Hi All

I have a 2012 990 SMT. It has WP 4860 front forks. I've owned it brand new. It's done about 47000km (seasonal/weekend rider - only ridden it in winter). I keep this bike well maintained and clean, but I ride it pretty hard. Road surfaced here is not good. I noticed the last week the stanchions have lateral wear markings. The closer to the outer tube, the worse it is. This wear is not uniform around the stanchion:



The photo does not show wear clearly. Here is a pictorial to describe the wear locations on the stanchion:



Last March, I took my bike to a local performance suspension specialist for an oil and seals replacement. They are highly regarded and recommended among the local community. Long story short: they did a poor job and the technician that serviced my forks in my opinion was incompetent or inexperienced. One of the issues is they had mixed up the parts when reassembling my forks. He paired the left stanchion with the right outer tube and the right stanchion with the left outer tube (ie: my vent holes are now located under my bars). Before I took my bike to the specialist, the stanchions were perfect (no wear marks) and for 7 years this was the case. When I owned my 2006 990 SD for 6 years (65000km on the clock), I never saw these marks. My previous bike before that (a 2001 GSXR1000) owned for 5 years (80000km). Again never saw wear marks like these. I keep my forks religiously clean. So seeing this wear is news to me.

My question is, what could be causing this wear ?

I would not regard the wear as something I immediately need to fix, but I will monitor. Apart from when serviced GSX250 forks 20 years ago, I have never touched forks hence and regard myself now with no experience in fork repair/servicing.

Any help/tips/prognosis greatly appreciated

I found this video for ya hope it helps https://youtu.be/H3xYhlpyaDA

It really shites me off when you can’t get some so called expert to do the job right.
I’m sure if you look on YouTube you will find a vid on aligning the front end so good luck

Hi Agro. Thanks for posting video. I'll recheck my settings. Maybe I've redialed in one fork incorrectly ?. I don't think so, but I'll check tomorrow.

Failing that, I've decided to re-service the forks myself to investigate the wear. Do you recommend ordering the full service kit (R14013 REPAIR-KIT EXC FRONT FORK06/07), or just the oil seal ? (48601414 Oil seal ring 48x57.9x11.4)

Regarding the cap removal tool (cap part: 48600431S PRE-LOAD ADJ. CPL. M51X1,5 05), are they universal ?, or are they specific to the WP 4860 fork leg ?. Ebay and other suppliers reference the The KTM 48600074S cap. One site references the KTM 48600074S cap and states their tool is universal.

https://www.amawarehouse.com.au/motion- ... gKlz_D_BwE



I don't normally take my bike to get worked on (I don't trust dealer workshops). I do everything myself. I went to this specialist because everybody raves how good they are. So, this re-enforced my view that if you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself.

Cheers.

On other thing Agro.

When my bike was returned to me, I had to change the pretension settings of the forks.

For years and years, I had the front fork pretensions set to 4. This was perfect. When I got bike back from specialist, the bike did not handle right. So, I took it into the hills with some tools to play with the settings. To make the bike handle the same as before (or as close as I could get), I had to set the pretensions to 3.5.

Could the specialist have totally f@cked up the reassembly on these forks causing each fork leg to now require different tensions ?

If so, what specific reassembly scenario could do this ?

Thanks.

PS/ I checked my settings on both forks (preload, dampen, rebound etc). That are correct.

Hey sorry for getting back late but I don’t look at this forum much.
But your better off giving this fella a call:- Joe at Ride Dynamics he really knows
His stuff.
http://ridedynamics.com.au/