New tricks - 'Workshop Session' February 10th 2024

 You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Don's BMW K1200RS was suffering an oil leak from the left hand front fork.  Someone with limited mechanical skills had tried to replace it but had butchered the replacement in the process.  Graham helped Don by fitting a replacement seal.  He had never fitted a seal with the forks still in situ. However good old YouTube suggested it could be done, and so he gave it a try and learnt a new trick in the process.  Luckily, Don had bought a rather nifty fork seal removal tool with him, which meant that there didn't need to be a great deal of space around the fork to level the old seal out.  Improvising with a slide from a bearing installer, Graham was able to drive the new seal without it getting damaged. Because it wasn't possible to tell how much oil was in the fork, the oil needed to be drained from both fork legs.  This was, in theory, a simple job requiring just the wheel spindle and a drain bolt in each fork leg to be removed. The bolt in the left-hand fork leg came out without an issue.  Then sod's law stepped in.  The drain plug in the bottom of the right-hand  fork leg was so tight that the tip of the allen key broke off in the bolt before the bolt started coming undone.  This was overcome with careful use of a syringe, allowing most of the oil to be sucked out of the right-hand fork leg.   Club Mechanic Phil then used his incredible memory and located the Fork Oil Level tool that enabled us to match the oil level in both fork legs.  Different weights or quantities of oil in a pair of forks can cause some severe and quite dangerous handling problems as forks will respond to bumps at different speeds.