trying to rebuild the front Forks on a WR450F

Not sure if anyone can help me on this, but...

The front forks at least are pre05 I think they are the 04 ones. From what I understand there are two types and I've got the older ones.

I seem to have blown the seal on one of the front forks, I've managed the get them off the bike and I've stripped the leaking one down as far as I can, but I cant seem to get the inner tube apart from the outter tube. I think there are a couple of metal sliders inside the tube that are catching, but I can't seem to stop that from happening.

Talking to Richard Stevens, he suggested heating the outter fork with a heat gun, which I have done, but all to no avail.

Is there anyone here that's done this before and can advise?

OK, stay cool....

Under the top cap ie, where the spring/oil is, there is a damper rod attaching to the cap. So undo the cap from the upper stanchion, then pull the exposed spring down to show a lock nut on the damper rod. Undo the locknut and screw the cap off.
Then prise the out dust seal out of the lower part of the stanchion and behind it is a spring clip, take this out of the stanchion.
Then the fork can be puled apart, ie, in a sliding hammer type movement, the two sliding bushes inside the fork hit each other and also push the seal out.
Unfortunately the bushes get damaged in this so will need replacing with the seal. I think full service kits are available on ebay containing seals and bushes.

How does that sound?

Timpo.

Cheers Timpo, looks like I'd got most of the way there I just wasnt using enough vigour

Talking to Richard Stevens he seemed to suggest you could save the bushes somehow - no sweat if I've got to replace them...

btw, had a look on Thumpertalk and found some pretty useful vids - it's american, but I thought I'd share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y43k1qFVGW4&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ICr...eature=related
http://www.moto-pro.com/files/shopti..._alignment.pdf

Thanks again Timpo, thought it better to stop and ask than just start smacking it

Cheers Timpo! You star, that worked straight away... btw, I dunno about other bikes, but it seems that heating the bottom of the outter tube and "slide hammering" it before the heat can really get to the bush does seem to work... from what I can see I've manage to pop the two apart with the minimum of force and no observable damage - but I'll check in the morning

not sure why the fork blow though... other than crud behind the seals I can't see anything particularly wrong, there are one or two faint marks on the forks, but nothing I can actually feel and thats it Guess I'll check it all in the morning and see what it looks like in daylight