6th Gen Fork Damper Bolt Stuck....

I am planning a trip at the end of the month and decided to do some maintenance on the front end. Since the bike is fairly new to me and I took the front wheel off to get the tire replaced, I decided that I would drain the fork fluid and replace it. The forks came off no problem and I followed the service manual directions for taking the forks apart. The fork damper bolt on one of the forks will not come out though... It took quite a bit of effort to loosen it, yet now it just spins freely in both directions. When I hold the fork damper and attempt to tighten or loosen this bolt, it does nothing. I have also tried installing the spring, collar, and fork bolt to put some pressure on the damper...

Any other suggestions?

One other thing that came to mind was to reinstall the forks and the front tire so I could have someone sit on the bike to compress the springs and put additional pressure on the damper. I imagine the fluid has never been replaced and the bolt is froze to the threads in there...

Josh

 

Can you show us the bolt you are referring to? Back in the day, oh some twenty plus years ago I did a few and we would always use an impact wrench for the lower damper rod bolt because of exactly what you are experiencing. I don't know if this is the same situation or not without more info.

 

Fork Picture

There is an arrow at the bottom of the fork pointing to the bolt I am talking about. I did try an impact, but you can still hear it spinning inside even while holding the damper rod. Either the bottom half of the "fork damper" or the "oil lock piece" is spinning with the bolt it seems.



Thanks,
Josh

 

Have you tried heat? I use a heat gun and keep the springs in with the cap etc still on. Then after I get the bolt as hot as I can I ggive the ratchet a good whack with either my hand or a hammer and it has always broke free. But if you have access to an air impact wrench would be even better. These bolts come with thread locker on them and the heat will soften the loctite enough to loosen it.

 

I'll give it a try. Thanks for the tip!

 

I think you need to re-install the top cap and have a go at the bottom bolt your refering to. It is a 6 mm allen head me believes. I dont understand why you were monkeying around with that unless you were planning on replacing the fork seals :banana:??? you didnt mention the year but some of the bikes have drain bolts at the bottom legs, as they cheaped out later on, you had to remove the entire fork tube and dump the oil out from the top. Even then, you wouldnt touch that bottom dampening bolt, Anyway....

That being sed, I had a situation where the bottom allen was stripped. I got to your point and removed the clip in each fork tube, because I was doing fork seals, I had the fork out of the triple trees and used a drill bit to drill off the head, then just used the slide hammer style of wango-ing the fork stantion and off it came. All that was left was the threaded part of the bolt that went into the dampening rod your tawking about. So, all your gona need is a drill bit a new copper crush washer, and a 6 mm bolt...gud luck, stuff like that can ruin your day yah know....

 

Hindsight is 20/20, that's for sure! I was following along with the service manual and then realized that I wasn't planning on replacing the seals.... Oops! ...Too late at that point though as I tried to tighten it back up and that didn't work...

Unfortunately this is probably going to be my best move... The forks aren't attached to the bike at this point anyway. I imagine the bolt is froze in the "oil lock piece" and it just spins freely inside the fork when I try to tighten or loosen. Shouldn't be to difficult to drill the head off though as long as replacement parts aren't made of gold and difficult to acquire.

Josh

 

You will not have a problem sourcing the bolt and miss-alien fixings for that there bike you gots...Unless the honda parts person does not have a pulse or the IQ of a FL-grapefruit...

Gud LuCK!!! wut dont kill us, makes us a walking encyclopedia yah know....:smile: Make sure you got an excellent drill bit and go slow with good light on the subject....

Warren

 

Well tried to drill the head off real quick after work tonight and of course the bolt just keeps on spinning right along with the drill bit... :chaingun:

Just got to figure out a way to keep that sucker from spinning so I can drill the head off and pull the darn thing apart. Not much room to wedge something in there to keep it from spinning though. I guess tomorrow is another day to figure it out. I should refer back to "if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it", LOL.

Just over a week and I am suppose to be taking off on the VFR for a week long trip.

Josh

 

They use to make a tool that went down the fork and held the dampner. But if you have the other one out maybe you could figure out something to hold it. I like to do all my work also but sometimes if I. Just can't get something I break down and take it to someone. Were you using an air impact wrench? And you tried the heat?

 

Josh,

If you are in a pinch, I have a spare set of forks you can borrow or buy so you don't screw up your trip. They are off a 2003 but they are clean and straight.

 

If you re-assemble the fork tube, you should have that rod dampening bolt secure, at that point you can drill her and it wont spin. May be different for your set-up than what I experienced though...It may be spinning because there is no spring pressure on it...keep us posted

 

Might need to take you up on this. How much you want for them? Any ideas on what shipping timeframe might be? I am taking off for the trip next Thursday. :hss:

Josh

 

Success!!!!! Almost......

Well I got a nice sharp drill bit and knocked the head off. Problem now is that the rest of the bolt is stuck in the bottom of the fork damper...



When I spin the remainder of the bolt, the nut inside the hole in the picture and video below spins freely but the rest of the rod (that I can hold onto) doesn't spin. I wonder if the rod broke inside the damper?? That would be *sarcasm* wonderful *end sarcasm* news. I'm dancing a bit in uncharted territory at this point...



[video=youtube;8_ZBJjhgbu0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_ZBJjhgbu0&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Hopefully this nonsense will help someone else out in the future. Lesson learned: Don't "fix" things that aren't broke before a big trip! LOL

Josh

 

If I run across the border to ship out of Ogdensburg it could probably be there in a few days. Not sure what the cost would be. I shipped a set of R1 forks to Cali last Saturday and it was $55 but that was UPS ground as cheap as it gets. You could just borrow them if you like. I was going to try to get $250 for the pair but you only need one so I could just ship the one fork if you like and you can send it back after the trip or when you get yours sorted.

Ok so I read your last post and it looks like you may be ok??

 

It looks like I may be good to go and its only 1am. Test ride tomorrow to make sure everything worked out okay. I have some pictures to upload tomorrow also, in case anyone else has a similar issue and is searching for an answer.

Josh

 

A few misc pictures to help show what is going on inside the damper

This is a picture of the bottom of the damper. A snap ring holds everything inside the damper and the oil lock piece slides over this up to the hole you see on the tube.



Here is the snap ring and the part of the damper that was just spinning around when I was trying to get the bolt out.



A picture of how these parts are assembled inside the damper. You can see here that the small piece is separate from the damper rod and if the bolt is froze in there, I couldn't imagine any amount of force that would have got it out without disassembling it to this point. I put a wrench on the nut above the aluminum housing and a pair of pliers on the bolt threads, and the rest of the bolt came out with very little force...



The local Honda dealer did not have the bolt in stock to replace, so I went to the hardware store and picked one up. It is an M8 x 1.25 (thread pitch). The actual length of this bolt is 27mm, but they don't carry such an animal at the hardware store (only 25mm or 30mm). I went with the 30mm one and used my bench grinder to get it to the length I needed. My crush washer looked good so it was reused.

******
I had trouble getting the bolt to thread into the damper piece without it spinning and then I realized the threads inside that aluminum piece were full of loctite and the bolt was catching on it. An M8x1.25 tap cleaned up the threads nicely and after assembling everything, I didn't even need to put any force on the damper to torque the bolt down to 14ft-lbs.

If you opt for the hardware store bolt, you must grind a little of the head off the bolt so the front axle doesn't catch when you reassemble everything. I figured this out the hard way and had to use a die grinder to "take a little off the top".
******

Thanks again for all the help. I'm going to finish buttoning everything back up and hopefully take off on a successful test ride today...

Josh

 

Wow some job. Glad you finaly got it. You may not know but maybe somebody reading this can answer me. So the sixth gen forks are different than the 5th? Because when I took mine apart I don't remember anything like what the bolt was stuck in. Thanks and good luck with your trip now