Stiction In My Forks

[nsaqam]

I have a '99 TXT321 and there seems to be a fair bit of initial stiction in my forks action. Once they start moving they seem to be fine but getting them to move from their resting position is harder than it should be. These forks are well used, is it possible that the internal bushes need replacement? How about too high of preload? I can easily shorten the preload spacer on my lathe but how much should be removed at a time? I bounce the bike before I tighten the fork pinch bolts for the axle but could it be misaligned?

Any help would be appreciated.

[charliechitlins]

Slack everything but top pinch bolts...including fork brace.

Then tighten bottom clamp, then axle.

Then be sure no bolts on your fork brace are binding in the holes.

If so, hog out offending hole.

If you're still sticky, you'll probably want to disassemble forks and check them.

While they're apart, polish springs with a blending wheel (you can use those scotch-brite-type pads that you can chuck in a drill) and surface fork tubes with #600 emery paper (works best with a lathe).

[brucej]

I don't think resurfacing the fork tubes is a good idea. These tubes have a low friction coating on them ( which gives them the black colour ). Attacking them with emery will do nothing good.

Edited April 15, 2006 by brucej

[ridgrunr]

Question:

When you are experiencing this stiction are you bouncing the front end while holding the front brake? If you are, that put's a bind on the forks as the wheel is not able to rotate as it needs to when the fork geometry angles change.

Try bouncing the forks without holding the front brake. If the stiction problem disappears you may have found that you don't have a problem at all. If you still have a sticion problem while not holding the front brake, your forks are probably out of alignment.

If you still have the problem, take off the fork brace and fender and then check for stiction. After you have the brace off, make sure everythingis aligned then see if the brace still fits. If it doesn't it's probably tweaked. I've seen bent fork braces that cause the forks to not be parallel. You may have to bend the fork brace back to original position if it's bent and is causing the problem.

[nsaqam]

Thanks for all your help guys.

I took the forks completely apart and removed all the internals except for the 2 bushes in each fork. I then checked the action and found that the stiction is due to having slightly distorted upper fork tubes. Left side has about .007" of runout and the right is crushed slightly oval at a point about halfway through its travel.

Checking on new upper tubes as we speak. Darn, more expensive than I'd like but what do you do?