250sx fork oil

[pudge]

hey guys, this may sound stupid but to add fork oil to my SX do i just pull that top chrome nut off the top or the forks and pour it in? i have a manual and service manual basically wants me to pull the entire assembly apart and when putting it back together "add correct amount of ATF oil"

[pudge]

i know someone can tell me how to do this....

[WIkid500]

Do what the book says. I rebuilt the shocks on my 200x and it's easy if you follow the book and take your time. Make sure you clean all the old crap out before you put new oil in. If you don't want to fully disassemble tip the fork upside down with the cap and main spring out and pump until the oil is gone. Flush it with new oil drain that out and put in the required amount and reassemble.

[userj8670]

atf = auto tranny fluid:welcome:

[pudge]

i did know that ATF means Auto trans fluid, my question is can it be added without disassemblng the whole front end and rebilding the shocks?

[smvorndran]

You can add it, but you should clean things out. Forks are easy to rebuild. Get a cheap set of fork seals off ebay, possibly new boots, and do it. The hardest part is getting the snap ring out of the top. My snap ring pliers never go big enough. I had to modify some needle nose pliers to get it. You also need a fork seal driver, but I made one out of galvanized pipe, 1 1/2" inch I believe. A piece of PVC pipe would probably drive it in too.

Friction & wear causes the oil to turn black. You could just take the cap off, and change the oil on the trike. If you take out the bottom screw, that will drain it. Pump the forks a few times to pump most of the oil out. I suppose a small amount of kerosene would give it a hillbilly douching. Blow air down it to wash out the kerosene, replace the bottom screw, then add the oil, put cap on. Voila!

Seriously though, as easy as it is, just clean them correctly and do it right.

smvorndran

[pudge]

ok, we have run into a problem. i told my buddy who also has an SX about this and he decided to try to change his oil... when he pulled the top cap nuts off they seemed to be somewhat pressurized to the point that the cap kinda popped off i guess. prob should have taken the weight off the front tire i assume.... he drained the oil from the bottom nut, it was black and definitely was not full to capacity. put the bottom drain nut back on and filled it up. not he says that the forks seems to be fully compressed and seized, he can not fit the smaller spring in and cant get the cap nut on.... any trick? why is the lower tube to jammed up the upper tube? how can we fix this? thanks guys

[pudge]

anyone?:wondering

[Dirtcrasher]

You could have prevented it by reading up on it before you started messing around......

Your lucky you didn't get 2 springs and 14oz of oil in your face.

Changing the oil is for routine maintenance. When you try and change the oil without disassembling the forks, cleaning them and changing the seals; you can be assured that they will soon start leaking out of the seal. That oil thats in there is probably the original oil!

They really needed to be taken apart.

At this point you may have to flip it up onto the grab bar and try to get the tubes free, you must have bound something up. It may even help to take the tire off and yank each side down.

You said "he filled them up", exactly how much oil would that be??

[pudge]

DC- i did read up on here and started this thread just for that reason, i didnt know how to do it, and i havent done mine yet becuase i am waiting to get some new seals so i can rebuild them.......i did tell him that the best way was to do a full rebuild after I posted here a few times about just changing the oil, but he wanted to try to just do that. he said he added what was recommended in the manual something like 6oz of ATF...

i think that because the weight was still on the tire putting pressure on the forks, when he went from one side to the next it dropped one side down, and got all twisted, we'll put it up on its ass and try to free them up. i'll let you know how we do either tonite or tomorrow.