200GT Front Fork Assembly

[spaynenda]

My son & I are restoring a '62 200GT and doing much of it ourselves (learning a lot, too). In reassembling the front fork, we wonder, has anyone tried substituting a circlip for the "stop ring," part no. 41 on the exploded view drawing found on p 94 of the workshop manual? We're having difficulty replacing one of them since destroying it during disassembly.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer,

Sheldon
San Diego, Calif.

[JimF]

Hi Sheldon,

I do have a spare fork lower I could send you for parts - would that help?

Do you think you could scavenge the stop ring out of a lower? Let me know.

Jim

[spaynenda]

Jim,

That would be a great help, thank you. The reason we ruined it was because that side was damaged internally. We got the other one out okay, although it too was not easy to remove.

How much do you want for it, and do you, by any chance, have a PayPal account??

Sheldon

[JimF]

Hi Sheldon,

It's free to you, my donation to your restoration. PM me your address and I'll send it out to you. There is a huge blizzard coming today to the Midwest today, so it may be the day after tomorrow before I get it to the post office.


Did you check the fork tube for straightness? I am wondering if whatever caused the internal damage did some damage to the fork tubes. I hate to say this but with these 31.5mm forks they are easily bent if your bike was abused by a previous owner.

I used to have access to a large machinists table that was smooth to a couple thousandths of an inch, and I would roll the tubes on the table to check them.

Plate glass works too, but I only have a small sheet of plate glass for checking clutch discs and nothing big enough for fork tubes.

A crude way to check is to hold the two tubes against each other (the long way of course) and look for gaps between them. You can roll the tubes a little as you continue to check. If you see gaps appear between the two tubes then one is bent or perhaps both are bent. Now you are back to needing a flat table to tell.

I now have a friend with a several-ton press and he can sometimes straighten them, but he has no large flat table so we have to eyeball them to tell which ones are bent and where to block the tubes in the press. Back when I restored my bike I sent my own tubes off to this place: ' http://www.snowcrest.net/gte/ ', and they came back as straight as an arrow. I checked them on the machinists table - incredibly perfectly straight! The cost to have them straightened is about $20 a tube. Plan on spending as much to ship them as to straighten them owing to their length and weight.

Jim

[JimF]

Sheldon - sent you a PM

Jim

[spaynenda]

At long last, the front fork is ready to assemble, thanks to JimF, after securing a new steering head bearing set from Guzzino.com. Pictured also is the frame and rear suspension, with re-built original shocks (thanks to S D Small Engine's tech, whose name escapes me just now).

You may be able to see that I went a little overboard on the paint (having used base coat/clear coat), but I just couldn't leave the stickers unprotected.

Final assembly will hopefully be complete by the end of the month...not sure we'll have the wiring completely sorted though. Stay tuned.