Fork Service and the Right Tool for the Job

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 4:49 pm

This past weekend I decided to replace my 29-year-old leaky fork seals. Everything came apart OK until I went to remove the circlip that holds the seal in place on the first leg I worked on. I tried to use my Craftsman interchangeable-tip circlip pliers to do this but it kept snapping out of the holes as I squeezed the pliers to compress the circlip. I tried fiddling with the tips and even tried a couple of pairs of conventional needle-nosed pliers. No luck.

So I cleaned myself up and drove across town to Sears before they closed to see if they had any decent fixed-tip Circlip pliers. They did and I bought a pair.

Monday morning I was able to get the circlip out of the first fork leg and change the seal. Changed the seal in the other leg too and cleaned up some of the areas of the bike I could get to while the front end was disassembled. It felt pretty good to be able to get all this done.

One plus to getting this done: I was able to finally complete my Sport Fairing installation, started about 26 years ago. Upon removing the fork legs I was able to finally get the original front turn signal mounts off the tubes.

PS: I followed the procedure posted in the tech section of this website by Tony Bagley (dhoff) (http://www.cb1100f.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=49092&highlight=fork+breakdown) to do this job and it helped me a lot. I supported the bike with a couple of stacks of 4x4 and 2x4 lumber and it made for a solid base for working on my bike's front end.

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 5:28 pm

That circleclip is a son of a gun. I ruined a couple of pair of cheap pliers, made a few trips to Sears & Harbor Freight, then searched here. I ended up using a small screwdriver to pry it out of the slot, it worked great.

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 6:07 pm

I have been using the OEM 07914-3230001 pliers for 30+ years. Motion pro also has a similar set
Actually it is designed for master cylinders but works perfect on forks as well.
well worth the money.

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 10:23 pm

Deleted. Clicked on "Quote" instead of "Edit"......

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 10:24 pm

Years ago, I took a small pair of 'electronics' size needle nose pliers and ground the tips of the jaws down to make a set of protrusions small enough to fit into the holes in the cir-clip. I bent the tips towards each other slightly so that they would have better retention of the clip. Then I used a large grinder to grind down the side of both jaws, leaving them with a 'side-on' profile considerably thiner than when I started. They work great for removing the cir-clips from various forks.