I can't help but raise an eyebrow at £1000+ worth of fork that is designed to leak? Must be leant more towards track use?? :frown:
NEW UFO MOTOCROSS RUBBER FORK GAITER 42MM RED 1703 | eBay Should sort you for your MOT anyways. :biggrin:
Question - could you retrofit another forks seal to your forks?? This would seal better i.e. normally and save all this faff every few months? They must be a generic seal size/fitment??
Apparently fork seals from Suzuki GSXR1000 K3/4 fit the Ohlins forks, and are a lot tougher!? I was thinking of doing them this winter, along with changing the fork oil.
Yep, first time I'll be having the forks apart, but it doesn't look too hard, and I'm hoping the Gixxer seals won't need changing every year!
Thanks for all the input guys. The bike is now booked in at Duc Wolves for tomorrow to have them done. I must admit though, considering it is a road bike, having to replace them in such a short space of time is crap. I'll look into replacing them next time with the GSXR1000 seals, if that turns out to be a good alternative.
I would, but i need the bikes for a trip this weekend and Duc Wolves won't fit any seals other than Ohlins. No other dealers near me can do it before tomorrow night.....................so got to swallow it this time. Next time though they will be GSXR seals.
And to think I'd been looking at some Ohlins as an upgrade for my hillclimb bike. Dont think I'll bother, my Showa's work fine , I'm just going to radial brake them and anodise the uppers black.
All sorted now at a cost of £132..........................me thinks the GSXR seals will be in my stock cupboard in the near future lol. We had a good chat with Barry this morning as well, i bought it off of him 2 years ago. He said he had 1 seal replaced at about 18 months, so i probably havn't done too bad out of them really. Got a good eyefull of a showroom full of Panigale's............me thinks i might just take one for a ride next week lol.
Bit of a bump here.... :Stop: Im lookin at a 1098s the weekend. Its 2007 but barely 5k kms on it. The guy has had the fork seals done 3 times by a guy who I know and works on Ducati's, qualified etc etc. Now the Ducati tech guy says he cannot find a single thing wrong with this particular fork, but yet it keeps leaking. The parts being used are genuine. Bike aint been crashed etc, forks dont have a mark on them. Anyone any ideas, its enough to turn me off buying the bike if im being honest. tks
On the old forum a few guys replaced the Ohlins seals with Suzuki items. Apologies do not know which model, but it shouldn't be rocket science to find out. Mine did the same at low mileage after 4 years, couldn't beleive it, but rest assured its not just you Ooops just see you beat me to it. Note to self read the fekin post you dumfuk John
Tks John. Yeah, I belive it was the k3/k4 gsxr, however, I read that these can wear the very thin coating on the fork stanchion (?). It would bug me if it kept happening though.
When i first posted this thread i was annoyed at how often i was needing to replace the fork seals. Since then i have met and had many conversations with Richard at Luigi Moto. His view makes lots of sense to me and i havn't had a seal go since. You have to look at the cause, before you can effect a long term remedy. In his view the cause is the bushes. In other words, the first time your seals go, replace the bushes as well as the seals. This then extends the life of the new seals no end..................................it has worked for me so far. Your ducati dealer has no interest in this, because they can hit you for £150 every time you come in for new seals to be fitted.................................even though it would cost little more to do the bushes as well. Hence, you keep coming back throwing £150 for each new set of seals.
I heard about this problem,especialy when the bike sat unused for a while so just pumped the forks up and down a few times to get everything moving every week or so when off the road over winter etc and had no leaks etc at all so seems to do the trick
Ohlins do the seals in 2 types. The loose spec seal is single lip and doesn't last very long. They introduced a double lip seal specifically for road use (developed for the Yamaha R1 SP ) a couple of years ago which lasts ages if your bushes are good. The Gsxr seals fit but are slightly narrower and tend to rock slightly in the seat and should really have a small shim behind them. And they are a pretty tight fit on the fork. On the bikes I have seen with them on long term (Aprilia rsv's mostly) it has badly worn the nitride to the point of the chrome showing through. They didn't leak but depends what you consider the lesser of the 2 evils but not sure they are suitable for a nitride coated fork long term.
