Replacing forks

[Timbo S2]

G'day,

Maybe an obvious answer, but im replacing the forks on my trackbike this weekend. Is it as simple as:

1. removing wheel, mudguard and front brakes.

2. Car jack (inc. wood) under exhaust manifold (bike still on rear stand), remove front paddock stand.

3. One by one, loosen bolts to yokes, slide old fork out and replace with new, ensuring that the new forks extend out of the top of the yoke by the same amount as before... Obviulsy I'd need to introduce the front wheel spindle to ensure that the forks are correcly aligned.

4. Torque all bolts up!

Anything I've missed, or proposing to do incorrectly?

[Mark/Foggy]

Before you jack it up stand the bike upright off stands and measure distance from spindle centre to lower edge of bottom yoke. Now jack bike up and check headrace bearings first, adjust as necessary. If there's any slack wagging the front wheel around with the brake on it's either headrace or wear in the stanchion bushes. Fitting the forks and doing these checks again will help eliminate problems/expose wear. Now with the front jacked measure the spindle centre to lwr edge of bottom yoke again, the difference in these measurements is your static sag and will give you a pointer as to how to set up the new forks for pre-load. Fit the new forks so that the spindle centre to lwr edge is the same as before. Now you've got an indicator as to whether you've got different fork internals from fork to fork. The amount sticking out of the top yoke changing could point out if there are top out springs fitted in the different forks and if both forks have them fitted whether they are of different weights. Whatever if you follow this methodology you'll end up with the same basic geometry as you started with as opposed to finding that the 2 forks have been set up to operate in different parts of the stroke. Apart from that it's just a matter of making sure that all the fasteners are done up tight.

[Timbo S2]

Great, thanks a lot!

Gonna keep me busy!