04F4

I am going to attempt to replace my fork seals tomorrow.
According to the service maual it says to use a special tool to drive the fork seal on, my question is what has anyone else used to do this with without having to buy the special tool?

Also, can I replace seals without taking forks off the bike and just "top off" the remaining oil in there to make it full? Once the seal started leaking I parked the bike and it hasn't lost very much oil. I didn't look at the manual
close yet.

I have never done this before any tips or suggestions that would make it easier would be sweet.

thanks

MXRACERX43

How do you plan on removing the old or installing the new seal on the inner leg while the forks are on the bike? If you figure it out definatley let me know, will save me a ton of time and make me a ton of money at work. Just kidding not you have to completely remove your forks. I have seen people use (with varying degrees of sucsess) a piece of PVC pipe spit in two as a seal driver. The plus of PVC is your backyard mechanic seal driver will not harm your forks to much being made out of plastic. The downside is that you need something with some good mass to drive the seals into place. If you try a homade tool be sure to lube the seals well. Definately drain and replace your fluid. You want to get your old fluid out of there either way. Replacing seals is not a hard job but it is a huge help to have the right tools. You can buy aftermarket seal drivers made by Motion Pro or Racetech for a fraction of the cost of a set from Honda. Also another very very important thing to remember is to inspect you fork bushings, I see tons of guys who will go through three or four sets of seals before they finally bring them into the shop to have the forks rebuilt properly. When the bushings wear and they are a wear part, they let the inner tubes **** in the outer tubes and this is what ruins your seals. The bushings should have a teflon covering on them if it is peeling at ALL replace them as a set. There is an inner and outer bushing.

04F4

thanks for the info. I will check into getting the right tool and be sure to check the fork bushings.

04F4

OK. so I replaced the fork seals. I see the fork bushings were about 70% copper as teflon was worn off. I called around for the 12 dollar parts and nobody had them in stock, I HAVE to have my bike running before friday so I went ahead and said **** it and put them back together anyways. So my question is how long could someone "guess" they will last for.




thanks

MXRACERX43

Order a new set because not long. It is hard to say but even slight peeling on the ends of a bushing will lead to fast seal failure. Just order a new set of seals and all four bushings. Ask your dealer if a company called pivot works sells a complete rebuild kit for your model. Better yet PM me and I will give you the contact info of the bike shop I work for, I will check and see if a whole rebuild kit is avaliable for your bike. It will save you a ton of money and makes it super easy because all of the parts you need are in one package and I mean ALL of them seeals orings bushings whole nine yards. A OEM dealer will not sell you this kit because they have a higher profit margin selling you Honda OEM parts. We can ship to you if you want the kit or parts.

E-Loc540

I will add...a homemade seal drive may drive the seals in crooked you also need to make sure they have plenty of oil inside the seal when you install them (some people use grease-its a personal preference) and its not so bad on street bikes usually but a little rock ding in your tube can leave a piece of metal sticking up that will cut new seals everyime, so you need to clean and inspect your fork tube surface (I use brillo pads to clean the tubes) but yeah MXRACER knows whats up too