polished lower fork tube

jvandyke · Posted: Fri May 06, 2011 11:13 am Post subject: polished lower fork tube

I couldn't stand the mottled, ugly adonized (or coated?) 40 year old condition of the tubes so took a minute to polish one out, guess I'll have to do the other too, eh?
Nothing delicate, 150 grit paper (pretty worn, probably in 300 state), then 600, then wet 1000 then some polish, good enough.

fasterspider · Posted: Fri May 06, 2011 2:32 pm Post subject:

I did it the hard way by just using soap, water and then Mother's aluminum polish.

Big difference in your forks now, the polished one looks pretty good. Cool

ztnoo · Posted: Fri May 06, 2011 3:38 pm Post subject:

That refurbished fork tube looks pretty damn good to me.
There are some great products out there for this kind of restoration.
One of the big things is getting stuff cleaned up enough (grease, grime, and junk) to proceed with further refinement.
Nothing is going to work magic in and of itself.
Lots of this is elbow grease, persistence, and sweat equity.
The more you put into the effort, the better result.
My experience has been with Meguirar's Mag and Aluminum Polish.
I worked on the outside head fins of my 1975 Yamaha RD 125, and they almost look like they are chromed.
That's how good this stuff is when applied with some time and effort.
Rubba Dub Dub....
Laughing

Some things don't take many $$$, just personal effort.

butch8231 · Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 12:09 am Post subject:

nice job!

jvandyke · Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 8:12 am Post subject:

Time invested so far is very minimal, maybe 15 minutes. Could probably get mirror nice with exponential time.
I buttoned one up and tried a test compression on the floor and it seems to bind and rebound is really slow, wonder what I did wrong.
Used ATF for fluid. Thought I measured amount correctly 5.4oz. Maybe got some parts in wrong? Hmmmm

Russell · Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 3:55 pm Post subject:

Sounds normal .
My experience has been is that ATF is at the upper end of the weight of oil you might use in a fork however I'm a heavier bloke and have often had good results using ATF in forks in mid size bikes of that era. However the response of a fork to being compressed 'off the bike' is not in any way like on the bike. On the bike it carries the weight of the front of the motorcycle, as well as having the considerable unsprung weight of wheel and brake components giving further inertia to it's movements. It is perhaps reassuring that the movement seems slow, because you do have some dampening effect.If it popped back fast without the competing effects of sprung weight at one end and unsprung at the other you'd have a veritable pog -stick front end once riding the bike.

fasterspider · Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 5:09 pm Post subject:

jvandyke · Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 10:26 pm Post subject:

I have fork oil too. Manual says 10w-30. Other sites say don't use motor oil. I don't know. I have bigger problems, see fork brace thread.