Leaky Fork Seals!!!

[scooter842]

Well this is a first for me. I was out riding today with some of my buddies for a bacholor party and after i got my bike loaded on the trailer i noticed that BOTH of my forks were leaking. Not too happy about that and im not sure why they went out. Could it be that they juse wore out wore out? I ride on average about 12-14 times a month both woods and track. We rode a trails area today and found some pretty fun jumps to hit and made a little track out of it (woods are getting borring) and some of the landings were rough, could i have posibly landed and put too much pressure on them? I dont tie my bike down tight, always put it on a stand when not riding and i always release the air presure at the top after every ride. I have had leaky seals on my older bike but they always seemed to last long. Btw i have an 05 yz that i bought back in november last yr, so it still seems to be to early to me. Thanks
Scott

[RaptorRacer888]

I dunno, prolbally you just rode in a sandy area and the sand made it up into the seal.

I bought my 05 YZ 250 back around October and I ride muddy trails, motocross, and the ocasional fields and mine do not leak.

[bikepilot]

Its not uncommon for seals to go bad quickly. Unless the oil level is way to high it would be imposible to put too much pressure on them from a hard landing or something like that. Either the seals have gone bad or they have something stuck under them.

Pry the dust wipers down, then clean out around the seal with contact cleaner (or brake cleaner) and carefully slide a business card under the oil seal. Wipe it around the fork leg like this to push out any sand or dirt that might be stuck under the seal. Put it back together and see if it leaks. If it still leaks, get new seals, if not you are good to go (though if you'v lost much oil you may want to take the forks off and set the oil level).

good luck

[scooter842]

Sweet ill go out there and try that out and see what happens. The left fork is gona have to come off. It pretty much dumped all the oil out and leaked out all over my brake caliper and still have a pretty nice puddle on the trailer. The right fork was leaking just enough for me to notice it. Not near as bad as the left, so i will see what happens. Any of you ever tore apart the Twin chamber kayabas? Any tips? I have replaced fork seals on older forks but not on these.

[bikepilot]

I'v never worked on twin chamber Kayaba's. Given the amount that it is leaking, you will probably need a new seal, but you might get by with cleaning.

Be sure to do something with your front brake - they don't work well with fork oil on them. Brake cleaner and a scotch brit bad work well on the rotor. Sometimes the pads will clean up ok, but often after gettting oiliy they never grip as well, even with repeated cleanings. The best option is to go with new pads if the brake is not up to par. In a pinch you can take the pads out and heat them up with a propane torch till they stop smoking - this will usually burn the oil out. Probably not the best option though - but when I was racing huskys and couldn't get a new set of pads in time for the next race it worked for me

good luck

[Garasaki]

I use camera film or negatives to do the fork seal whipe trick. Works pretty slick...

[robertc]

Hey, Scott, when you haul your bike, do you compress the forks when you pull down on the tie downs? I blew both fork seals on my bike, so i got a fork support. It keeps the forks up when you haul the bikes around.

[Michael Parker]

fork seals go out, just like cranks; everyone has to deal with it. when you get them fixed i suggest the you get a pair of seal savers though.

[Keetoman393]

The seals may not have seated well yet. At my last job we always had that problem because the shafts were so smooth, the seals never had a chance to "set". Our cure was to take some very fine emory cloth and rough up the seals where they make contact. Worked like a charm!

[scooter842]

Ok Its been a week and a half since but heres what ProAMA725 and i found while re-sealing my forks. VERY LITTE OIL. There was hardly anything in there!! The manual calls for 245 cc's of oil in the outer tube and 195 cc's in the damper. Thats a total of 440 cc's that should have been in there and i know for a fact that we didnt drain near that much out of there, and they definately didnt leak that much. So i dunno whats up but maybe thats the reason why they went out so quick. Who knows. I also forgot that when they went out, me and my buddy wwere seing who could do the best stoppie, and we did tons of them. So im thinking that prolly didnt help much either. Anyways we got them back together with the correct ammount of oil and new seals and REVALVED!! ProAMA725 did an awesome job and they feel Completely diffrent now in the small bumps. Im very happy with his work.