KLR650 fork seal trick

[loingrader]

This trick involves removing your fork seals when they start to leak.

There are a couple of ways to get the fork seals out of the fork on our venerable klr650s after the retainer ring is removed.  one way involves draining all the oil and then putting about 100psi in the fork via the valve on top.  it will blow the fork seal out and i hear works quite well.  it does not allow you to do a good cleaning of the internals of the fork though because the fork does not get completely disassembled. 

the second method is to remove the allen headed bolt at the bottom of the fork tube via an allen wrench and the kawasaki tool inserted into the top of the fork tube to keep the internals from rotating.  the tool can be reproduced by getting a long threaded rod with a 15/16th nut welded onto the end to hold the internals.

another way to remove the bottom bolt is by use of an impact wrench. this normally does not require the use of a tool to hold the internals from the top side to keep them from rotating.  unfortunately this was not the case for me this time so i took a wooden  1"x1", 3 feet long with a pointed tip, cleaned it up nice and used it to keep the internals from spinning.  i needed just a little resistance and it worked like a charm.

for what it's worth i run tranny fluid in the forks of all my bikes.  normally mobile 1 synthetic because i have it around.  there are countless threads about the many different kinds of fork oil but i've always had great luck with just tranny oil.   

i also replaced my chain and sprockets at 17000 miles because i had run out of adjustment with my raising links.  that was a piece of cake.  ready for the rally!

-bret