R6 forks oil change - help

[victorb]

Decided to change the oil in my R6 forks. I removed one fork from the bike, opened the cap bolt, pulled the assembly out. Following the R6 service manual: "Step 1: Loosen nut" - this nut in the picture below (red arrow):

So I put an open end wrench on the nut, and start turning. The preload adjuster starts turning with it.. uh right.. I grab a wrench, put it on the preload adjuster nut (blue) to keep the preload adjuster in place, take the open end wrench to the nut and start pulling.. nothing.. pull a little more.. nothing.. the damn nut is not budging one bit! I kept trying harder until I noticed that the preload adjuster nut was starting to take a beating due to the amount of force I was applying to it.

So my questions is: am I missing something, or should I just keep going at it until it breaks free? Since this is all threaded on a small diameter rod, I don't want to bend it by applying brute force if there is a trick I am not aware of..

 

[bd43]

The nut acts as a jam nut or lock nut. Are you turning it the right way? What you are doing holding the adjuster in place while turning the nut is correct. You should be turning the nut counter-clockwise to loosen if you were looking at it with the blue adjuster away from you.

Other than that, there is no trick to it.

Hope that helps.

 

[victorb]

Hey Daryl - thanks for the info. I'm fairly sure I was turning the right way, but now you put the doubt in me
Now that I have confirmation that there's nothing more to it, I'll go back with a longer open end wrench so I can have more leverage on thist nut as opposed to the adjuster nut. It must have gotten stuck on the threads somehow.

Thanks again!

 

[FinalImpact]

Did you put it together last? The reason i ask is this; if the last guy forces the rod into the aluminum it could be gulled and stuck. If you did it and you remember it threading on by hand, its just tight and more torque is required.

Do you see hints of "Loctite" green or blue? That could hold it.

You could break the jamb nut free and grab some brass, copper or aluminum shim stock and bend it around the shaft. Now grab the shaft over the shim stock (which is protecting the shaft) with vise grips and try to unscrew the alum cap. Just a thought. . . .

 

[victorb]

No, I got them off ebay last year and didn't open them up before putting them on. I don't think they were ever opened since they were rather new.

Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't have time to take care of them this week, but since winter is back in the northeast I'll have plenty of time to get the job done this weekend.

 

[victorb]

2nd attempt was successful! I ended up clamping the fork in the lower triple with the cap open so I could get better leverage on the nut..

Random observations on the job in case someone looks this up later:
- Loosen the lock nut by turning it clockwise. You want it to go down on the rod which has a regular thread, so the old "pointing your thumb downward, turn in the direction your fingers are curling" works fine
- Taking all (most of) the old oil out takes a while. I did it in three steps: Drain the oil, let it settle down at the bottom of the fork, drain again, let it sit, drain again.
- If you don't have a rod puller, reattach the cap bolt to the damper rod before filling up the fork with the new oil else you won't be able to get the rod out of the fork.
- After filling up with new oil, make sure to stroke the rod slowly until you can feel damping throughout the stroke.. Again, this takes a while (like 10/15 strokes).
- Cap bolt is 27mm - Make sure you have a 27mm socket handy before you start the job.

My forks came from a 2008 R6S and the oil that came out was quite nasty. Brownish green (it was probably green when it was new), with quite a bit of black sediment.. Probably a good idea to do this as regular maintenance every 2 or 3 years. It's really not complicated, but it does take a while.

Useless pictures follow:

and the money shot: