• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Fork rebuild kit? Steering bearings

mjskier

mjskier

Husqvarna
AA Class
Hey all, any link to a fork rebuilt kit for the TE 630?

I need to replace the seals, and while I have it open I'll also do the bushings.
For KYB or Showa I'm used to buying a rebuild kit (like all balls) with everything in it. I'm not finding such a kit for the Marzo.

I also plan on servicing the steering column bearings (on the last ride it felt like I had a steering damper) Any suggestion if I need to replace the bearings (OEM, something better...)?
 
Stem bearing races are hard to get out - not much lip to hammer on. You may need to grind down a long punch to get to them.

I changed fluid not that long ago, did not replace any parts - sitting about 7500miles. Dust seals were dirty, oil was not.
BTW, a slightly smaller air gap prevents bottoming for me. I used amsoil shock fluid, half 5 and half 10 wt. Very happy with the forks.
 
My fork oil was very dirty. The inner bushing were fine, but the outer ones show sign of wear.
I took the steering column out, and that thing is nasty! The bearings had plenty of grease, but it is all contaminated with dirt.
I need to plug the hole in the top bolt (where you insert the gas vent tube) Since I now have a 3d printer, maybe I can come up with a combo plug and holder for the vent tube...

Symptoms that something was going on was the steering getting super stiff under load, as if I had a steering damper set at the highest setting.

Good suggestion about thicker oil and smaller air gap. These forks are super plush, but they show their limitation very fast off-road. Do you remember what oil height you used?
 
Very early on someone suggested adding 10cc's of oil to each fork leg to prevent bottoming out. I did that and it definitely did the trick. So when I serviced them I set the air-gap to spec and then added 10cc's of fluid. I don't recall the actual gap nor the total amount of fluid.

Seems to me it reduces the gap about 20mm but don't quote me on that. Like from 158 to 135 or something like that. Or maybe it was 110 down to 90. But you get the idea.

The problem with the steering stem is that it has a hole in it for the steering lock, so dirt can get down inside the bearings through that slot. Some were worried about the fuel vent dumping gas down there and washing out the grease, but the bearings are on the outside of the internal stem. So vented gas spilled just comes out the bottom and down the back of the fender.

I replaced my lower race early on as it was notchy. My guess is if the top nut is just a little bit loose then a roller can slam the race and indent it. Mine was almost dead center. For a bit I thought maybe it was supposed to be like that. :rolleyes: I have never had a problem with it since, it's never been apart again either. Me thinks they cheaped out on those bearings - seems like everybody has had to replace theirs - I have never heard of that on any other brand or type of motorcycle.
 
CJBROWN said:
Stem bearing races are hard to get out - not much lip to hammer on. You may need to grind down a long punch to get to them.
Click to expand...

Like this? :cheers:
You were correct, not much lip to work with. That dovetail lip worked pretty well to get a good purchase.

chisel-X2.jpg


This video is kind of long, but it helped me understand the process.
I had to regrind the chisel a few times as the edge would get rounded off. But other than that it went pretty well. Just had to take my time and lightly tap opposite sides of the race.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvgIRuRHSrQ
 
Just for info, I ended up ordering a complete seal and bushing kit from http://getdirtydirtbikes.com/

These guys stand by their product. They somehow goofed the initial order (or their supplier, innteck-usa.com did), but they fixed it right away.
SKF seals (which I have used on a KTM 300 with great results)
 
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