Fork Oil Change - RD350YPVS

I wanted to increase the damping on the Gold Valves, the forks on the 350 still dive a lot, to do this you need to remove the fork springs, so an oil change was in order. Fortunately on the 350, there are drain plugs at the bottom of each leg, so with the front stand in place it was an easy job to drain the oil from the fork legs one at a time. You also need to remove the top cap of the forks in order to allow the oil to drain out. The springs are then easy to grab, with a hook, the gold valves themselves sit on top of the damper rods under the springs, so not easy to see let alone remove. I ended up with a bit of stiff electrical wire which I made a loop in the end of that would go over the screw on the top of the gold valve an hence enable them to be pulled out. It took me about 10 minutes to fish them both out, which was definately worth while as pulling the fork legs out would have taken longer.

I used the tuning guide on the Racetech web site here to tune the damping on the gold valves - I went for maximum damping with 7 threads showing on the end of the valve preload screw - probably a bit excessive, but I want to feel the difference and if I have to back off later then I will.

The oil level states 140mm on the racetech site, and I used SAE 15 oil, I made a mistake when filling the legs though as of course with the stand on the fork legs are fully extended and the measurement is done with the Gold Valve installed but the legs fully compressed.... derrr... waste of some oil.

I also noticed that my preload spacers were not exactly equal lengths so I ground off the longer one to make them the same. If I remember correctly I made them on a race weekend on a circuit, so not surprising thinking back!