Fork Seals.

[Ed Case]

Eyeguy's brought to my attention that some owners are replacing the two seals in the fork legs with only one, what happens with the 7mm difference where the original seals sat, is the gap just left or is a spacer of sorts used to compensate ?.
                                                      Regards to all..............Dave.

 

[mcnicol]

Dave

I just did this on mine. The seals are so tight that a spacer probably really isn't necessary, but I just cut the lip off my old seals and put them back as cheap spacers. I could have turned some alloy ones up but why bother, they can't be seen with either wiper boots or gaiters.

Ken

 

[Ed Case]

Dave

I just did this on mine. The seals are so tight that a spacer probably really isn't necessary, but I just cut the lip off my old seals and put them back as cheap spacers. I could have turned some alloy ones up but why bother, they can't be seen with either wiper boots or gaiters.

Ken

Thanks Ken, good idea..................................Dave.

 

[Jota Rob]

I use a dedicated fork oil seal, as used by Jap forks, which appears to be a different rubber (or neoprene perhaps) and has an integral wiper seal built in.
Difference is its 8mm wide making the spacer 6mm but found it works better for me, as when I tried a single std seal they failed prematurely, twice.

Rob

 

[Dellortoman]

There's a difference between seals for rotary and reciprocating applications. As Rob pointed out in the previous post, reciprocating seals have a wiper lip because they're likely to encounter dust and crap as they sweep lengthways along the shaft. Rotary seals don't usually have the wiper, and the sealing lip has to do both jobs of wiping up dirt and sealing in the oil. So they tend to fail earlier when used as fork seals. I reckon that's why the original Laverda setup was 2 seals. The outer one acted as a dust wiper, allowing the inner one to work in a clean environment.

Cheers,
Cam