I replaced my seals twice, the first time i thought i drove the seals in poorly with a piece of pvc. I borrowed a seal driver and here they are leaking again.

If i shine a light on my fork pistons? the silver part i can see verticle scratches i assume from the pvc, but you cant see it unless the light is directly on it. and i didnt replace the bushings. They looked warn but i diddnt think it would cause the seals to leak immediatly. It took about 100 miles for the leaking to get noticlable. help? are my forks fubard?

 

your seals prlly needed replacing but after u hit it with the pvc u prlly jus totally f'd it .. who knows .. just replace the whole forks

 

Somebody told me today that your supposed to put the old seal in between the new seal and the seal driver? any opinions?

 

What year is the bike and how many miles?


If your bike has over 10k miles or so, it probably needs new bushings. Seals will just blow out repeatedly with worn bushings. I almost always replace bushings since they are cheap

Inspect the fork tubes for knicks, any gouges or knicks in the tubes will cause the seals to blow.. Also check the forks with a square all the way around to make sure they are 100% straight.. I doubt pvc would have gouged it unless you had very rough edges. First few seals I did I had rough pvc and never had a issue.. Now I use some sand paper just to take the jagged edges off the pvc..

And use OEM seals! Don't use aftermarket.

I've used a piece of pvc to drive fork seals every single time and never had a set of forks leak. I've done over 15-20 sets of forks, many now are 2-3 years old and still on the road not leaking.

 

when you install the seal use a piece plastik so it can slide over the bushing seat(where its cut out for the bushing). i ripped a few when i first started out, then used this process and never had them leak again. also get oem seals, most aftermarket seals are garbage.