03 Wombat Fork Repair

[dcooke007]

I have a set of 03 Wombat forks that are being prepared for Phil Lachapelle. Phil has a Combat Wombat that needs a suspension upgrade. I have already completed one of the fork legs including refinishing. This is a popular upgrade for the earlier model Hodaka's and thought it might be good info for the group. This would apply to forks from the 250 and 175 Hodaka's as well, although there are some minor internal differences....mostly spring rate if I remember correctly. Also the triple tree stem is different on the 250 and 175 Hodaka's.

Clamped the forks in my bench vise with padded inserts to secure and prevent damage to fork tubes.

Removed the fork cap and and removed the fork spring and associated parts.

This metric allen head fastener is located at the bottom of the fork housing and must be removed to seperate the fork tube from the lower fork housing.

Using a couple of ratchets, extensions, metric hex socket and a fabricated tool I removed the fastener from the bottom of the fork. More detail will be coming on the tool I fabricated.

After removing the fastener the lower fork housing slides off and this is what remains.

An internal snap ring secures the damper assembly to the fork tube. Removing the snap ring allows removal of the damper from the fork tube.

More info to come.

Danny Cooke

[Pep]

Great photos Danny - thanks for taking the time to share the info!
-Laurie

[Bruce Young]

Kudos! Laurie, we need more of this sort of thing for each model of fork. 30mm model 90 up to all. Thanks Danny, great job. Bruce Young
Hodakaparts.com IDAHO

[michael_perrett]

Change oil often, 'cause there are not any replaceable bushings like other forks Once they are worn, new forks are needed.
Mike Perrett

[dcooke007]

The most difficult part of dis-assembling the forks can sometimes be removing the hex fastener at the bottom of the fork housing. The hex fastener screws into the damper assembly. When attempting to dis-assemble...... the fastener and damper sometimes turn together rather than unscrewing from each other. The solution obviously is to find a way to hold the odd shaped spring seat extension on top of the damper assembly. I have used the squeezed hollow tube method but in this case the force required to unscrew the fastener was more than the tube could hold.

Fortunately one of the hex fasteners unscrewed and I had a damper assembly to measure and consider how to fabricate a workable tool. This is the spring seat extension on top of the damper. It has a flat on each side and the ends are round. The width of the flat is 11.8 mm, the diameter of the radius is 13.96 mm and the height is 7/32 inch.

I selected a nut with a flange from my scrap fastener drawer. Put the nut in my drill press vise and drilled the threaded hole diameter to slightly less than the width of the damper extension flat. From that point on working with my dremel tool, small files and dial calipers I formed the shape of the damper extension into the nut. The nut could be pinned to a socket but at this point I simply put a little tape around the nut and forced it into a socket so it would not fall in the fork tube. The opening formed in the nut is 12mm wide flats with 14mm radius to fit the extension. This worked well and I was able to dis-assemble the other fork. Also works well when re-asembling the forks and being able to tighten the hex fastener properly.

[michael_perrett]

Nice tool, Danny. Simple and fairly easy to make.
Mike Perrett

[dcooke007]

A little more acomplished today. Removed the wire retainer ring with a small screw driver, removed the washer and fork seal. Cleaned and preped fork housing for new seal and refinishing.

The clear coat on the lower fork housing was missing in some places and what remained had turned yellow. With a de-greased fork housing I sprayed a medium coat of remover and let it sit for a few minutes. Using an old tooth brush, it was a simple matter to remove the old clear coat and then rinse with cold water. It is important to use gloves and safety glasses. The paint stripper is not kind to skin, eyes or lungs for that matter. This should be done out side with at least a dust mask....a proper chemical mask would be better though.

I installed a new fork seal, cleaned up the seal retainer and installed same. I saved the re-coating of the fork housing for last as I did not want to scratch the new finish while installing the new seal.

Re-coated fork housing with Duplicolor clear high temp engine paint.

Lube the fork seal and I like to put a light coat of grease on the seal retainer before installing dust cover. Installed dust cover on fork housing and installed lower housing on assembled fork tube. Danny Cooke

[dcooke007]

Spoke with Phil and decided to fabricate some fittings so he could use air pressure to fine tune the forks. We dont know how this will turn out but it will be interesting to experiment. Anticipating that adding a little air pressure may be useful to supplement spring pressure, may be able to remove the springs and use air pressure alone or if that doesnt work then fittings installed to vent pressure after hard use.

These are high pressure truck tire valves that you can get at most tire shops and some auto parts stores. I held the valves in my vise with aluminum vise jaw inserts to remove the rubber part. Using a utility knife I cut the rubber length wise into quarters and using a pair of side cutters I snipped away most of the rubber. Using the utility knife as a scrapper I removed the remaining rubber.

The truck tire valve measures 8mm and I decided to thread the valve 8mm x 1.0. I placed the tire valve in my drill press chuck with the tap on top of my vise. Turning the spindel by hand allowed me to cut the threads and keep every thing straight.The valve has a small shoulder and that is where I stopped threading. The shoulder acts as a stop and a sealing surface.

Using my drill press it is time to drill the fork caps. I located the center of the cap and and center punched. Using a set of aluminum vise jaws to hold the cap I aligned the center drill with the center of the fork cap and center drilled. A center drill is more rigid than a regular drill and less likely to walk off center. The point here is to get the hole started straight and in the proper location before drilling to size. Thread is 8mm x 1.0 to match modified tire valve.

With all the parts fabricated I degreased, applied red Loctite and assembled. Red Loctite is to secure and seal the tire valve threads to the fork caps. Red Loctite is intended for fairly permenant and heavy duty purposes and should be used accordingly.

The forks are now assembled with new seals, aluminum lower fork housing and triple trees refinished and modified fork caps installed. At this point they will be shipped to Phil for installation on his Combat Wombat. The factory recommended fork oil is 6 ounces of 20 weight motor oil. We are going to use 20 weight real fork oil instead as a starting point. Might have to go with a heavier or lighter weight fork oil. This has been a good project and I hope the info provided is helpful. Danny Cooke

[racerclam]

Easy way to get shrader valves for this job is to buy them with 1/8" pipe thread on the end , commercial hardware store should have them . Thats what I did years ago.

Rich

[dcooke007]

Rich, that is a great idea. Had to use what I had available at the moment. Would have saved a little time.

Danny Cooke

[Bullfrog]

Some time back, Bob Whitman and I put together a sheet on this topic -- we used a 24" long piece of black pipe (plumbing pipe) 5/8"ID by .840"OD and squeezed one end in a vise to create the tool to "capture" the flats on the top of the inner cylinder (damper rod).

I've also noted that some of the 34mm forks use a formed wire "circlip" to hold the seal in place, while others have a true internal snap ring . . . and NONE of the Hodaka Parts Lists I've examined show EITHER style of clip.

Ed

[dcooke007]

Hey Ed,

I had a squeezed tube type tool but the side wall was not thick enough to resist the turning force to dis-assemble this particular fork. The wall thickness on your tool seems to be greater than what I was using so it would probably have worked . Any way I wanted to get the size specifications out to the group in case some one else had this problem. Modifying the nut was not difficult and unless it gets lost should last a lifetime. Being on the frugal side making it from a spare nut was even better.

Same thing with the tire valves, cheap and on hand at the time.

Any thoughts on the fork oil weight I can pass on to Phil?

Danny Cooke

[Bullfrog]

I like 20 weight fork oil in my 03 forks.

Ed

[bchappy]

Ed or Bob,
I printed the sheet you two did on the 03 (and 175/250) fork repair and I thought it was in a Resonator but I have searched all of them and don't see it. Where was it printed? Danny has done an excellent job here but I just wanted to find the original.

[Dale]

All good info here. Thanks for posting Danny. I am impressed by how well the lower fork tubes look after you stripped them and put on a new clear coat. Very nice.
Dale

[bobwhitman]

I have the original article Ed & I did, which I believe was posted on the Yahoo group. I'll email it to Bill and Paul, perhaps it would be useful for Paul to post here among tech tips.
Bob

[bchappy]

Paul has it on his Tech Tips now if anyone is interested.

[dirtsquirt80]

Danny what would something like this cost? thank's Scott

[dcooke007]

Hey Scott,

The first problem these days is to find an 03 Wombat front end. In this case I had an extra one in the attic so that worked out well for Phil. I do not have any others at this time though. If your question is more repair and restoration oriented it is a matter of time and materials. As well as the degree of refinishing desired. Since these were going to be raced there was no need for a perfect finish on the triple trees or the lower fork housings. There were some minor dings and in this case I simply stripped off the old clear coat, polished one small area, prepped the metal and clear coated. Restoring to a higher degree takes more time and costs more obviously. In this case the labor cost is around $275 plus seals and materials. You can call me if you would like and we can discuss it in more detail. 804 892-5444.

Danny Cooke