Fork seal holders and parts update

[Allan G]

The fact they don't screw all the way home is a good thing, it means you have not bottomed out before the stanchions have reached the bottom.

The other option is you revert to the shin set up as on previous bikes.

[JulianS]

Cannot use shims - no groove for the big circlip on the 1966 on A65 forks.

[Kevev]

Not sure I understand what you mean Allan. The oil seal holders have no bearing on where the stanchion is. The only thing they do, apart from house the oil seal and accommodate the gaitors is hold the top bush in position. The top bush sits in the top of the slider tube and no matter what is screwed down onto it it can only be where it's supposed to be. The stanchion is fixed in the top yokes and the slider tubes are the things that move and that movement and their position is determined by the spring and the weight / force acting against that.

[Allan G]

Kevev, a miss type I'm afraid instead of stanchion I meant to say oil seal holder.

If you re read it as "the fact they don't screw all the way home is a good thing, it means you have not bottomed out before the oil seals have reached the bottom (meant to add) of the threads." It makes more sense. They would have also had some twine wrapped around the bottom of the threads originally also.

The dishes spacer you refer to is known as the widget, the earlier bikes had a shin setup but as Julian pointed out there is no circlip on the later bikes so that's a no go.

[Kevev]

No probs Allan.

As far as I can make out on the 1966-68 set up, as well as doing it's job of sealing the oil inside the forks, also uses the oil sea as a spacer to form part of the system that retains the top bush.

You can screw the oil seal holder down tight and once the oil seal inside has butted up against the dished 'widget. spacer and this in turn has butted up against the top bush that is as far as you can go.

With the early oil seal holders that I have bought from Barleycorn this 'end point' where everything is butted up against each other is reached before the oil sea holders are fully home, which leaves a gap of approximately 2.4mm. This looks awful and what I want is for the oil seal holders to screw fully home on the fork tubes, so that they look right aesthetically but also hold the top bushes in place and are not butting up too tight or slack on to them.

That's why I have taken such accurate measurements to assure everything is just right.

The easy option would have been to buy the correct oil seal holders in the first place but I can only source chrome ones and I wanted stainless, so this was my only option.

I bought the oil seal holders from Barleycorn with full knowledge that they were not the correct ones for my bike, so there is no implication that Barleycorn are in any way at fault. In fact Simon from Barleycorn rang me to ask if I was sure that I was buying the correct parts because he had noticed that I had referenced my direct bank transfer payment as A65 Parts. A lot of suppliers would not have been so attentive.