Fork hard chroming

[Aidan]

My 1982 Yamaha has eaten it's fork seals and there are nice deep gouges in the crome of the fork leg. I've had fork legs re-hard chromed before and it cost about £150 (including new seals being fitted), but I don't want to spend so much on this bike as it's meant to be my cheap commuter bike.

I've tried a bit of 'wet and dry' sanding but don't think I've got deep enough.

How deep can a scrape be before there's no point changing the seal?

[Ichy]

you could try filling the scratch with JB weld, superglue, or epoxy adhesive then sand it down, won't last forever but should work ok.
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[sickpup]

Depending on the bike about £150 for a new pair of stanchions.

[stinkwheel]

You can do a bodge repair on pitted forks that is very effective although not all that aesthetic.

Firstly, clean all the rust off, down to bare metal, make sure you get rid of any flakes of chrome and scrape the rust out of the pits with a stanley knife blade.

Degrease the stanchions thoroughly using a solvent, you must completley remove all traces of oil clinging to them.

Now get some Araldite epoxy resin, it is improtant to use the original slow setting stuff (now marketed as precision?), NOT araldite rapide which absorbs water and swells over time.

Mix it up and skim over all the damaged parts of the fork stanchions, try to use as little as will fill the defects whilst still having it standing a little proud of the surface.

Leave to set for AT LEAST 24 hours.

Now using progressivley finer grades of wet and dry paper, polish down the araldite 'till it is perfectly smooth and level with the rest of the chrome surface, finish off with a cream polishing agent like autosol then a wax polish.

This works, I have done it many times. The critical parts are 1) How clean and grease free you get the surfaces. 2) The amount of elbow grease expended polishing.

Fit gaiters.

[Paddy Blake]

When you are putting the new seals on wrap a piece of paper
around the top of the fork sticking over a bit and put some
greace on it.then put the seal onto this and slide it down to where
it should be.this will get it passed some marks that could damage it.

[Whosthedaddy]

I have now seen 3 threads on how to change a fork seal, each one making it look more complicated than the the previous . I was going to have a go, bu I may just hand the seals, oil and dismantled forks to the workshop and say pick the bones out of that

My forks wereleaking on the ZXR due to them being pitted, each time they were compressed they would wear a small chanel in the rubber. This was filed smooth and filled with epoxy, filed smooth again as a quick fix. They may have leaked a little, but would be a make do until either a new pair were sourced or they were rechromed, shame the bike never lasted long enough .
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[Aidan]

Cheers - think I'll give the epoxy idea a go and if it fails too quickly will either flog the bike or pay to have the forks ground down and hard cromed.

[Aidan]

Have a crazy idea - why not rely on a 1982 200cc 2stroke to commute 20,000 miles a year round 3 motorways a day? So I've bit the bullet and paid to have the forks re hard-chromed and re-built

How do you size gaiters (to know which to buy)? On the diameter of the fork or the diameter of the fork outer (bit the wheel is attached to)?

[stinkwheel]

Have you considered having a look round the breakers for a front end off something else that might fit? There is a possability you might find something with altogether better brakes etc for much the same as a re-chrome costs.

Wonder if a 350LC or even a YPVS front end would fit? They were made at around the same time.

Gaiters are stretchy, you just need something roughly the right size.

[Aidan]

B******s!
Having waited all this time for a '10 day turnaround' The forks arrived last week without any oil. I paid an extra £10 for oil on top of the £200 for the rechroming only to notice the forks are more pitted then when I sent them.
pittedforks.co.uk

[hmmmnz]

i hope you have sent them a dirty email demanding your money back, how do these firms stay in business,
must be time to start looking for some more fork legs mabee ones with better brakes as well.
keep us informed
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[Aidan]

I have to admit, I used them a few years ago on my old SV650 forks - they were quick and the forks lasted the five years until I sold the bike. To be honest if the job they end up doing lasts then I'll still be reasonably happy

[Whosthedaddy]

[owdamer]

I sent mine to a place called www.hardchromeplating.co.uk.
Bunch of twats. It took em 6 weeks, they scuffed all the paint on the legs and the chrome was left unpolished.

[Whosthedaddy]

[Ichy]

[Aidan]

I've phoned them every week!! £200 did include the oil, but as the forks need to be fitted to the headstock (right word? Part that connects the wheel to the handlebars) to seal, they said they'd include the oil for me to add. They didn't and I couldn't be bothered to call them again as I thought it'd just take longer.

I think it boiled down to the fact my forks don't fit a 'centre-less grinder' and therefore needed to be hand ground which took an extra 3 weeks. Then they found bubbles in the chrome, which meant they needed to start again - which they managed in under a week! But the bubbles are still there.
TBH I'm happy to allow a few extra days for problems, but not this long.

If they don't fix them and return them by the end of next week then I'll look towards some recompense. I know they're individually owned small business and I respect the crap they get from the government. I'm a solicitor and hate threatening small businesses.

[Ichy]

[KatOwner]

Are they special forks or of an unusual design? Seems odd that they can't fit into the machine properly and won't seal without the top yoke.

I am looking to get the Kat's forks done this winter to get rid of some corrosion at the upper end. It's not going to affect the seals or cause leaks... it's just unsightly.

I don't want to get a perfectly servicable set of forks ruined, so I am definitely after a good firm to do mine. ANyone got GOOD stories to tell ?

[Aidan]

They've returned them to me, one's fine, the other isn't. They're picking the faulty one up again tommorrow.

They're for a 1982 Yamaha RS200. Hardly high tech!
Instead of the forks being gripped in place they're bolted through the headstock, so they can't be sealed until on the bike.

I still believe when they finish they'll do a good job, it's just rubbish that they've taken so long.