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• Disassembling 37mm forks - Honda CX500EC, CX650ED

Disassembling 37mm forks - Honda CX500EC, CX650ED, CX500TC Turbo, CX650TD Turbo

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These particular forks are from a CX650ED; there may be minor differences to the forks used in other 37mm models, and we will document them as we become aware of them. The forks in question - this is the non-TRAC side, note that Turbos have TRAC on both fork legs:

These ones are already off the bike as you can see, and have the bottom cap still in place. A 14mm socket removes the nuts holding it on:

Nuts and associated washers:

Above where the axle sits is a bolt that needs to be removed:

Best to drain the fork oil before this point using the drain bolt on the side; we don't have a photo of that yet, but we will get one. Be careful compressing the forks in an attempt to drain the old oil more quickly; it will exit with surprising force and make quite the mess... This particular bolt wasn't too stuck, but showed that the inside of the forks look pretty gooey:

Easiest way of undoing the top cap is to put them back in the triple tree and torquing it back up so that you can stop the fork from twisting as you turn the cap:

A large shifting spanner with a thin cloth covering the cap should have them off pretty easily - they shouldn't be on TOO tightly. Be careful of the spring pressing against the cap - apply slight downward pressure as you are unscrewing the cap to prevent the spring from shooting off into the back of the workshop... or your eye. It's not that much pressure but better to be safe. Again with the gooey inside:

Now the spring can be pulled out:

Now we can turn our attention to the dust seal:

It should be able to be pried up carefully - easier if you have one tool on each side to apply even force:

Once that comes up, you can see the grease holder and plastic ring beneath it:

The grease holder is often omitted on reconstruction... here's why:

This one was touched gently and it disintegrated everywhere. Not really the kind of stuff that's helpful to have floating around inside your fork. Beneath that you should be able to see the circlip:

Closer (will add some arrows to this pic):

These are often slightly rusted in place, so it can help to spray/pour some penetrant oil into the area and let it soak in, then try and spin the circlip around the fork to break any hold that rust has. Then use circlip pliers to compress it and lift it out (much easier said than done, usually):

Now you should be able to take the bottom section in one hand, the chrome section in the other and use the latter like a slide hammer to gently bang them apart. That's harder to describe than to do... we will make a video for that. The bottom of the chrome piece looks like this:

This is aluminium coloured under the goo:

The end of the damper rod:

This is the bolt which bolts into the bottom of the damper rod, which we removed right at the beginning - this one is from the other side, though, which isn't half as gooey inside. You can see the copper crush washer clearly:

Damper rod tip and other parts from the TRAC side - a bit easier to make things out without all the mess:

There's little wire clips holding the spring in:

Prying them out allows you to slide this section off:

We'll update this when we come back to the forks and create some infopics pointing out which bits are what.