Fork seal holders and parts update

[MJM_58SR]

Hi all
Just wanted to share a painful experience with you all and have a rant.
I am doing a bit of a refurb on the super rocket and stripped the forks for a service including new seal holders etc. I decided to get the parts from Burton Bike Bits.
The seal holders arrived and seemed great quality, until that is I also bought a seal holder tool From them and it didn't fit.
Anyway after an email exchange I sent the tool back but it turned out that the problem was a bad batch of seal holders! Did anyone else have a similar experience. So I sent them back too.
To be fair they exchanged the seal holders and sent the whole lot back to me pretty quick.
It was great to be able to press on with the rebuild BUT then the seal holders wouldn't screw onto the fork bottoms! They were nowhere near as heavy as the previous ones either.
I emailed Burton bike bits and the reply was they are the correct thread and they test every one on a NOS bottom so they know they fit! Do they really do that?
I've asked them for a solution but that's the last I've heard..
Anyway I know they won't screw on as I've tried it on two sets of bottoms
So my opinion has changed about these seal holders.
The service at Burton bike bits was good until it seemed to get too hard or maybe they got fed up I don't know.
It not all a rant about Burton bike bits, it's about the quality of parts. I'm pretty new to the world of BSA and old bikes and the stuff that I've been sold is dubious at best.

[DAVE BRADY]

Hi,

Keep up the pressure on BBB.  Some suppliers seem to think that we should be grateful that they are there.   BBB used to have a shop but I suspect that too may people took back ill fitting stuff so went online only.   I know I did.

Dave.

[Kevev]

That's very interesting as I am trying to get hold of a decent pair of oil seal holders for my 1967 A65.

I was hoping to get a pair of stainless steel ones, as the ones I already had on my bike were stainless steel but I damaged them getting them off the fork slider tubes. This was due to them not having anything fitted inside for the tool to engage with. I ended up using a bit of heat and a large stilson wrench to remove them, which caused the damage. I didn't want to put them back on anyway as they wouldn't screw all the way home on the tubes and when I first installed them I made a couple of stainless steel spacers to fit over the threads on the tubes, so that I could tighten the oil seal holders up properly. I used a leather strap to do this and at that time was unaware of how they should have been fitted with the correct tooling. I cannot remember where I bought these stainless oil seal holder from back in the early 1980's but why anyone would manufacture these items without the notched flange inside for fitting/removal is a strange one?

SRM have stainless oil seal holders on their webshop but unfortunately no stock.

I was going to settle for chrome ones and was thinking about buying a pair from BBB.

Not so sure now, has anyone got any recommendations please?

[JulianS]

Try Barleycorn Engineering:

https://www.barleycorn.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=25&product_id=71

When we had autojumbles he was a regular stall holder.

[idie]

I would recommend Barley Corn. His products are made by him. He can do oil seal holders with or without the lip on the top, which is good for stopping binding in the fork covers.

[Kevev]

Thanks for that Julian.

I've just rang Barleycorn and they have the stainless steel oil seal holders on stock, so I have ordered a pair from them.

Spot on 

[Kevev]

Update on my oil seal holders from Barleycorn.

Simon from Barleycorn has just rang me to advise me that his oil seal holders are made for the BSA A10 and he's not sure if they will fit the A65?

He says that he is not very experienced with the A65 but is concerned about the the way the the top bush is held in place.

The part numbers for his seal holders are 29-5310 and the ones in the A65 parts book are 41-5142. I was told by several members in another post that the A10 oil seal holders would be ok to use on my bike as the threads are all the same.

Can anyone advise if I will have any problems with using the A10 oil seal holders on my 67 A65?

Thanks
   

[JulianS]

The critical dimension is from the base of the holder to the oil seal flange.

My A10 has 1968 Lightning forks but the oil seal holders are stainless items taken from the A10 forks fitted before. No problems with the fitting but origin of the holders now long forgotten so dont know if they aremade to whatever A10 spec may be.

[idie]

You may well find a difference the A10 rely on a circlip to hold the top bush in place. I believe the A65 relies on the oil seal holder to do the job and it looks to be a different shape.

[Kevev]

Hi Idie,

You're right that the A10 has a clip (similar to a circlip but without the holes for circlip pliers) and the A65 has a dished washer that sits on top of the top fork bush and is held in place with the oil seal.

As Julian said, the critical dimension is from the base of the oil seal holder to the oil seal flange. When the oil seal is in place then that critical distance becomes from the bottom of the oil seal holder to the oil seal.

The way I see it is, as long as the oil seal holder screws on to the fork slider tube properly and retains the top bush in position, whether that be by a circlip under the oil seal, or the dished washer then that's the job done.

I will go ahead with the Barleycorn A10 seal holders and see what happens. It may be that I have to make some modifications but I can't see anything that should be too big a problem. At least not when you have a full machine shop at your disposal.

I will let you know how I get on and post the details of any modifications I have to carry out. That way anyone else wanting to use these items will know if it can be done okay. 

[idie]

Thanks that would be interesting. Keep us informed.

[MJM_58SR]

Just thought I would post a further update on my forks
BBB came back and said that all of their stock of seal holders fit into a NOS lower leg...
Anyway I got fed up and have been back into the garage, I used some valve grinding paste on the holders and have worked the holders onto the legs, they are now a nice fit and I'm happy with them. Obviously I will give them a thorough clean before assembly!
So to recap, the first seal holders I got from BBB were made wrong and too thick, I had to find that out for myself, they screwed on well and lookEd the part but then on assembly the seal holder tool didn't fit. BBB then said they had a bad batch! Great they could have told me. The replacement holders didn't screw on to the fork bottoms and I've had to work them to fit.
I'm now going to be very selective when buying parts.
Just thought I would share my experience, a month to get the parts right to rebuild forks is a bit excessive...

[Allan G]

Two companies I avoid where possible are Burton bike bits and Draganfly. I returned a side panel to them in person some years ago, both sides were bad but one side I cleaned up and made fit. I took the other side back and went through them all with Mick until we found a good one, the whole
Batch of black ones were bad and I settled for a orange one (they got painted anyway) I had ordered some spares to collect whilst I was there (ordered a few days prior) but when I got there they forgot to do the order so charged me for shipping.

Barleycorn do Some Excellent parts. All well made. He always says that he doesn't know if it will fit an A65, covers his backside that way but a lot of parts are interchangeable. Your 67 has the same as the A10 type, and uses the ties on the gaiters. The thicker type came into play from 68.

Unless it's a generic part like a horn or a branded item then BBB are fine, otherwise the likes of SRM (who buy most of their parts in) or the little guys who thrive on their reputation are the way to go.

[JulianS]

The main difference between the 1967 and the 1968 oil seal holder is the heavy external circlip fitted into a groove on the 1968 one, to fit the gaiter without a clip.

The inside of the 1968 is a bit constricted by the groove and makes even a correctly dimensioned tool a tight fit.

Photo 1968 left (97 2514) and the short 1966 right (68 5132)

[Kevev]

Update on the oil seal holders.

I bought a pair of the stainless ones from Barleycorn and there is a little problem with them fitting the 1966 - 1968 A65 fork tube.

The problem is indeed caused by the dished spacer that retains the top fork stanchion bush.

You can screw the oils seal holder on but with the standard 3/8" (9.53mm) thick oil seal they will not screw all the way home on the fork slider tube.

The flange that the oil seal presses up to, inside the oil seal holder, needs to be a further 3/32" (2.38mm) up from the bottom of the oil seal holder to allow it to screw all the way home and do it's job of retaining the top bush. Alternatively the oils seal needs to be 3/32" (2.38mm) thinner.

I don't know if you can get thinner oil seals but the 3/32" (2.38mm) is too much to take off the standard ones, so what I have done is made a modified pair of dished spacers that sit a little lower in the slider tube and left me with only having to take just under 1/16" (1.5mm) off the thickness of the oils seal.

Not quite standard but it's done the job and as I won't be selling the bike I'm happy. I will of course document everything, so that in the future when the bike will inevitably end up in someone else's hands they have all the necessary information about this modification, along with the original standard parts minus the oil seal holders.

The Barleycorn stainless steel holders are excellent by the way. Very well made, highly polished and the threads are spot on, making screwing them on a breeze.

I will put PTFE tape on them when I fit them to prevent any leakage.