'96 XR200 fork rebuild

 Been out of touch for a while.

Bailey has moved up to her sisters 96 XR 200 as she outgrew her 2002 XR100.
So now I need to rebuild the forks for her on the 200.

I have them out, and have pulled the caps off of the tops and removed the
spacers and springs.  I have removed the clips that hold the seals in.  So -
what is it that keeps the tubes connected to the lower legs?  Should I just
be able to force the seals out now by pulling the tubes out of the lower
legs?

Anybody got any suggestions on aftermarket springs or other goodies for
these forks while I have them apart?  Any trick conversions for the front
end of an XR200?

Thanks!

Tom




 

 


How timely, I just did the forks on a '97 XR200 this weekend.

Before the tubes will come apart, you need to remove the damper rod.
These aren't cartridge forks.  You need to take out the bolt on the
bottom of the tubes.  This is best done with an impact wrench.  A
holder on the top side of the damper rods may still be required.  It
takes a large hex, or I build my own tool by carefully grinding down
a strip of 1/8" steel strip so that it just fit into two points of the hex.

I put gold valve cartridge emulators into the forks.  This requires you
to drill six 5/16 holes in the bottom of the damper rod to replace the
four small holes that are already there.  To keep the same preload,
you will have to cut some PVC about 1/2" shorter than the existing
spacer (the emulator fits between the spring & the damper rod).
The emulators should really smooth out the harshness that lighter
riders will feel in the rocks.

The oil in our bike was original.  It was pretty black, even tho the
bike has seen little use.  I put in Honda 5W fork oil.

Good luck Tom.  Let me know how it works out.

-Jeff Deeney- ©2007 DoD#0498 NCTR UTMA BRC COHVCO AMA
jldeeney@c om c ast d ot net '99 ATK 260LQ-Stink Wheels  '94
XR650L-HellSickle
We don't stop riding because we get old, we get old because we stop riding.

 Are those conventional forks?

I have used a broom handle and friction as a backup "holder" inside
when working  on conventional forks in the past, when necessary.

Just a thought, as this requires thorough cleaning afterword to remove
any possible wood (wud) debris.

Jim



         Wudsracer/Jim Cook
          Smackover Racing
         '06 Gas Gas DE300
        '82 Husqvarna XC250
           Team LAGNAF
        

 

Yup, that was what I was getting ready to do.  While looking over
my scrap material shelf for a wood dowel, I spotted some 1" wide
x 1/8" thick steel strap.  I removed about .080" from the width &
it fit perfectly into the slot.  The only drawback is that it flexes
a bit in torsion, requiring an impact wrench to reseat the rod.

-Jeff Deeney- ©2007 DoD#0498 NCTR UTMA BRC COHVCO AMA
jldeeney@c om c ast d ot net '99 ATK 260LQ-Stink Wheels  '94
XR650L-HellSickle
We don't stop riding because we get old, we get old because we stop riding.

 I ended up making a tool today for this.

I rummaged around in my shop and found a motor mount bolt (i believe that's
what it is) from my TT600 that  I parted.  The hex end of it looked about
the right size to I attached it to a pice of PVC with some tape to get it
long enough to stick down into the tube with and - yep - perfect fit on the
inside hex end of that tube that's down there.   So then I found that a
piece of 1/2" copper plumbing pipe is about the exact diameter of the bolt.
So I connected the two together with a copper pipe splice joint I had too,
and then added a hex fitting at the other end to put a wrench on and viola -
new fork disassembly tool.  Worked great.

So - what's the free length of the springs supposed to be?

Thanks Jeff.

Tom