Torino

Parked bike was rear ended by a dude reversing his minivan. Bike tipped over on her left side. I got to the scene and picked her back up. The tip over had rashed up my fairings and mirror. Didn't appear to be any other significant damage. Maybe an hour later, at a buddy's place, we noticed a shine on the left front brake assembly. Slow oil leak from the left fork. There's no oil leaking on the right side. cleaned it up and checked the next morning, it's definitely a leak. forks and tee look straight to me. Apart from changing out fork seals and topping up the oil, is there anything else i should be worried about??

NB. I have ridden her some with the leaking fork, maybe 40-45 miles and never went over 70mph, doesn't seem to have affected the handling as far as i can tell.

ZoomSplat

You're not going to be "topping up the oil" you're going to replace it. Fork oil should be serviced every 20 to 30k anyway, and do it on both sides even if you only have one seal leaking. If it was just a tip over, and he didn't back over the bike or drag it under his car, then its very unlikely that the forks are bent or anything is broken.

It likely won't change the handling of the bike until the oil really starts getting low. The thing that you should be more worried about is the oil leaking down and running onto the brakes and contaminating the pads, and the small puddle of fork oil laying on the garage floor that you're going to roll your front tire through every morning when you back the bike away from where it spent the night.

In addition to fork seals, you're going to want to order the bushings, and if you've spent the time to dial in your suspension you may want to consider re springing the bike so that it is appropriate for your weight; since you'll have the forks apart and the springs out anyway its not going to take you any more time to swap them. Its also a good chance to play with fork oil weight to get the correct damping properties for your weight and riding style. If you have taken the time to dial in your compression and rebound specs, record everything before you disassemble it, and remember that you DO need to back them both all the way out before disassembly, otherwise when you put it back together it won't be even, you'll have 20 clicks on one side and 22 on the other (for example). Once you get in there its all pretty simple stuff, just a lot of cleaning and some more cleaning and a bunch of oil and oil residue, and then some more cleaning. Use the blue Scotts shop towels, they wont leave lint behind the way a shop rag or a paper towel will.

If you're doing it yourself, a set of fork seal drivers makes the job go a shit ton smoother, but you can use a piece of PVC pipe if you're cheep and careful.

Torino

thanks Zoom. I see I got some fun work ahead of me when I get the ordered parts in. Only have about 7k on the fork oil, but better safe than sorry! it's such a slow leak that it's not enough to get to the floor overnight, just shines up the brake assy, but i'm away from home for a bit now so i'll see how it looks when i get back in a coupla weeks. Good point about the oil fouling the brake pads.

i'm mechanically adept, relatively new to fixing bikes though. Looking forward to tackling this. Thanks again Zoom !

ZoomSplat

Well look at it this way: would you take the oil pan off the engine and try to save the oil? There is no drain plug for the fork oil, disassembling the forks will allow for a high potential for contamination. You don't want to dump used oil back in, plus you never know what fine micro junk is sitting in the bottom of your drain pan. Fork oil is about $12/qt, not worth destroying your front end over such a small cost.

Torino

true word...aint no arguing with that!