dinged tubes

[Dogsled]

Well my dinged up fork tubes have start to leak............................very very lightly, but I have no way of gauging how much fluid is leaking and/or what my fluids quantity is or will be in the future.

It was an interesting venture into how the heck the front ends operate and what all is in there. I can make out this riding season for sure the leak is so small, so my fluid leak is small. I feel safe and confident. After a month I got an excess wipe of of the tubes to be just wet.

The strange thing is only one tube really pitted while the other tube was smooth......both are leaking now (the same amount, just wet) I've had bad luck with aftermartket seals and bearings. I hope the Cyclemax seals were just that, OEM and not aftermarket. I just can't figure out why a good tube without a mark is leaking.......

I bought aftermarket shifter seal/bearing and it leaked like a seive.....I went to OEM and it's still good after 5 years.

There are no numbers or id on these seals so it's hard to tell. These seals are new enough I hope to mic them and find OEM specs to compare.....In Cyclemaxs defence, they keep the parts (OEM) in stock that go bad the most and front seals would fall into that classification. Even though they carry few OEM parts in general.

But who could ever tell or know since there are no numbers on the parts I took off or put on......

I gotta head to PA to the cycle salvge yard to see what condition the tubes are in that they asid they have.

All in all I have learned alot about front ends/front suspension and what to look for in parts.

[WingAdmin]

The fork seals that Cyclemax sells are OEM Honda. Common replacement items that they carry (switches, seals, etc.) they source from Honda and keep in inventory.

[Dogsled]

The guy at Cycle salvage said ALL 1500 tubes are the same. He had one alot older than my 97. I don't know when the 1500's first came out and if in fact thay are the same.

[ka4yqi]

The 1500 came out in 1988. Don't see why they would be different.

[Dogsled]

Now the problem is gonna be finding clean tubes. I never did anything off road that woulda dinged these (this) pipe up. What the odds of getting good tubes is, is gonna be hard I think

[wjnfirearms]

If you're talking about the salvor in Rochester, they're not far from me. I've dealt with them several times and if you call them and ask them for more detail about the tubes as you're coming from Columbus and don't want to take a several hour trip for nothing, I do think they'll check them for you more carefully. They are pretty much straight shooters and are decent to deal with, along with having very fair pricing.

I didn't look for Wing stuff the last time I was there this summer and I know there are a couple Wings in inventory, but the two I know about for sure were older ones. One is basically complete and would make a good project for someone looking to do one. I don't remember exactly how much they were looking to get for it, but I don't remember it being a great deal of money. If you looked at it, one would wonder why it's in a salvage yard at all. If memory serves, it's only been off the road less than two years. There is likely parts like tubes I just didn't see as I weren't looking for them.

[Dogsled]

Firearms,
I called them again today and the front legs they have are off an '88. At first I thought we were talking just upper tubes. But it was a set of 2 complete legs. I'll visit my friend in Rochester and take a ride there if he's going 175.00 for both legs. I want to take a good look at them but to tell the truth, I don't see what good that's going to do. Both legs I rebuilt are leaking and one leg was in perfect shape.....(so why is it leaking????) Alot of bikers who do their own work say the upper tube that looked good had to have issues that would scratch/cut nto a seal. The leak is very minor, it's just not perfect.....I can at least try for that.

Thanks for the heads up on Cycle salvage. They sound like straight up guys just talking on the phone.....any help is always welcome.

It's hard to believe a set of 88 legs are gonna be as good or better that a 97.

[wjnfirearms]

My Buckeye friend, I have beliefs about buying a lot of things sight unseen. I am cautious.

Age is relative. I've seen many things that newer items looked like crap and older ones were in better shape. It all depends on what happened to them and other factors like storage, etc.

It's always conceivable that your leakage issues relate to the seals and not the tubes. They could be junk, something occurred during installation, etc. If one isn't careful installing seals, they can easily suffer damage tamping them in place. Aftermarket parts aren't always perfect. I found this out the hard way with carb parts for my '77 Wing. I've seen this with both bike and car parts. I remember vividly one of my sons doing someone a favor and installing drum brake shoes on a Mercury not long ago. He was having fits trying to figure out why he couldn't get the drums on after he installed the new shoes. I intervened and compared the size of the new ones to the old on a hunch. The backing plates were over 1/4" longer so they wouldn't wind down enough to allow the drums to go on. I know for fact that the new ones were the correct ones because I sold them to the guy. After I removed them and took them to the bench grinder, everything went together ok. How did I know that this was the problem in the first place? The same thing happened to me once with shoes for one of our Jeeps.

[Dogsled]

Well I was as meticulous as I could be. I had a piece of 1 1/2" pvc I used to drive the seal in, I went in pretty easy. A note, the PVC wouldn't go over the tube so I had to rip a slot on a table saw on one side so it spread a hair enough to slide down the tube. With that said the seals were tapped in straight and even. Scott said Cyclemax parts of this nature are in stock OEM items and they looked good. Could I have damaged them, anything is possible, but BOTH of them.....I find that hard to believe.

The damaged sides sure didn't look like road kick-up nicks. Thise tubes are pretty hard....it sure looked like hammer dings to me......But only one leg???

Yeah, i'm leary about buying a set of '88 legs complete and just putting them on. Although I am getting pretty good at taking them off and on...
I could re-use my lower legs with the new seals in the anti-dive set-up, take the new bushings and transfer them to the new tubes, then throw in new seals......OR, just change the fluid and put them on as is and see what happens.

When I buffed the dings down it was smoothe but left pits. I may just be getting oil i'm losing in the pits.....on the one.....but what about the other....
I'll take a ride though and see what this place has...... Everything is gonna be a crap shoot with parts as these bikes get older.