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Instrument housing removal?

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My Speedo and tacho are away being reconditioned. In the meantime I’m going to remove the instrument housings, which are unpainted alloy on my ‘72 Commando, and give them a polish. Question is, can I simply remove the large hex head bolts from the top of the forks or is there a spring underneath which will need resisting? I suspect the former but you never know!

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Graham: You suspect correctly. Under the big nut the damper rod is threaded into the bottom with a locking nut and a spacer over a compressed spring. However you attack the job know that the whole front end will drop if you remove both big nuts at the same time. Good luck. Mark

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Under the large nut, once you have removed ONE AT A TIME from the stanchion, there is a nut on the top of the spring shaft. Spanner on the nut, and the large nut can be undone. If you do it one nut/stanchion at a time-no issue. If you want to do both together then the front wheel and forks drop dramatically  to the floor! Suggest a brick under the front end to stop this. Also the rest of the bike now wants to sit up on the back wheel-be very careful, have your mates round for the laugh-to hold it all in place!

I’m confused! Today I undid the top nuts (tried both, one at a time), which unscrewed until it felt like the nut thread had disengaged (a click each turn) but I couldn’t pull the nut out. Bike was in the centre stand so light load on the front forks, the nut had moved about 1/4”. I understand that there is a damper rod screwed into the nut, retained with a lock nut which I need to expose for disconnecting. What am I missing?

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You need to put a jack under the front engine mount to just support the weight of the front of the bike. Then undo both the large nuts at top of forks. Next slowly lower the jack and the springs will come up out of the forks as you lower it. Stop when the smaller nuts are accessible. Hold the small nuts with an open ended spanner and unscrew the large nuts. You can then lift off clock holders. 

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and make sure that wheel is kept supported to avoid dampers disappearing, obviously. It’s all simple when one understands what connects to what.

 


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