Ryan
Member
Hey there to all and hope to meet some more good friends. My name is Ryan and I live in Windsor, Ontario, Canada (right across the ditch from Detroit). I have been working on my bike for about 3 yrs now and am getting to the put back together stage. I have powder coated the frame, swing arm, centre stand, wheels and am about to do the lower fork legs as well-the last step before assembly. Here is where I have also encountered my strangest problem so far. I am only the second owner of this bike. The orig owner only put just under 50,000km (that is about 30,000 miles) on it then put it away. He fired it up a few times each year and always drained the fluids for the winter so I got a fairly decent bike to begin with. Being that the case, I still wanted to make it my own. Now I have followed every manual tech tip and on line bit of help and have pretty well been able to do everything on my own without paying a shop an arm and leg. There is not many places around here that will even look at a bike older than 1990 let alone a GL 1100. Well, here is my problem... I have the front forks almost completely disassembled, I just cannot get the upper sliders out of the lower legs. I have everything else off and out. The springs, spacers, damper tubes, allen nut, spring clamp and spacer. The only thing left holding the two parts together is the old seal and I just cannot budge it at all. I have tried pushing it in then pulling sharply, heating it turning it, you name it-if there was something in a manual or on a tech tip page I tried it but I just CANNOT get the tube out of the lower. I don't wany to take it to a shop that is an hour drive away just to find out I missed a simple step or am just doing something wrong. So if there is anyone who can offer me any advice or let me know what it is that I am doing or have done wrong I would greatly appreciate it. I hope to hear from someone soon as I getting very frustrated. If there is no idea's floating around out there then you are welcome to say hello back. I am sure that I will probably run into a few more stumbles during re-assembly than the tear down. Thanks-Ryan.