It's been a couple of exciting weeks for me, but have made some decent progress (at least I think so. LOL).
Drained the Old (30+ years) Bel-Ray 30 wt fork oil out of the forks. According to my notes, I put in 150ml into each leg. I got approximately 145-148ml of oil out. And it still looked like fork oil. But there was a little sludge in the bottom of the cup, so, I'm glad I took things apart and drained the old oil out.
Put the forks in my bench vice and used my OLLLDDDD Craftsman electric impact wrench to pull the bottom bolt out of the forks. Held the forks in place using wooden V Blocks so I wouldn't scratch anything.
I got the Fork Seals out using a nicely rounded tire iron that I taped up the shaft where it hits the top of the fork. I also used the wife's hair dryer to warm up the top of the forks to loosen the seal up. That worked well and got the seals out with no collateral damage.
Washed all the internal fork parts in warm water and Dawn dish detergent. Used a long nylon brush (similar to a baby bottle brush) to do the cleaning. Used the hair dryer to do the initial drying then let them sit in my furnace room for a couple of days (it's nice and warm in there) to finish drying.
While they were drying, I then polished the slider tubes. Didn't get crazy, but I used red, green and Jewelers Rouge and have the tubes looking pretty much new. Put a little Simichrome on the section that would be above the seal just to seal the chrome.
A few days later, I started putting the forks back together again. Used 1 small drop of Blue Loctite on the bottom fork bolt as was suggested in another thread in SOHC/4. Got the forks back together and used a little fork oil to lube things up when putting everything back together.
I replaced the small rebound springs, more on general principles than anything else. The old ones measured just about 1 - 1.5mm shorter than the new ones, so what the h__l. I also used new bolts in the bottom of the fork as well as new crush washers. Even though the old bolts had only come out once since the bike was built in 75.
Next, I had a choice of fork seals that I could put in. A while back when I started taking the front end apart, I bought a set of Honda seals. They measured 11mm tall and appear to be double lipped. I also bought a set from David Silver Spares. These measure 13.5mm tall and appear to be triple lipped. Did a bunch of reading on which way to go. There are some reports of the 11mm seals leaking right out of the box and there are some stiction issues reported when using the 13.5mm seals. What to do, what to do.
I decided to use the 11mm seals, figuring that if they leak, I can always pull the forks and put in the 13.5mm seals. So, the forks are back together. And I did make sure the writing faced the top of the fork tube.
Now to mount them up in the triple tree with the rechromed headlight ears. I had new rubber bushings for the inside of the ears. During the reassembly I noticed a very slight scratch line on the tubes right where the lip inside the headlight ear would be. Didn't like that, so while looking on my bench, I found one of the lip washers off the lower steering stem. It is just the right diameter inside and out to fit over the lip inside the headlight ear, so, since this part of the fork doesn't (or isn't supposed to) move, I put it on over the lip. Added benefit is possibly that no water should get down on the part of the tube inside the rubber fork boot.
Got the forks all mounted up and ready to start mounting up the rest of the front end. I will have to loosen the fork bolts up to align the forks properly. Also, since I used the All Balls tapered bearings in the steering stem and used the thin spacer provided I have ended up with about a 1mm space between the top of the rubber ear and the bottom of the upper triple tree clamp. Thinking about removing the steel washer under the steering stem castle nut and grinding the lip off. Would seem that this will remove that 1mm of space. But I have time to do that, so it can wait for now.
Attached the Stays to the fender and put the new O-Rings into the Caliper bracket along with some Grease. The Caliper Bracket moves nice and freely, so not anticipating any Caliper alignment problems.
Mounted the fender up and just snugged all the bolts down finger tight. Need to check and see if I need to use any Loctite or anti-seize on anything before I tighten everything down.
So here are a couple of pictures of how she sits tonight.
Charlie