Our experts at CMM are back with all the answers to your questions! Fill in the form at the bottom of the page to ask your burning questions! This time, we talk you through fitting forks!
Fitting externally sprung forks can be a real hassle unless you know the wrinkles. Remove the lower yoke pinch bolt, carefully tap in a flat bladed screwdriver just enough to expand the fitting allowing the stanchion to pass through.
A drawbar can be used to pull/refit the stanchion back into the base of the top yoke. Your bike will probably run an axle with the correct screw pitch but if not get a rod threaded and add a crosspiece.
To keep up to date on Q&A and everything Classic Motorcycle Mechanics, like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter here.
Screw the rod into the top of the leg, pull up until it registers into the top yoke, maintain the tension, remove the screwdriver, fit the bolt and remove the drawbar.
Fit the top bolt through the yoke and check everything’s properly in place.
As a child Bertie (well, Robert back then… blame his sister for the nickname) was exposed to motorcycles thanks to his uncles. They would show up at his house with a lovely lady as pillion throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
After a naughty time on field bikes (it’s what we did back then) Bertie passed his test in the early 1990s and became a reporter for MCN in 1995, moving to the sports desk and covering World Superbikes in 1996.
With a change to Bike Magazine in 1997, he stayed until 2000 as news, features and road test editor. Moving into PR with Cosworth, Bert was bored with cars and returned to bikes in 2001 with Two Wheels Only, becoming editor in 2002 and leaving to be freelance at the end of 2004.
With almost a decade freelancing, Bertie joined Mortons in 2013 and became editor of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics, a post he’s desperately clung to, to this day. And no, he’s never had a pretty girl on the back of his bike.
[email protected]