Suspension Upgrade Underway

I had a busy weekend, partly due to the fact that I finally have all the parts I need to do my suspension upgrade project. JDRadman has been a huge help, to the extent that he even forwarded me some brake line parts I can't source locally. I can't thank him enough, so I am not even going to try, although whenever I meet Jim in person I'm going to ply him with bourbon and beer.

Saturday morning I saw that the weather was nearly perfect. This meant I had to (oh, the horror) go for a ride with the wife. After a quick shopping trip, we headed out to burn up some fuel, since I need the tank to be light when I lift it for the shock swap. We hit an old railroad bed I like to ride, and I could easily feel the weakness of the stock suspension riding two-up with luggage over small whoops.

We got home and had some lunch, and then it was time to work... So I forced myself to start. I always have a terrible inertia about these things.

The job started well, I took some measurements of the bike loaded and unloaded, as a baseline for comparison. Before the job, the bike looks like this:



Then I took off the plastic, front wheel, handlebars, beak and fork tubes. This took very little time, and I was feeling great.



Next it was time to attack the triple tree. The big outer nut came off easily enough, but the countertube frustrated my every effort. Heat didn't break it loose, PB Blaster didn't seem to help. I actually bent a big Bondhus T-handle in the middle of the beefy handle, all to no avail. After attacking it for far too long, I gave up in disgust and defeat, forced to leave my bike on the walkway as a reminder of my mechanical ineptitude. When I retreated the bike looked just like it does in the above picture, except that I replaced the jack with stands and strapped the centerstand tightly into place.

I awakened the next morning keenly aware of the challenge that awaited me. It took me three aeropressed double-shot americanos to get motivated. But motivated I finally was, and I attacked the problem again. First I tried the 'right' tool for the job, and found that things were still as tight as... , so I gave that up for lost. I was within perhaps five minutes of just cutting the thing off, when I decided that if I was going to be destructive, I could perhaps be intelligently destructive.

I locked a pair of vise grips on to the countertube just as tight as I could get it. Then I took the hollow handle from my jack and put that over the handle of the vise grips. The fit was surprisingly good. Stretching my arms from breaker bar to pillion grab handle, I pulled for all I was worth. After an agonizing moment POP! went the tube, and out it came without further drama. There is no visible corrosion, no hint of red (or any) loctite, just a countertube with damaged threads where I used the wrong tool for the job but got 'er done.

After that progress was as expected, but I was watching the clock because I had to leave the house. I assembled the trees, measured and found I needed 7 mm of spacer for the top nut, and started searching. I didn't have anything that would fit directly, but I did find a small piece of 6061 T6 aluminum that I had cut from the end of a large bar at some point in the distant past. Said bar was about 8 mm thick, and just about the same diameter as the bearing surface of the nut, hallelulia!

I knew I spent all that money on a mini-lathe for a reason. It was a matter of perhaps half an hour to set up and cut a spacer that fit perfectly. The only closeup I took of the thing is this blurry one of the assembly during a test fitting. I don't like the look of that seal thingamie, and I believe I'll hit up the Yamaha dealer for a replacement.





In no time at all, I had the triples installed and the front forks fitted.



Then I got the front tire back on and had myself a rolling chassis again.




And aside from the brake caliper and handlebars, which are also in place, that's what the bike looks like right this second. We had to go out for the afternoon and evening, which rather killed my plans of completing the installation.

Basically, to complete the front, all I need to do is get the brake line installed. I believe I have a routing that will work, but I'll test-fit that later today. Then it's on to the rear, to put on this bad boy:



More soon!