Fork maintenance is my achilles heel. I get about as far as cleaning the wipers and oil seals and then have a techo freeze. The zokes manunal I printed off does not look the least like my forks from the top. So can I ask you wise and patient bunch a recurring question. I want to change my fork oil. I know that the forks need to de demounted-end of story for me . Can someone step out sequentially what is the process from here. I have watched You Tube stuff-informative but not zokes.I am keen to close out this hole in my armoury. That said I am still scared by carbiy maintenance and only drop the bowl for cleaning then chicken out-I might pose that question next month LOL. By the way regular cleaning of the seals has seen the originals remain funtional thus far-I use the clears from my goggles cut down a tad, wipe out then bounce the forks several times and repeat the process 2 more times (with the wipers slid down) Cheers.
First off I am not a expert but once you dive into these forks it is pretty simple. You have the standard forks which are easier to do as well. Take them off and have a clean place to work. Wipe them all down and back out your clickers and remember the settings. If your seals are good and do not need to replace them there are a few ways you can do this. The most simple way if you want a good flush is first here. With the fork upright take wrench and brake open the top cap then back it all the way off of the fork tube. Once done slide the tube down about half way. Then if you look in between your spring and the upper cap you will see a spot to fit a open end wrench on the center rod (blue I think). You have to feed it through the spring there, once on there put the wrench back on the upper cap and brake loose the upper cap and take the cap off. Wiggle the wrench out of in between the spring and take out your spring. It would be a good time to measure how much oil you have in there for a reference. Just however many mm's from the top. Most people use a syringe with a tube, most shops sell them. Notice that there is a guide type washer in the cap to keep your spring in position. Hard part is done now. You will want to use a shallow wide pan to dump the oil into. Something if you drop a part you can see it. Collapse the fork all the way down and with one hand hold the fork and the other hold the open part with the rod. Dump out the oil and you will have to pump the rod. There will be a couple of parts that will come out as well. I normally keep my hand over the rod to catch them. There may be a black plastic pre-load spacer that sits below the spring you took out, the other is a long silver rod that is inside damper rod, just pull these out and set aside. Keep pushing and pulling the damper rod while draining the fork until you keep hearing it sucking air. Get all of it out of there you can. You said your seals are still good so a short cut way of cleaning it out is using kerosene. This is up to you and I do this from time to time. Once the oil is out set the fork upright and spring is out, pour kerosene in there and pump the rod again, at first it will come up quickly but eventually you want to get a good smooth stroke all the way out. Once done flip fork over and dump it out paying attention to the color. Kerosene is clear and you want to keep doing this until it drains clear and then a few times past that making sure as the last drops it is clean. If for some reason you do not like this method or people shoot me down using it or you are just curious since it is apart then you will want to remove the guts part. On the bottom of your fork where the compression clickers are you can remove that nut with a impact wrench. Once you take that out your compression stack will come out. Once this out your damping rod will come out of the top. Once this is out you can clean this with brake clean or however you wish. The kerosene actually flushes it really well though. When re-assembly if you have the compression stack out Carefully re-install the damping rod assembly all the way down using your fingers where the compression stack was, start threading the compression stack in by hand making sure the damping rod is seated down in the bottom of the fork tube. You will need to use a small air impact gun to get it to tighten, they do make a tool to hold the damping rod in place while you tighten but I have never had it or had a problem getting to tighten with a air gun. You do not want to hit this hard with a air gun but you want it tight enough that it does not back out. Someone on here probably knows the right torque, I kind of put my gun on the lowest setting. Then just re-assemble adding 7.5 weight oil. You will again want to pull the damper rod up and down several times to be sure it is a smooth stroke and all air is out of there. Once done you should let the fork sit for a little while before setting the oil height due to air bubbles. When you put your spring in have the damper rod all the way up and wrench ready. Set the spring in there (don't forget pre-load spacer) and fish your wrench in through the spring to the blue nut, then spin the spring to make the damper rod go higher than the spring, then put the top cap (with the spring washer guide). When putting the top cap back on, make sure the blue nut is all the way down on the damper, you are after getting as much threads of the damper rod into the cap, it will make more sense when you see it. If you wanted to do fork seals you do not have to take the compression stack out or the damper and guts. You will need a seal driver though. I will save that for another time. Anyone want to add anything I missed feel free. It's late so I am sure there is something.
That's a pretty complete description for the job....nice write-up. I might ad when I did my '07 50mm forks the stinkin' damper rod would'nt stop spinning. Could'nt even coax it free with the impact gun while pull on it. I made the tool to hold it, ( It was a bit of a chore too... very "size specific"). Also made a seal driver tool. Dave
Zokes 50 response Deat Raisrx251, what a wonderful response. I appreciate the technical input very much and especially the time you clearly spent responding to my issue. A hearty well done Mate. Thankyou; Glenn H.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y43k1qFVGW4 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ICr-DOmdk walks ya through it. not zokes, but really really close..
No Problem Glenn, luckily I had a good Husky dealer who would let us come up and work on our bikes late on Friday nights to learn the ropes. Didn't have a forum like this to share info.
