Pro-Tip on fork cap torque

[RHill]

04/05 GSXR 600/750's call for 25.5 ft/lbs of torque on the fork caps.......that is twenty five and a half foot pounds.  

 

A good sized crescent wrench is about a foot long, so if you push on it till you feel the pressure about the equivalent to 25lbs, your good.  

 

Now if you happen to have the correct socket and a 3/4" impact, don't use it.  Yes, putting around 200lbs of torque on the cap will probably secure it.....and it may make you feel like a man....but it really isn't necessary, and the next person to work on the shit you touch may write a post on the internet about how much of a dipshit you are.

 

a 28" breaker bar, 1 1/4" deepwell socket and a torch shouldn't be required to remove a fork cap.....let alone putting enough force into the breaker bar that you almost fall over when it does break loose.

 

 

/vent

Edited July 29, 2015 by RHill

[Al Z. Heimer]

^^^^ This or a slathering of red loctite.

[RHill]

Tell me you loosened the pinch bolt on the triple clamp, first.

 

I try to unscrew my front axle while the pinch bolts are tight too....isn't that how you are supposed to do it?

 

 

 

 

Fork was out of the triple, solidly mounted in a bench vice with a spare vortex clip-on...no pinch bolt friction.  Speaking of pinch bolts though.....this guy he-man'd the crap out of the pinch bolts on the lower casting as well.

 

No locktite, galling, corrosion or anything else, when it broke free I could spin it by hand.....it was just torqued to hell and back. 

 

These are the forks that came with the track bike originally, the ones where the caliper bolts were over-torqued to the point of stripping, the brake pad pins were sealed in by construction adhesive, and the nice guy sold me a motorcycle with a shock that wasn't even bolted in place (there was a bolt, with no nut securing it). 

[F4iguy]

Honda owners "never" have those kind of problems. The torque chart is like the bible.