Honda RC163 Replica - Fork Seals

I'm not a big fan of doing fork seals, especially on bikes that don't have a center stand, getting the front in the air while keeping everything safe and stable is always a challenge. On this occasion I used my over center wheel clamp, a ratchet strap to hold the bike to that, 4 car batteries to weigh the stand down and a motorcycle lift under the engine to lift the front up. A proper pain but it's absolutely secure and isn't going to fall over damaging either me or the bike.

It's pretty straightforward, drop out the front wheel - the drum brace and brake cable have to come off to allow that, then it's just a matter of undoing the spindle clamp bolts, removing the nut and then tapping the spindle out. Then it's 2 bolts to remove the mud guard, loosen the fork retaining clamp bolts and the bolts for the clip ons. The forks then slide downwards and can easily be removed and taken to the bench for working on.

The dust seals on mine had been glued in, I have no idea what had been used but it had gone really hard and needed to be chipped off, they were the wrong ones for the job and they had gone like iron so they are in the bin now. The forks are off a Honda CB350 Four, very simple affairs, a circlip holds in the seal, once that is removed a 6mm allen bolt is removed from the bottom with a rattle gun and the inner fork can be withdrawn. you have to use a rattle gun otherwise the inner part of the fork tends to rotate when you try and loosen the bolt, the rattle gun makes it very easy. They hold 125 cc of 10 weight fork oil, they each had about 25 cc left in them, which is less than ideal. I wanted to get the seals out first so I could see what size they were, I had been told they were 400/4 forks but when I checked that out the 400 forks are much bigger diameter so I had to cross reference them to make sure I got the right size - 33, 46, 10.5. I ordered the right dust seals while I was at it, the oil I already had in stock.

While they are apart the bottoms of them will be cleaned and painted gloss black for added authenticity, it will all work and look very much better when I have finished. Reassembly is a reversal of removal, if you have the parts on hand the whole job could be done in about 1 1/2 hours, obviously longer if like me you are repainting while it's in bits.