the numbers.
*I updated the blog while waiting for the oil change.
