Fork oil smells like cat farts? Why? Repair Footage Friday

[adventureprone]

Hey folks.

Every friday we release footage of George and Ian doing some pre-trip restoring/repair. This week Ian rebuilds his front shocks. The fork oil smells awful and there is no beer!

‪Spooning leads to Forking - Repair Footage Friday‬‏ - YouTube

*Rated R for language*

[pushrod]

What do you feed your cat!?

Two comments: First, the draining bit is unnecessary, as you can pour the oil an gunk out when you pull the shock apart.

You cannot clean the fork internals enough. Clean, clean, clean!

Second, if the springs are a bit compressed, you can 'patch them' (in view of limited funds and time) with PVC spacers (made from Sked 80 pipe) that will give you your minimum length (add a half-inch).

[The_AirHawk]

If you need to lengthen a sacked fork spring, just "shock" it by slapping it hard against smooth pavement (or hard-topped workbench). It has to be smooth, or you will damage the surface of the coils. Just slap, spin it in your hand 1/3 turn, slap, spin it, slap..... flip end-over, repeat, etc. - until you reach the uncompressed-length you're looking for. You can gain a couple of cm of length, depending on spring-weight.

THEN set your sag with an appropriate-diameter section of PVC pipe (sch 80 is good, but 40 works just as well).

The spring will also not re-sag nearly as much, as you have now "stress relieved" it.

The oil smells bad because they used fish-oil extract mixed with the mineral oil. I do not know why, something to do with anti-oxidation I suspect.

[seruzawa]

I'm not sure that those things holding the front wheel on on an SOHC CB750 should be called "shocks".

"Slightly dampened springs" might be more accurate.