Topic: cb500 forks?

[jonathantaylor86]

I crashed my 72' cb500 a month ago and surprisingly there is minimal damage. Some idiot on the highway changed lanes w/o looking and i bit the dust going 80. The muffler and cooling fins took a beating, but the engine runs fine. My problem is the front wheel separated itself with the bottom of the forks from the top of the forks. The forks arent bent because they slid back on just fine, but I want to rebuild them and I was curious if anyone could give pointers on what to look for if their not useable? The springs are intact and I have a pair of washers with 2 squared edges that i collected from the crash. Should the front wheel have came apart that easily during the crash? Any tips or suggestions would be great

[754]

Where are you?

 Are you saying the wheel and lower legs seperated from the fork tubes..

[bryanj]

On the early 500 the only thing holding the lowers on is a threaded rod from the damper in the alloy lower through the spring and screwed into the chrome top nut lacked with a funny two sided nut. The later forks had a "stop" welded into the end of the steel tube so the damper could not slide out downwards. Try looking at an on line parts fiche for the 71/72 500 to see what i mean