Shovelhead Redemption

I’ve had this pair of replacement fork seals for a year. I’m not known for keeping my bike squeaky clean, but the black grunge that is always present on the left fork is really starting to irritate me. I’ve asked my ex-boyfriend a couple of times to help me with the seals, but he never felt it was enough nastiness to warrant the work. His level of tolerance for oily surfaces is without match. And since he’s a guy and I’m not, he obviously knows what’s better for my bike than I do.

Sturgis is right around the corner. I’m heading to Glacier National Park on the north side of Montana before arriving in South Dakota, and I’m not confident my front tire will make it. I know I need an oil change. I’ve been thinking about getting my bike detailed before the Biker Belles ride, but why do that if I’m going to ooze slime with every hole or bump in my path. Fortunately I just bought a bike lift from a friend, so I can pull the wheel to take to the shop for installation, saving myself some money. After mentioning that I’m planning on replacing my fork seals to a few different groups of people and not getting any responses along the lines of, “are you out of your mind?”, I figure I can do it myself.

I’ve read over the section in the service manual that pertains to front forks a few times. I’m convinced the person crafting the manual went through it and replaced every instance of “have fun with this” with “may cause death or serious injury”. But I’m not afraid – of dying. I’m terrified that I’m going to end up with a bunch of parts on the barn floor and I’ll have to take the parts somewhere or call someone and beg that they come help me.

The first thing I have to do is remove the front wheel so I can take it in for a tire. It makes sense to do the tire and fork seals at the same time, since I have to remove the wheel to do the seals. To begin with, I have to remove the brake caliper from the wheel. The manual suggests hanging it with a bungee cord, and I have to make sure I don’t touch the front brake lever while it’s off. I improvise with a cargo net, which I like because I can hook on to both sides of the caliper. This is when I discover that battery terminals are not the only metric fastener on a Harley, which further validates my angry outburst of 4 years ago when a Harley-Davidson parts guy snottily told me that Harleys don’t use metric (it was rainy and cold and I’d been on the road for three weeks and still a long way from home – and broken down, of course).

I’m lucky because my landlord Ed likes to work on tractors and stuff, and he has a bunch of tools. I also think he might like to help out a little if needed, which he does with the wheel. He donates a much-needed work light to the cause. With the wheel off, I’m on my way to the shop to get a new tire and pick up my oil change supplies.

When I leave the shop with a case of oil and my new front tire installed on my shiny chrome wheel, one of the owners tells me to give him a call on his cell phone if I run into any trouble. I don’t believe that he really means it, and I know I’ll have to be worrying about death or serious injury for that to happen. This is the part where being a woman comes in handy, as I doubt he makes this offer to many of his male customers.

On the way home, the sky is just plain funky. The clouds to the west are intense but not scary. It is clear that rain is

heading my way. At home, the clouds are intense AND scary. Just as I’m heading out the door toward the barn, a massive gust of wind starts tossing around dirt and blowing birds out of trees. I wait for a calm moment and make it to the barn.

Following the manual, I remove the right fork assembly from the bike. I have to borrow a large Crescent wrench of Ed’s, since I don’t have anything big enough to fit the top cap. His 5/8″ socket with the huge socket handle helps me loosen the bolt on the lower triple tree and allows the fork to slide out. Suddenly the rain is pounding on the metal roof. I stand in the door of the barn and watch the storm rage. After a few minutes I return to the bike, and after three pulses of the work light, I have no power. Although there’s still daylight, the barn is dark. I go to the door and see an amazing rainbow lighting up the sky. A very faint double is there as well. The lighting and colors are incredible, and I get the cell phone out and start snapping pictures to post on Facebook.

An hour later I’m back in the barn starting on the second fork assembly. Out it comes, and I take them both over to the work bench for better work conditions. I pull a t-shirt out of my hockey bag and line the jaws of the vise with it as I clamp down on one of the fork tubes. I start unscrewing the cap of the fork tube, just as it tells me to in the manual. I hear noises. It sounds like a spring under very high tension that’s being twisted with every turn of the Vise-Grips. Reeech! Reeeech! Now I’m a little nervous. I’m working with this thing like it’s a loaded shotgun. I’m not looking at the cap from the top. I’m pretty sure it’ll kill me if it comes off. In fact, I’m not quite sure how this whole scenario is going to play out, but I have a feeling that this is where death and serious injury comes in.

 

I make the executive decision to call the guy at the bike shop.

“I wouldn’t have called you if you didn’t tell me I could.”

“How’s it going?”

“I’ve got the fork in the vise, and I’m taking the top off the fork.”

“Really? That’s not how I’d do it.”

“How would you do it?”

“What you want to do is take an allen wrench, it’s a metric, maybe a six millimeter, and take out the screw from the bottom of the lower leg. Then you’ll pull the fork tube out with the seal. Don’t undo that top cap. It’ll end up embedded in the wall. You’ll be wondering why you did that.”

“Yeah, I had a feeling that wasn’t going to end well. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Seems like a piece of cake, but the bolt is stubborn, and I can’t get a good grip with the hex key I have. What would be perfect is a set of hex keys I can put on a ratchet or handle. I don’t see this going anywhere without it, so at about 10:00 pm, I head for Walmart. I find what I’m looking for in a Stanley set. I know this won’t be a collection of tools that I’ll have for life, but it’s a collection of tools that’s available when all other stores are closed. When I get home, I’m too tired to go on and vow to wake early and get this done before it’s too hot.

I do get up right at 6:00 and am out in the garage shortly after. I’m quickly able to get the bolt out of the bottom of the lower leg, remove the dust cap, and pop out the spring clip, but the fork tube still feels hooked. The manual tells me to keep pulling on it, and on the third try, it all breaks free with a stream of fork oil that didn’t find it’s way out the drain hole the night before.

I pull the fork seal off and place the new one on, making sure it’s facing the correct way. I can tell it isn’t going to slide down on its own, so I place the old fork seal on top of it and use a screwdriver and a rubber mallet to press the new seal into the lower leg. I reinstall the spring clip and the dust cap, and one fork down. Yay! That was easy.

Too easy. The second leg is the one with the closed end, the one that the new hex key driver won’t fit in. I have it locked down in the vise and start working on it with the folding hex key set. It takes everything I have, but at some point the bolt gives and starts turning. I’ve managed to bruise the palm of my hand in the process, but I’m overjoyed that I finally got it free.

The joy is short-lived once I realize that the whole tube is turning with the bolt, and I’m once again hearing that high-tension squeaky spring sound. I’m trying to hold the tube in place, but the spring is still turning in there. I try this for quite a while, varying my attack with each attempt, but I’m totally ineffective and start dreading the thought that I’d have to take it in. This is when I realize that 7:30 here is 9:30 on the east coast, and I text an old friend in Georgia to see if he’s up and ready to provide tech support.

Crazy Dave responds to my text with a phone call a few minutes later, at about the time I hear Ed get in his truck. I walk over to the door, and Ed pulls up. I ask him if he’ll show me how to use his air wrench, since that’s what the manual suggested. Crazy hears my conversation with Ed and catches on quickly,

“I bet you’re removing the bottom bolt from the lower legs.”

“I’m trying.”

Crazy gives me some tips, we catch up a little on life, and the call is over. Ed has gone to do whatever it is he goes to do first thing every morning but promises he’ll be back to help. There isn’t much I can do at this point. In order to change the oil, I’ll need to warm the bike up a little, and there’s no way I’m starting it on the lift. I go back into the house and clean up a little. Ed finally calls, and we go out to the barn to get to work.

We end up cutting off the hex key from the folding set and inserting it into a big cordless drill. It keeps spinning. And spinning. And spinning. I get the brilliant idea to pull back on the fork tube with all my strength while Ed drills, and sure enough, I go flying back when the screw finally releases. Woohoo! It’s amazing how good it feels when something finally works.

I change out the fork seal and reinstall the forks and wheel without a hitch. But the work isn’t done yet. I got new risers last year with my new ape hangers, but the risers weren’t chrome originally, and even though I’d bought the new lower risers around a year ago, they still weren’t in. That job goes without incident, and then I’m on to the oil change. Again, piece of cake. So while I’m on a roll, I decide to fix my ghetto exhaust.

Last year I decided that as much as I’ve always loved my Vance and Hines Staggered Big Shots exhaust, I was ready for something new. This comes into the “if it ain’t broke” category. I love the sound, the performance is good, new exhaust is at least $600. I’m really just looking for a cosmetic change. After much deliberation, I decided to remove the heat shields and wrap the pipes with black heat tape. It looks pretty cool, but at some point in the last couple of months, one end had unwrapped and got tattered while dragging. It had been tie-wrapped back on, but there were a few inches of shiny pipe sticking out, and it looks ragged.

The exhaust came with slash cut tips that faced down. I’ve been thinking about putting them back on the end of the pipes and then wrapping the heat tape up to the edge. I also had the idea of facing the tips outward instead of down, so I check it out. I like it. I have no idea how I’ll make it work. The tips have three steps: the first goes into the end of the exhaust pipes, the second step, a little wider in diameter, has the hole that previously bolted onto the heat shields that are no longer with us, and the last step is the part I want to show. The second step with the hole is not in the pipe, so I’m not sure how to make the tips stay in.

This is when I drag the fourth poor sucker into my little (now going on 24 hours) project. I call Rebel J, hot rod and chopper builder extraordinaire, and ask what I should do. I’m getting a little burned out at this point and would love to hear him say something like, “hot glue gun”, but no such luck. Drill a couple of holes dummy. No, he didn’t call me a dummy, but it really was an obvious solution. I just didn’t want to do it. But it’s now or never, and I pull out some good quality drill bits I purchased a long time ago and have never used. I find machine screws that matched the diameter of one of the bits, and I even stumble upon an old tap and die set with an appropriately sized tap.

I think I can do this with the pipes on the bike, but it quickly becomes apparent that my lazy ass needs to take the pipes off the bike. I do some unwrapping, some soaking, some drilling, some tapping and some screwing – and then rewrapping, strapping and painting with the heat paint – and then the pipes are ready to go back on. I wrestle with the reinstallation of the exhaust, because I’m really hot and tired at this point. But it’s finally done, and I like the way it looks. Kind of. The cuts are tilted up a little more than I had envisioned, but at least they’re even.

Now I’m ready to get on my bike and go for a ride… and here comes the afternoon thunderstorm. Test ride tomorrow, probably to the salon to get my nails done. That black line of grease below the tip isn’t very attractive.