Forks, non Laverda

[chrisk]

FFF, found the problem with my NOS Yamaha DT360A stanchions. Mounted on the bike, the axle was about 15mm lower on one side than the other.

Found a bend on left slider, thought a press might fix it, snapped it in half. That didn't help.

Found another pair of sliders, pulled everything apart, looking at them on the bench .......... one of the new stanchions was 15mm longer than the other. (SC500 I think)
My second Ebay touch-up. Explains why they came packaged individually. 

 

[Dellortoman]

Breaking things in a press can be a dangerous pastime.

There can be a lot of energy stored in a bit of metal that's being straightened (or bent) in a press. I tried to straighten a piece of steel bar yesterday. It's about 15 mm diameter by 300mm long, and had a slight bend in the middle. It's a piece I've had lying around in my steel scrap bin for years. A piece of bent bar isn't much use for anything, but I thought if I straightened it out it would make a good drift to knock some old wheel bearings out. I put it in the press between a couple of blocks of wood and jacked the press until it started to look straight, then BANG! - the bloody thing broke, firing the two halves off in different directions like bullets. One piece hit my little finger. It must have hit with a sharp fractured edge because it sliced my finger to the bone. Ouch!

It was a brittle fracture with sharp edges like a piece of broken glass. Seems it wasn't just mild steel as I had assumed. It was high tensile spring steel and didn't take kindly to me trying to force a permanent bend in it. I don't remember how it came into my possession, but I reckon it must have been a piece of torsion bar out of a car's suspension. FFF!