The one specific thing that had prevented me from, at very least, getting the Le Mans roadworthy was that one of the fork legs was drizzled with escaping suspension oil. The first step was to order some new seals but that quickly escalated to new updated cartridge dampers, new progressive springs and new stanchions (the chromed tubes).
Spending money is a lot easier than spending time and so the parts sat and waited.
Eventually circumstance contrived to drive me into action. The relentless cycle of pressure, stress and friction at work then drinking for companionship in the quest for oblivion had to be broken. I surfaced this adventure and requested a break, six months hence and the game was afoot.
There’s nothing like a commitment to curtail the prevarication and I pulled to forks off the bike and stripped them. Shocking how sludgey the oil was, how worn the seals were and how disfunctional the dampers had become. I learn’t that the new dampers were a tad shorter than the old ones and that the last person to work on them had considered two sets of seals to be better than one. The prescribed thinking now is that a single modern seal has less stiction and seals just a well.
I bought a basting pipette, not for basting, I am a stranger to the kitchen, but to measure 120cc of transmission oil into each, newly rattle-can satin-blacked fork leg.
On the bracing front, Dave Richardson’s “Guzzioligy” reference is positively evangelical on the benefits of fitting a fork brace so I took his word for it and fitted one.
In other news, my work, who genuinely are the coolest most reasonable people to exchange money for life force, agreed that it would be a good idea for me to get lost in the USA for 2 months.
Le Mans man 