PREP pictures, bike on stands and arse high up in the air.. as it should be.! :fact
pleas dont mind the dust/dirt,'m about to change all that

 

Braver man than I. :fact :thumbup

 

you cant swim, unless you jump :fact

 

Shouldn't you be using an OEM tool on that fork leg? :lol


Looking forward to your progress Digs.

 

that IS an OEM tool!! its just kinda faded... i think it was a limited edition model :hammer:

 

:lol You're an OEM tool. :hammer:

 

awww, thanks, i was hoping you'd say that!! :lol



ohh, btw, its called a Stanchion! :secret:

 

:corn

 

I've been looking at these pics trying to work out why the ass end is lifted with the chains.... and looking..... and looking.... went away..... came back.... kept looking.....

and then it hits me! Your bikes dick (dog bone) is dangling down on a full flop so there's no shock in there! Drrrrrrr :hammer:

:shake

 

and looking..... and looking.... went away..... came back.... kept looking.....


:shake

i recommend you have someone do your suspension mate,!! :yesnod

:corn

This is one thing I just pay to have done.

okay, so I guess i left out a small detail, I worked out a deal with my best friend. He's a machinist so he deals with
much tighter tolerances with the kind of work he does, most machines he operates at work are worth a fair bit more
than a run of the mill R1, and he is the top employee at his company! Here's the kicker.. he doesnt need the $, so
he'd much rather we bitch at each other for a couple hours and then I take him out for dinner or lunch or whatever.

:sneaky

 

:corn

This is one thing I just pay to have done.

 

for as often as forks should be refreshed, specially when hitting the track, it pays for its self to learn.

 

:corn :thumbup

 

but i figured with the help of my best friend {machinist extraordinaire}
and access to all the tools I could possibly need, how can we go wrong!

See, right there, that's where things usually go south for me...

Good luck!

 

:lol

 

in for the progress report

 

How do you judge every year though. I'm planning 20-25 trackdays. Surely I would refresh mid season where a guy that say does 4 could probably do 2 years right :dunno

 

Time and use will make the oil a mess, once it's used. So if you used it once and then put the bike away for two years, I'd say the oil should go. Just my view though. I can't change the fork oil in my bike more than once a year :lol

 

Digs, I was supposed to swing by yours soon but i have to admit, i'm scared now lol!

Looooool @ Ya OEM tool!
Mike

 

Nice work

 

thanks for all the reply guys, yeah its been interesting thats fer-sure...

I had a nice chat with Marbod @ MSpeed Performance in Vancouver earlier and just my luck, he actually had a bag full of shims sitting around for years up until not long ago. I guess there was a customer who purchased an ohlins cartridge kit and he was gonna mess with it, so Marbod decided he'd kept the useless seals long enough :hammer:

He has placed an order for 1 seal n' i should have it next week, nice n' cheap though so thats cool, I managed to learn a little more and picked up some
fancy Motul shock oil as it is the 2nd time i've been recommended the slick stuff. I' cant remember the numbers but i'll post them up later. Sorry DanQ,
Marbod was very convincing, he assured me he hasnt used fork oil in the shock for years!! and he JUST got this new MOtul stuff in, its supposed to be
the cAts meow!! so i bit the bullet.. only cost a couple more bucks than Bel-Ray fork oil.

1st things 1st, before dissembling the fork you need to back off on pre-load and compression to their softest settings {or terrible things can happen to your left eye.. :lol}

for reference, see PAGE 4-62 ON SERVICE MANUAL (be sure it is the 2009 version as i've found Yamaha omits certain images during revisions.. ie 2012 manual!)

Well, I took some pics of the process today, I had intended to just drain the oil I put in there on saturday and refill it after cleaning out the cartridge but we did not have access to contact cleaner on the weekend, so we did not wash out the outer fork tube, yuck! it was FVCKING FILTHY!@ note to self {take machinists recommendations with a grain of salt}. Oh well, that was a waste of half a liter of Bel-Ray 5wt!, lesson learned! Tip of the day, BRAKE cleaner does the trick for cleaning the fork tubes just fine! and I get that stuff for FREE!! YAY!

Okay, now I left all my paper work at the shop, so i wont be able to use proper terminology but basically these pics are of the 3 tools we need to bust open the fork tubes. Since I dont have 150 bucks to purchase a proper fork spring compressor (to be used once a year, :lol) we need to use the spacer provided (it has two holes which allow you to press down on it and manually compress the spring underneath). Its kinda tricky because the only way to do this is to rest the top fork cap on a BENCH VISE (no pics of this, sorry, had to supervise :fingr: ), use the special tool to compress the spring, and it should provide enough room to expose the locking nut underneath said fork cap. Lucky for me dad had the perfect unit we could utilize next, it kinda looks like a tuning fork, it needs to be placed in between the spring-spacer {roughly 4-5" cylindrical tube} and the locking nut hidden under it, of course it needs to be very thin as you dont have much room to work with... once you stick that perfectly thin tuning fork in there you are able to hold the locking nut with a modified 17mm wrench {this wrench needs to be extremely thin as well, with the use a grinder of course} The trick here is that the spring pre-load adjuster is part of the fork-cap and if you're not careful, you can severely damage the two *teeth which actually do the pre-loading of the spring, of course these are very brittle (you'd never know it from watching some how-to videos, hahhaha.. they just shove a huge wrench in there... oh lordy }. Anyway, you need to grip the locking nut with your fancy 17mm "on a diet" wrench while you unscrew the upper fork cap, this is done via the upper most bolt, the pre-load adjuster, once you have backed off on pre-load (read note above) the bolt will stop at full counter-clockwise position. Therefore turning it further will actually allow you to unlock the upper fork cap from the Damper Rod Assembly. :secret:

I'm actually kinda glad we were forced to open this fork up again as I dont think we had a very good grip while holding the locking nut on the weekend (didnt have access to a bone-rack of a 17mm wrench) and were stuck with an old bicycle multi-tool {standard instead of metric}, I held things in place for quite a while as the old man went to work on the grinder... making sure our 17mm wrench will be perfect! for years to come!. Half way through I casually turned the fork cap counter clockwise and realized the bloody thing was actually quiet loose!!! phew!! another disaster averted! and 3rd lesson learned!! USE PROPER TOOLS!! . Okay, so i'll share a secret here, we actually used a 16mm wrench, nothing a mechanic will touch ever needs one.. so its just sits at the shop for years... until you decide to rebuild your suspension, took a little more time on the grinder {had to open it up a bit of course} but it was FREE! :lol

Once this is done, its all but cake, you can drain some/most of the oil at this point and proceed with steps as explained in the service manual. We have yet another special tool which allows you to screw a T-Handle on to the Damper Rod Assembly (where the fork cap was screwed) so we can again compress the spring and remove the tuning-fork tool used earlier... Now you can remove the spring spacer and locking nut which will will give you access to the Spring itself. There is a white plastic spacer which the cylindrical spacer sits on, and is on top of the spring itself, all this can come out now.

Drain as much oil as you can, carefully plugging the damper rod assembly so you dont just toss the actual damper rod onto the table, Its very long and sits inside the damper rod assembly.. Remove the damper rod carefully and set aside for cleaning. at the bottom of the damper rod is the compression adjusting needle and spring of course, be sure not to loose these. Upon draining all the oil (so you think, there is still a shitload sitting at the bottom of the inner tube and in the cartridge itself) you can proceed & disassemble the rest of the fork (this will give us access to the valve cartridge itself!.

 

so, now we get back to what the 1st post shows, I told you I was starting in the middle somewhere.!! :hammer:

at this point, i've removed the upper fork cap, locking nut (hidden behind spring compressor spacer tube), spring spacers, spring, drained most oil out and also pulled out the outer fork tube, what you end up is the Stanchion itself.

It is threaded onto the black casting (what you bolt the wheel n' calipers to). Another note to self, Locktite used by machinists is EXCESSIVE IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD!!... mY buddy always has to follow the boss at work, i guess they have this fancy trigger thingy which apparently releases *according to them* the perfect amount of blue locktite!! with one squeeze!! obviously they are not mechanics, and because he used this proven method on my stanchions over the weekend, it was locked tigher than, well you know... Completely unecessary!! and I knew thiS!! fack... a couple dabs of the finger over the threads is plenty, its the reason you should follow torque specs, locktite is only a precautionary measure to account for vibrations, not to glue the fvcking thing on there Erik!! :1pok: :dundun:

anyway, the only way to remove this (and yes Yamaha uses a bucket full of RED locktite) is to heat it up with a torch, do not torch the bloody stanchions though, D'uh! only surrounding the base of it, you need to heat up the casting itself! so you're basically heating up the threads inside (Thanks MArbod!!) this will dissolve the locktite into an ugly messy dust, yuck... never again!! fack, we bent the damn T-bar a couple of times until it gave... now this is a small issue i found, if you grip the stanchion around the middle with the *fake ohlins tool you wont get enough torque and you'll do nothing... you need to grip it much closer to the casting itself.... This is a problem because its where the outer fork tube & seal will be going up/down up/down. You need to make sure both the tool and stanchion are absolutely clean!! and i'm serious... it is very easy to scratch and damage the chrome stanchion. In fact i noticed a very tiny chip at the bottom, i dont think its big enough to cause issues but its worth noting... I am surprise to even notice this today as we took every care to make sure it didnt happen over the weekend, my guess is it was already there, maybe from a rock chip while riding!??? only reason i notice is a spec of dust settled on it, now, here is good TIP, you cant buff out chrome, no way to fill it in & you'll probably just make it worse, so avoid these at all cost! now I understand why fork covers are so damn important, lucky for me I didnt notice any weeping fork oil after we put things together on the weekend, lets hope it stays that way :dunno

Thanks to Ebags, i'm now schooled and will look around town to see if there is a place that will do Diamond-Like Carbon coating on my stanchions... They are practically brand new so its perfect time to do this. I dont much really care about the slick properties of this coating, as I am mostly interested at how hard it is {compared to chrome) and how it will stand the test of time; 40 years or so!?? wow... :dundun: {if anybody has experience with this please chime in, i'm not 100% certain its worth the $$, and i need tires more :fact }. Worse come to worse and if I need to fix up any scratches or nicks on the chrome now, i'll just wait on this and do it when / if it becomes an issue. I've read though that chrome takes about 6 hours before it looses some of its slippery properties, which explains why suspension always feels off at the end of a long canyon carvin' day. This would not be an issue with DLC coating.

Anyway, unbolt stanchion, careful, there is a good bunch of oil right at the bottom and will instantly spill all over your dress shoes if you're not careful, once that is done, you can go ahead and clean off the excessive locktite your buddy put on there a year ago!! :saw:

the valve cartridge is inside and now visible, it is also screwed onto the casting.. I guess it could be accessed without removing the stanchion itself but I figured if i'm in there, may as well get everything nice and clean (remember, old oil will collect at the bottom, YUCK!)

tHIS IS where the fancy RT Cartridge Holder tool is needed! I will post more pics tomorrow,! including shots of the valve itself as I need to make sure there isnt a sliver loose in there which could damage the valve itself once i start riding... It is a precaution which is kinda a knock on my ego as I hate doing things twice and wasting fork oil, but you know what they say, better safe than BINNED!!

 

 

this is a very good point, anybody considering this should note the ONLY reason I've been able to work it all out is because my best friend is a Machinist, so proper tools was nothing more than the cost of a meal away. I'll post up pictures of what the tools so you have an idea, these tools while unpainted (ohlins tool green sharpie was a joke, hahahah) are built to EXACT specifications! the pro's use the good stuff (ie proper fork spring compressor) but you will find you only really need a handful of 'em to get it done, and you wont damage anything {knowledge is power!}. RT and Motion Pro are able to provide all/most tools you need, but some of them can be made right in your own shop, ie tuning fork & slim wrenche.

of all the tools we used, the RT fork cartridge tool is the ONLY one I actually had to purchase, no way around this one! and it pretty much needs to be the exact one designed for this job,
other years or different fork manufacturer's specifications may be completely different. The beauty is you can use the same one for late model R1 as you use for late model R6!! the same Yamaha part
number is listed on both manuals, :fact

RACE TECH FORK HOLDING TOOL TFCH 04A - 09+ R1
{TFCH 04 is listed as Yamaha R6, but i believe they are the same thing..}

 

I can vouch for the locktite down in the valve cartridge. Got the fancy RT tool and tried to remove the cartridge without taking off the stanchion... Lets just say a heat gun will not provide enough heat. I finally got frustrated enough to take it in and let someone else deal with the mess. Hopefully they use less locktite in case I ever have to do it again...

 

All I did was take it to Marbod @ MSpeed Performance once we had total access to it and everything else was done. Cost me $20 bucks, and yes you need a proper hand held torch in order to do this, he used an actual OHLINS STANCHION tool, which is why I knew what was needed... no other way around this one either, either Ohlins tool or machined! it needs to be EXACT so you dont damage your stanchions. Once that was done, you can continue on with the work, i use BLUE locktite on reassembly, and only a finger dab here n' there, its not glue guys!! :lol

After the 1st time you may be able to pull out the cartridge without removing the stanchion, but I dont like taking chances,. Maybe DanQ can post up in this regard? is there anything that can be
damaged if this is done? I would really love to avoid nicks and scratches on my stanchions (and the DLC cost involved to protect them)

 

hmm i ordered a tool kit from traxxion, ill be having my brother give me a hand with my install. if i feel like ill be looking to do more (which i would like to) maybe ill buy the race tech spring compressor.

 

ok it looks like the main thing im going to need is a cartridge holding tool, ill be sure to order one of those as well. im also going to have to track down a copy of the service manual as it seems it should be helpful.