Pitting on front forks

tezzy_v2

My little Yamaha YBR has some pitting/flaking on the chrome of the forks and i think it has done in my fork seals. What are my options to get it sorted?

There's only 5000 kilometres on the bike but its 4 years old. Have it a few months and up to last weekend had only been tipping around town on it. Went on my first 100km spin on it there on saturday and there was fork oil all over the mudguard when i got there

no point fixing seals for them to be ripped apart again. I dont really want to be without my bike leaving it in a shop for a few days so instead of getting them rechromed could i order the actual chrome tube and just replace that myself? Full forks are available on ebay for £85 + P/P each side, but funds are tight. Any cheaper alternative would be great. Im willing to give the fitting work a go myself as have a reasonable set of tools, a Haynes manual and a few mates to call upon.

Suggestions please!

EvilMonkey

I don't think the forks are chrome, get some metal polish and clean the forks up then replace the seals. I wouldn't replace the forks unless it was really bad.

Teddy Daniels

tezzy_v2 wrote: »

My little Yamaha YBR has some pitting/flaking on the chrome of the forks and i think it has done in my fork seals. What are my options to get it sorted?

There's only 5000 kilometres on the bike but its 4 years old. Have it a few months and up to last weekend had only been tipping around town on it. Went on my first 100km spin on it there on saturday and there was fork oil all over the mudguard when i got there

no point fixing seals for them to be ripped apart again. I dont really want to be without my bike leaving it in a shop for a few days so instead of getting them rechromed could i order the actual chrome tube and just replace that myself? Full forks are available on ebay for £85 + P/P each side, but funds are tight. Any cheaper alternative would be great. Im willing to give the fitting work a go myself as have a reasonable set of tools, a Haynes manual and a few mates to call upon.

Suggestions please!

Propper way is new tubes and seals.
cheap way is aradite and wet and dry paper

Cut 'n paste from the last time I relayed this bodge

You can do a bodge repair on pitted forks that is very effective although not all that aesthetic.

Firstly, clean all the rust off, down to bare metal, make sure you get rid of any flakes of chrome and scrape the rust out of the pits with a stanley knife blade.

Degrease the stanchions thoroughly using a solvent, you must completley remove all traces of oil clinging to them.

Now get some Araldite epoxy resin, it is improtant to use the original slow setting stuff (now marketed as precision?), NOT araldite rapide which absorbs water and swells over time.

Mix it up and skim over all the damaged parts of the fork stanchions, try to use as little as will fill the defects whilst still having it standing a little proud of the surface.

Leave to set for AT LEAST 24 hours.

Now using progressivley finer grades of wet and dry paper, polish down the araldite 'till it is perfectly smooth and level with the rest of the chrome surface, finish off with a cream polishing agent like autosol then a wax polish.

This works, I have done it many times. The critical parts are 1) How clean and grease free you get the surfaces. 2) The amount of elbow grease expended polishing.

Don't let them get in such a **** state again, fit gaiters if you can't be arsed cleaning and polishing them. Treat any new pits using the same technique as soon as they appear.