The time has come and I went after the HAWK front suspension and thought I would post up my experience as it is so far for others and this is the best place to put the post. Hats off to Megadan! The Mikes SX fork valve looked to me to be much the same as the YSS valves and my budget liked it.
Took the HAWK front end apart and drained the fork oil. WOW…pretty surprised to see how dirty it was as this bike has only 1146 miles on it and the factory oil was changed at build up to MAXIMA 15W. Where does all that black come from? Must be the scouring pressure of the fluid against that aluminum.
I think I messed up with the drilling of the Damper Rod. The instructions say 5/16 inch holes spaced 180 degrees lengthwise 10 mm apart. I thought that meant 10 mm distance on hole center and drilled the first hole that way. After looking at it, um…that looks to close and big! The instruction pictures make it appear much smaller but 5/16 in a 14mm rod looks huge and through both sides! I am all in now but ¼ inch I think would be better. Hope have not been fatally weakened. These instructions are for a Yamaha XS650 fork so I am wondering if those damper rods are larger. The second rod I spaced a little more. I believe they will be strong enough, and one thing is sure they will no longer impede oil flow.
*CAUTION: After some research, the 14 mm HAWK Damper rod should have holes drilled with a 1/4 inch or 6 mm bit.
I bought some aluminum rod 24 mm OD with a 16 mm ID and I turned down the outside diameter with sandpaper by hand and what a job. They also offer a 23 mm OD with 19 MM ID. I was going to do a rotary tool on the inside diameter too but I figured out to use a step drill to chamfer the inside to provide a recess to allow the valve to seat flush. I don’t have a lather or a drill press, but eventually towards the end of fabricating I figured out I could use a highspeed rotary tool on low speed with a sanding disc and tape to spin the aluminum rod against a piece of 100 grit sandpaper to take it down to 23.89 or so mm needed to fit in the fork tube. Use 100 grit if you do, finer stuff just takes forever.
Aluminum tubing:
https://www.amazon.com/uxcell-Alumin...s%2C250&sr=8-1
The HAWK came with a stock preload spacer of 35mm. This preload is pretty good for my weight, 175 lbs and 15 lbs of tools on the rear. The front (loaded with rider weight) SAG was 2.1 inch and I have never bottomed the front forks so this would be the target with the valves too. The valves measure 14mm so I decided to use a 10 mm valve adapter so I could have something on the other spring end as there is a good chance, I will be loading this bike and need to add more preload to the spring. So 14 mm plus 10 mm adapter leaves 11 mm for a preload spring spacer I made up of PVC for the total of 35 mm.
I want to clean out the inside of those forks and I am looking for a cleaner that would be friendly to those rubber seals. I thought about putting the bolt in the bottom and sloshing kerosene around but maybe there is a better idea?