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Fresno, CA
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Fantasy
1435th
Edited Date/Time
1/7/2019 7:36pm
Hey guys, doing a service and rebuild on a set of used Honda 1999 forks for my 1995 CR 250 full restore.
I purchased a set of used 1999 CR forks from EBay. Outer tube appearance appears such that you would believe they both came off the same bike.
Questions I have are as follows,
Is it common with the first image to have two different springs. The right side spring appears heavier with more coils.
Second question is the thin walled adjustment tube is twisted 45 degrees. Im thinking someone was trying to force a turn.
Lastly the caps being different. Any concern for me over this or is this how they came.
I purchased a set of used 1999 CR forks from EBay. Outer tube appearance appears such that you would believe they both came off the same bike.
Questions I have are as follows,
Is it common with the first image to have two different springs. The right side spring appears heavier with more coils.
Second question is the thin walled adjustment tube is twisted 45 degrees. Im thinking someone was trying to force a turn.
Lastly the caps being different. Any concern for me over this or is this how they came.
I can take the inner cartridges out of my 97 forks and mate them with these other parts. Hopefully the caps fit.
I’m going to rebuild them with Racetech type 3 Gold Valves so hopefully using those valves it won’t matter using the 99 internals vs the 97.
I appreciate any further comments .... Thanks.
The 99 forks look different to each other but actually belong together. There were several years where combining springs with either 1, 2 or 3 coils placed together and one spring without 2 or 3 tighter coils determined the spring stiffness. So a spring without and one with 3 tighter wound spring actually was the standard spring set up.
The 3 tighter spring was in the leg with the narrower diameter fork cap which threaded into second chamber vs the other leg with the cap threading on the outside of that chamber.
The valving was the same on both expect the surface area of the internal bushing was almost twice as wide.
A Honda mechanics manual was instrumental in determining this. These manuals are an excellent resource for specific info.
I have seen at least one other 99 Honda CR 250 with the two different fork caps. Certainly not suggesting all were this way for that year.
The Shop
The spring set up is indeed correct as verified by a factory Honda manual.
Both forks should have featured the internally threading fork caps along with the dual bushings for 1999.
How incredibly bizarre, and it makes no sense.
Post a reply to: Honda 1999 CR questions regarding stock Showas and rebuild.