The problem I am having is on my 2001 FLHPI Road King. My left fork began leaking oil, so I am in the process of removing my front forks to replace all the seals and gaskets with an after-market kit. I have followed the Harley shop manual on how to remove the forks. Unfortunately, our attempts to remove the fork slider from the fork tube have met with considerable resistance.

Using the fork slider like a slide hammer in the separation process has been nothing but troublesome and the seals have not moved a fraction of an inch after my father and I battled away with them for two hours. I suspect the seals have not been replaced since the bike was first built at the factory.

Do you have any suggestions? I did a search on the forums and a few posts point to simply just brute strength. I believe super-force may be necessary in some instances but would sooner work smarter, rather than harder, when I can.

 

Just making sure, but did you remove the 6mm allen bolts at the bottom of the fork sliders? Also there is a snap ring that holds the seal in that needs to come out. Thats the only thing I can think of that would make separating the slider difficult. My came apart fairly easy but you have to use enough force to pop the seal out.

Mark

 

Dammit...we missed the 6mm allen bolt. We removed the snap rings. I mentioned the bolt twice to my dad when he had one of the forks in his hand and he must have looked at the wrong bolt hole when we were making sure we were following the manual's steps.

Looks like we were working like morons today. Thanks for the reminder.

 

^ What he said ^ I have a 2000 FLHPI and the seals had never been changed either. I changed mine this spring and didn't have any problems, just had to use some pretty good force to get them off. Make sure to take the allen bolts out. I bought a long 6mm allen wrench, cut off the right angle part, and used a 6mm socket to get them out. BTW, now would be a great time to throw on some chrome sliders if you don't already have them on there. Good luck!