Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

About 3 months ago I noticed my fork seals were leaking a bit (a small amount of crap accumulating at the joint) so I bought some new seals thinking "When I get some time, I'll replace those".
Monday night I actually made the time to do it. When I pulled the front end apart I noticed brake dust stuck to everything so I gave it a good clean and degrease. Tuesday I took the forks in to get the seals replaced then put the whole lot back together before riding to work yesterday.

As an aside... I hate it when you get almost everything apart - you've got one more thing to undo and then you realise that when the book says "using the long handle holder (Special Service Tool) unscrew the ..." you really DO need that particular SST and there's no other way around it... Fecking SST's!

Apparently the fork oil had been slowly leaking onto my brakes. It wasn't until yesterday when my brakes suddenly worked bloody well that I realised how bad they'd become... They had been getting progressively worse so slowly that I hadn't even noticed.

Moral of the story: If you notice something that needs fixing - don't stuff around! Either fix it straight away or get someone else to.

Probably old news to most of you, but a wake-up call for me!

mate...
you hadn't noticed fork oil on the brakes????
do you do a bike inspection BEFORE each ride?
a full check is MANDATORY...before you put your life
on a 200kg lump of steel and rubber...
sorry to sound so incredulous...its just that I am....

cheers

Of course I do!

Do you notice brake dust on your brakes? Do you clean it off every day before you ride? Sorry, but I don't. That's exactly what it looked like.

I'm not talking about a lot of fork oil - the level in my forks hadn't even dropped appreciably... We're talking about an extremely small amount of oil here...

my Front RHS fork doesn't leak any more.. I think it's leaked all that it can... Still gotta get it fixed when i can afford it.. prob in 2 weeks time..

Russell wrote:Of course I do!

Do you notice brake dust on your brakes? Do you clean it off every day before you ride? Sorry, but I don't. That's exactly what it looked like.

I'm not talking about a lot of fork oil - the level in my forks hadn't even dropped appreciably... We're talking about an extremely small amount of oil here...

sorry mate...as I said...I was just a bit incredulous when I saw ya post..

are you sure its fork oil..thats affecting the brakes...not leaking brake fluid?
just a thought


cheers

It was definitely from the forks.
Believe me Ian, I was as surprised as you sounded , which is why I thought I'd post it. Obviously a little bit of fork oil goes a loooonnng way.

I'd also like to clarify how bad my brakes were... The brakes were about as good as they were when I purchased the bike (from a dealer who apparently had given it a "full" service). Which was crap compared to how good they were when I put decent pads on - which is about how good they are now after I cleaned them.

I've had this happen to my ZX9 on the left fork, took me a week to notice it because it isn't that easy to see the left one when it is on the side stand and the steering lock only works when the bars are fully to the left...so you can't see the fork or caliper unless you are making a point of looking by getting down on your hands and knees.

It was only when I put it on the paddock stand to wash it that it became obvious. Got the seal fixed, unloaded half a can of brake cleaner onto the caliper and they're good enough to do stoppies when someone pulls out in front of you...