padawan wrote:Hey all,

Desperately need some assistance. I tried Jon's idea of sticking a broom handle down the fork tube to hold the damping rod and then undo the lower bolt but had no joy. I then fashioned a piece of garden cane and slipped that down the side and it gave me a good hold but still had no joy.

I then thought to try and removed the tube from the lower (with the rod still in place) so that I could get direct access to the lower bush but I couldn't get the fork seal to budge i.e. couldn't get the upper and lower apart. Has anyone got any other ideas? I really want to get this sorted this weekend so that I get everything to the coaters next week.

So after being inundated with suggestions I slept on the problem and pondered

First I decided to put back the spring and spacers and set the pre-load to maximum and then for good measure gave the bolt a good few whacks with a hammer this enabled me to screw the bolt out enough to see the head but it wasn't enough to get the bolt out. I then had a brain wave I took out the bolt that isn't generally used to bleed the forks and then screwed in a longer bolt which essentially served to hold the lower bush and guess what... it did the trick out came the bolt with no issues! So now that I had the experience of stripping one fork the other was a doddle and both forks are stripped and ready for the coaters.

Ah nearly forgot a fair few posts ago I mentioned the fecked head of the rear caliper retaining pin. Anyway, I went for the destructive option and drilled a small hole through it, it was enough to hammer in a torx head allen and off it came, so the caliper is all stripped too so all in all a productive day :D

some times taking time out helps.

i didnt have a clue about the forks sorry.


what colour you having the fork lowers & calipers?

Hey, glad to hear it's all done now, good tip there too!

Erm, how many pages should there be on this topic so far? From the'V4 General' page it shows 7, but when I go to check the topic, it only shows the last 2???

Hey All,

Quick question what's the best colour match for the engine housing's? It's a appears to be an obscure grey colour.

A bit shy on photo's at the moment but will have pic's of the powder coated parts in two weeks.

Ford Graphite Grey is the colour you want, that's what I did mine with,

Hi there, I admire the dedication your pouring into your bike and have enjoyed reading the thread, I only wish I had the time to do the same - children demand all my time. I have a question about the guy on gumtree, did you go with him in the end? as I need to get some work done also and can't seem to find many places in west london.

mattjc wrote:Hi there, I admire the dedication your pouring into your bike and have enjoyed reading the thread, I only wish I had the time to do the same - children demand all my time. I have a question about the guy on gumtree, did you go with him in the end? as I need to get some work done also and can't seem to find many places in west london.

Hi Matt, thanks for the praise unfortunately my re-build is nowhere near as good as some of the others on this site but I'm doing my best. I too have a lot of demands having a one year old little boy and another baby due in two weeks :) My wife said I had to have the re-build done before it arrives but it's unlikely to happen. Also not having a garage and working long hours in the office means build time is very limited - but I determined to get it done. I recently looked back to my first post and that was back in May '08 so it's coming up to nearly a year

Anyway, I recently spoke to the chap off gumtree and he's still doing work but told me that he's not got much on due to the "credit crunch" I am going to get him to do my panels (his prices are still the same). I can't vouch for his work yet but going by the pictures he sent me he seems to do a really good job at a very reasonable price. The best thing to do is get in touch with him yourself. I think I posted the link on here but if not send me a PM and I'll send you his details.

Like you I've found it difficult to find places in west london to get this type of work done - so if anyone else on here knows anyone please post the details.

Questions guys .. I was going to clean up my rear brake caliper and noticed that I couldn't get the pistons to go back in, should these slide in quite easily? I would take the whole unit apart but the the two bolts that keep it together have been rounded off so I just want to clean it up - it was previously working when on the bike, so could it be that they've just seized?

Also, I've noticed that rear brake calipers are hard to come by on fleabay so can I swap this for another unit from something else should the concensus be that it's fooked.

The pistons should just slide in. I've always used a bit of brake fluid as lube to help it on its way. The only rear caliper that is compatible is the NC30 and 35. I don't know about the the SSSA 250 Hondas but they are pretty hard to come by also.

Thanks for the head's up Viper I'll see if some brake fluid frees things up.

Another question is hose sizes, anyone know the bores and lengths I need to replace all of the rad and fuel hoses?