So Close!...
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Finally got round to doing the forks! Got new genuine oil seals from fleabay for less than a tenner each, but try and find the top dust seals!!…
Made sure the bolts are separated from the aluminium by using CT1 sealant to ‘encapsulate’ the fuxors! Doesn’t hurt leaky copper washers either;) …
Used 1 & 1/2 extension bars to use the 27mm hex/Allen adapter to hold the inners in place made torquing it up real easy…
Finally fitted these puppies in the forks!…
Will fit the forks to the bike soon as possible, weather permitting
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I thought about it, even bought some (YZ) that had been fitted to a Dtr by a previous, but the reality of how massive tall they are just put me off. Getting the right donors is definitely the ‘ting’
The standard forks are way too soppy… -
Has anyone else noticed that when you tighten up the front wheel spindle it wobbles up-down/side-side a little? I’ve had this with different forks and spindle combinations! Is this normal?!…
I’ve noticed that the gap on the speedo side is nearly 5mm more than the disc side, normal or not?…
Ta for any insight
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I’m guessing both mine are a bit bent!
I recon it’s what happens when you ride a bike any distance with 1 fork seal gone (which to my shame I have done) and put too much pressure on side, especially the side with thread…Both of mine were bent to hells fuck! If I had tog gotten a new one I would never of realised how fuxin awful my bike was handling at any speed over 50mph!
Nearly every thing that comes into contact with my Life seems to be just ‘that little bit wrong!’ It’s fuxin exhausting! Whatever happened to harmony, balance, in the World. The fuxin Holocene is wasted on money grubbing Torrie, Nazi, Capitalist fuckin head up their arses, “it doesn’t matter what I do cause it’s all just a dream” misery mongers!!
Please bring on the Zombie apocalypse, or some way of thinning the herd that is mankind. COVID wasn’t harsh enough!…Sorry, my Rant is over
I’m tired of living in a “world full of Wonders” not a “Wonderful World” that I believe this ball of spinning dirt could be….
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I really find it hard to believe I never noticed this before! I suppose I’ve always had higher priority problems to deal with
I did notice it enough to buy another spindle at some point, I just can’t remember when 
…Having good tyres, new forks with seals , bushes and springs has really made me focus in on the one imperfection left. My ’good’ spindle threads in almost straight until you have to torque it up, then it moves the wheel up & to the side quite noticeably. I always felt like the steering was tracking a bit, and having a bit of a sudden ‘dip’ when cornering hard! I always put it down to soppy shocks and knobblies
…The progressive springs are the bogs dollox! They feel like a different animal
Even with the spindle i can feel a hell of a difference, no more manic dive under brakes. They feel like they ‘flex’ less as well if that makes sense? They feel so much more positive than before…If you know a place I can buy a new spindle please let me know
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@SpookDog What I will say is this, I did have a lot of fun going back to an old classic Yamaha even though my bike goes and stops, nothing quite like raking around a bone stock one.
But when all is said and done, when you're using it as a daily, you can't beat factory trim.
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#$!!?%^*#!!…
Has anyone ever removed the front wheel bearings before? I can’t get the centre spacer to move out of the way enough to get to the inside of either opposite bearing I’m trying to drift out. I can’t even get the edge of the sharpest flathead screwdriver I have onto it! Is this normal?…
Help please!…Are the rears gonna be the same?!…
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@Calum
Slide hammer was my next plan of attack. Every other one I’ve seen (and the 1or2 I’ve done) have had the centre tube/spacer move enough to get at the bearings from inside, from the opposite side. So you can hit the centre race and tap them out…
I don’t get why the dtr one is so ‘tight’?… -
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@SpookDog The central spacer is often a bit of a PITA on bike wheel bearings; kneeling down with the wheel flat on the ground in front of you (with the disc rotor facing upwards) try pulling the punch/screwdriver etc towards you whilst hitting it. This pushes the punch end away from you and helps it get some purchase on the bearing's inner race. Also if the bearings are quite old it may be the case that the spacer has seized to the inner race. Had a few painful fingers over the years when the punch has slipped during hammering them out but never been in a situation where I plain couldn't punch them out.
Other points raised: It's normal for the wheel spindle clamp on the fork slider to be 5-10mm away from the outer face of the speedo drive with the front end assembled. IIRC I once bought a NOS spindle and even that produced some "up and down" wheel activity during tightening so I wouldn't worry.
A method I've always used to guarantee front end alignment (assuming your headrace bearings are correctly adjusted) is to install the forks/front wheel in the bike, fully tighten the front wheel spindle but don't tighten the spindle clamp. Leave the bottom yoke pinch bolts loose and tighten the ones on the top yoke. Then loosen the steering stem top nut just enough to allow the top yoke to rotate on the stem. Take the bike off the workstand etc., hold the front brake on and bounce the front end up and down 10-20 times to get the forks parallel with one another, then gently rest it on the side stand (try not to turn the steering at all when you do this). Then tighten the steering stem nut (which affects headrace bearing adjustment) followed by the bottom yoke pinch bolts, then the wheel spindle clamp last thing. The spindle clamp is there on bikes with long-travel suspension because even a slight variation in the alignment of the fork legs can produce stiction through their full travel; it allows the RH fork leg to "float" during this process so the forks/yokes/wheel can self-align before everything is tightened.
The spring rate controls the suspension stiffness so running the forks with one blown seal wouldn't be enough to bend them in use. One of the bike mags in the 90s posted up some pictures of two guys doing a two-up stoppie on a stock DTR and that didn't bend the forks; 41mm stanchions are only 2mm smaller than the pre-USD GSX-R1100 of the day.
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Cheers bud, I’ve never managed to find an informative method on correct fork assembling. Reverse of disassembly really doesn’t tell me shit!
I get the clamp side fork having to be able to free travel, and I get stiction or binding if trying to change the gap between clamp and speedo-drive. But the affect that my spindle(s) has on the wheel can’t be normal. I’ve got a new one ordered and hope it helps with alignment. Otherwise I’m gonna have to remove the headstock out bearing races and reseat them to be sure they’re proper, cause the way it stands I can’t take my hands off the bars and coast…The inner spacer on the front wheel moves freely, as in the same amount all the way round. It’s just that it’s not even moving a whole Mil to any side. I was hoping to find whether this is normal or just another one of ‘my problems’
Whether I need to source some kind of ‘expanding drift’ that clamps inside?…. -
@SpookDog No worries, even people in the motorcycle trade have trouble getting their heads around the way off-road bikes fit together. Suspension, chain adjustment, chain guides (lots of people take these off because it "spoils the look of the bike", then adjust the chain too tight), all very different to sticking an R1 on the paddock stand. I once worked for a shop in the West Country and the owner and workshop foreman would sometimes spend over an hour arguing because the foreman had adjusted CRM250 etc chains to the same tension as sportsbikes with less than half the travel. And he wouldn't accept the fact that once the suspension starts to work it tightens the chain and knackers the bearing behind the front sprocket. A lot of the customers were greenlaning guys but he just wanted to be right!
Taking a look at the headrace bearings is a good shout, All Balls make a taper roller upgrade kit which is very good and you could fit a grease nipple whilst it's apart. You will need to seal the slot on the stem which the headstock steering lock uses though meaning you can only use the one on the ignition switch but I considered this a fair trade-off for perfect headstock bearings forever. I just used heatshrink tube and cable ties; don't use gaffa tape as the grease will break down the glue over time and you'll end up with all the grease coming out the bottom of the stem rather than forcing its way through the bearings and seals.
A blind bearing extractor might be your best option for the wheel bearings. I bought one of these sets and the smallest size also worked on the needle roller bearings when I did a bottom end rebuild, including the one on the clutch arm:
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I got top and bottom tapers on there at the moment. I just didn’t give the races as much attention as I could of when I drifted them into the headstock. I need to fit a bottom seal-washer. I didn’t have one at the time I fitted them. I only ‘eyeballed’ the tension as well. I’m gonna wait till the new spindle arrives and see if there’s improvements…
I do have a blind puller kit I got from eBay for under £20 An OK bit of kit. Cheers for the feedback bud…
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Hey bud! Just an aside, did you ever sell your sweet 93 Dtr? Or did things get better and you’re riding again? Weather has been sweet (apart from the blustery winds) the last couple days
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@SpookDog Yes I sold the '93 just after Christmas and my original unrestored '98 3NC went a couple of weeks ago. I have ridden both since recovering from my injuries, just to make sure they were both running OK before selling them. Now trying to empty the house so I can have a holiday; here's the rebuilt wheelset I listed today:
Many thanks for your concern buddy, I'm nearly 50 so feel very lucky to have made pretty much a full recovery. Been getting back to full fitness over the winter with walking, cycling, upper body stuff etc and did a pretty cool MTB ride up on the Ox Drove (byway from Compton Abbas Airfield/Win Green to Sixpenny Handley) the other day. This felt pretty special as the last time I was there was on a DTR in October 2021. Here's my 2002 Specialized Epic with Brain rear suspension; most of the time it's a hardtail which helps on tarmac/hills but the rear shock can tell the difference between the rider pedalling and the rear wheel hitting a bump and starts working all on its own as soon as you get onto the trails. I rebuilt the shock over the winter (which nearly made my head explode) and so far all is well!
I'll be hanging around on here though as I like helping people out. And being helped; the other week @OllieDTR came and bought some bits off me, we were talking about headstock bearings and he said he put his bottom yoke in the freezer overnight and heated the lower bearing and it dropped straight on! All the engine bearings I fitted last summer doing that in reverse and I never thought of doing that on headstock bearings.
