During my fantastic tour of Ireland over a long Easter weekend (more praise for the Irish Eccentrics for being such a sociable, helpful crowd and for laying on perfect weather and near empty roads for me), my left hand fork seal started to weep. As an interim measure I inserted a piece of carefully rolled toilet paper into the seal recess and a further piece into the dust cap - this temporary "gland packing" was extremely effective and prevented any further oil loss during my 1300 mile tour.

However, a leaking seal is not going to get better and I needed to restore the fork oil to its proper level...and with the annual MoT inspection just a couple of months away (leaking fork seals is a common reason for failure), it made sense to order up new seals and just get on and do it.

Anyway, so far so good, stripped the fairing off (I note previous posts that say this isn't necessary, but I wanted to tackle a couple of other jobs on the front end, so it made it easier to remove it), slackened the yoke clamp bolts, removed the forks (slipped out as easy as a easily slipping out thing) and drained the oil. Incidentally, I measured the volume of oil drained from the leaky fork - just 260ml compared with 350ml in the right fork! (recommended volume is 360+/- 10ml) - that could account for my increasingly nervous cornering.

So the question to you knowledgeable and experienced people - how do you remove the circlip that retains the seal in place? I have tried gently levering with a small flat blade screw driver, but can't get it to spring out. Obviously I am taking necessary precautions to avoid damaging the alloy housing or scratching the steel piston, but it just ain't playing nice. Circlips that I have come across before have always had drilled lugs on them at the free ends to allow either compression or expansion (depending on type of circlip) with circlip pliers. 

In the time honoured tradition of STOP and ask, I am taking this opportunity to take a break (and lunch) before blundering on and going permanent damage. Any suggestions?

I can only suggest that your small flat blade screwdriver is not small enough, somewhere in this forum the subject has been covered memory says to rather use a more pointed instrument.
I haven't yet had the pleasure. 

 

Get a very pointed thing like a scribe and lever the end out then with a flat screwdriver under the part that is out and lever it up then let go with the scribe and grab the pointy nosed pliers and hold the end of the ring and pull it towards the gap and it should come out.  
Now this has been very easy to type and after you get the knack it is easy but it is somewhat difficult to start with as the end tends to slip back in the groove.
An extra pair of hands will help and when you put the screwdriver under the end bit don't lever too hard or it will just slip off and you have to start over.
Pull the fork leg and slider apart first that way you aren't trying to work around the leg.

PS Actually instead of levering with the screwdriver push it under the circlip end and twist it to hold the end up which will also give you room to grab it.

ungaas wrote:I can only suggest that your small flat blade screwdriver is not small enough, somewhere in this forum the subject has been covered memory says to rather use a more pointed instrument.
I haven't yet had the pleasure. 

 

Ungaas and Rick G,

I have finally got the boogers out and using my smallest flat bladed screw driver and a fair bit of patience and perseverance. Pushing down hard on one of the free ends of the circlip was the answer and, once the free end had popped out of the groove, it was easy to pry the rest of the clip out of its groove. I then used a more pointed instrument to lever the old oil seal out having doused it with boiling water (as per Haynes manual). 

As I have no need to dismantle the fork completely (just replacing the top oil seal), the difficulty was in working around the leg which doesn't give much access room to get the screw driver in. As mentioned by Rick G though, probably easiest to pull the fork leg and slider apart in the first place. A few minutes saved and an hour wasted!

Still job done and I didn't scald or stab myself in the process or bugger up the hardware, so that's a bonus!  

Thanks for the advice.

Now for the rebuild....