Changing fork oil, how to?

[brico]

I am replacing my Fz6 '05 steering head bearing (after 16K km) as i noticed it to be somewhat wobbly and when opened found bottom ball bearing badly rusted. So I am taking advantage and wanted to change fork oil as well. I've searched the forum but could not find any instructions on how to do oil change in forks. Do i have to dismantle the whole thing in pieces to do or is there a simpler method? what seals "o' rings will i have to replace once open?

 

[CombatPenguin]

If your just changing the oil in the forks it's easy. Losen the top cap on the fork, then take the fork off the bike. Take the top cap off pull out the washer, spacer, then spring. Dump the oil out, pump the fork a few time to get it all (maybe leave it upside down for a few minutes). Refill the fork with the new oil and re install the spring, spacer, washer and top cap and that's it. The service manual says the top cap bolt get torqued to 17ft lb and there should be 467 cm3 or 15.79 US oz of oil in the fork.

 

[brico]

Thank you so much. This is great info and much appreciated. I do not have any manuals that describe this as all manuals downloadable through this forum are not as detailed as your instruction.

 

[CombatPenguin]

I got my manual from here to and it's great but can be very technical at times. Good luck with the oil change.

 

[RJ2112]

As you will have the fork legs off to do the bearings, you are already right there. Penguin has given you all the info you'll need to do the fluid change.

I did exactly the same thing... tipped over the legs, and drained the old fluid out, and flushed a few times with fresh fork oil. Then refilled to OEM specs, and put it back together.

A few months later, I came into enough money to have the suspension reworked. and had the fork re-valved, new springs and added an Ohlins rear shock.

Even with me having replaced the fluid in the fork, and spending a couple of hours flushing it out, the guys in the shop were quite amazed at how nasty the sludge in the fork was. My seals and bushings were all fine.... but the graphite like goop in the bottom of the fork didn't budge from me flushing with 'good' fluid.

A long way of saying that just swapping the fluid is not as good as using solvent to remove that sludge in the fork legs. Sort of like cleaning your teeth with just mouthwash.

 

[r-a-m-o-n]

Hello, if you didnt change the oil already when you refill each fork its better to measure the distance from the top of the inner tube (fully compressed) without the spring. The haynes says there has to be 134 mm from the top of the tube to the oil level and i found that it is less than 467cc in each leg. It wasnt a lot of diference but there was some. Also take extra care when taking the dust cover and oring because its really easy to make accidental marks on the outer leg.

 

[Fred]

Invert motorcycle.
Remove fork caps.

Installing new oil is the reverse of these steps.

Fred