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Fork seal week

It’s been a great week for the fork seal industry – not so much for Guido’s fleet...

(From our Travels with Guido series, September 2024, Guy 'Guido' Allen)

What’s that old cliché about how things tend to happen in threes? Maybe it’s right. You see one of the things that occurs when you have a bit of a fleet of vehicles – about 30 bikes and half-a-dozen cars at last count – is that they are capable of breaking faster than you can fix them.

Take last week for example: we had three sets of fork seals go. Weird? It gets worse – they were all Hondas. I think it was the 1980 CBX1000B which led the charge, closely followed by one of the 1975 GL1000 Gold Wings, then the 2001 GL1500CF Valkyrie Interstate.

Under normal circumstances, I would have tackled one of them, but at the rate they were cracking up I decided to enlist my local workshop.

In some respects it worked out nicely, as the CBX1000 hadn’t been running well and I was happy to hand that over to Brett the mechanic for a freshen-up. Doing almost anything on that bike, including changing the six spark plugs, is time-consuming. In this case it was idling rough, often on five cylinders.

Fresh plugs and a fresh tank of fuel helped the situation, though we may have to pull the carburetors off for a proper look. That’s something we are trying to avoid as the bank of six is a bugger to remove and refit. Plus, we had them off for a clean-out only a few months ago.

Then it came the turn of the Gold Wing. It’s relatively benign to work on, even if the architecture including the boxer four and oddball fuel tank location makes it a somewhat alien experience. Well, it should have been easy. But no, the first set of seals, which I supplied, failed and the whole job had to be done a second time. And they wonder why I drink…

Next up, the big Valkyrie. My local workshop (Gassit Motorcycles) is located in an old building that was originally (I suspect) a corner store and so none of the doors are wide enough to let the Valk pass through. Yep, I’m serious.

So muggins had to pull out the fork legs and deliver them without the rest of the Honda attached. Why not just do them myself? While I can do a simple set of forks, I’m not really equipped for anything that’s a bit tricky. In the case of the Showas off the Valkyrie, they have one or two wrinkles inside which made me glad I handed them over. They were thirsty buggers – swallowing very nearly a litre of fluid.

I really can’t complain about the Valk wanting seals. It has large fork protector blades mounted on the upside-down design, which have kept the legs pristine despite its 84,000km odometer reading. I suspect this is the first time the seals have been changed in a very long time, perhaps ever.

Anyway, we’re all smiling again. Of the three bikes, the CBX is the most challenging to run and maintain. It’s the most demanding for maintenance and many jobs turn out to be a fairly big enterprise thanks to the machine’s complexity.

By contrast, the Gold Wings and Valkyrie are pretty benign. Keep the oil up to them and they’re happy. The flat four and flat six layouts are both two-valve designs with screw-and-locknut valve clearance adjustment, putting it within relatively easy reach of the home spanner-twirler.

While both the Gold Wing and Valkyrie were primarily designed as tourers, they’re both surprisingly quick for their era and market segment. The Wing is noticeably more powerful with stronger acceleration than my 1971 CB750-Four.

Meanwhile the Valkyrie’s solid 100 horsepower claim means it shuffles along fairly rapidly and the thing handles better than appearances would suggest.

Of course the CBX is the most exciting of the three to ride, with a sexy growl from the straight six and performance that soon overwhelms the chassis. Riding some of these old toys makes you wonder how any of us lived through the seventies and eighties!

Now that lot is sorted, it’s time to turn my attention back to the half-dozen or more jobs waiting on other transports of delight in the shed. Wish me luck…

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