Motocross - Maintenance

Has anyone ever had a time where they've talked about something people should avoid, then by bad karma, it happens to that person? Well, add me to that list of people because recently I had to make a few repairs to my motorcycle and was going to post a bit earlier. However the parts I needed to order were fairly expensive and took a while to install so I had to put posting on this blog off until I knew my motorcycle was running perfectly.

I had ended up bending and breaking the forks on my bike, which if you also participate in motocross, are extremely expensive to replace. The forks are a set of two oil compression shocks that are attached to the front wheel of a motorcycle.

Here is a visual of the new forks on my bike shown at the right



I had been reading a bit more of my book after I had made the repair and found that riders that get stuck in-between two ruts in the ground usually end up on their face and their bike is usually damaged in some way (Casper 7). This is exactly what happened when my forks broke. I was about to jump my bike for a photo I was going to upload earlier, but as I was going up for a jump, my front wheel became caught in a pothole (a rut). This, in turn, stuffed my front wheel into the ground, sending me over my handlebars and bending my forks forward to the point where they couldn't travel up or down without becoming stuck.

Also, when I was performing this repair, I had underestimated how long it would actually take. I had just supposed that I would swap out forks and be done. This, sadly, was not true. I soon learned that I had to remove my handlebars, front break system, wheel, axle and multiple hoses that lead to my forks. my frustration grew when I realized that as soon as I removed the forks, they began to leak oil on the ground. The dark stains on the ground in the picture above are actually the puddles of oil that my old forks created.

As soon as I had attached my new forks, I also had to spend the rest of the day testing my bike and tuning it so that my forks wouldn't bend and burst a second time. I had learned a lot about how to tune my bike though. I had learned that the forks had to be bled of air at least once a week and that they could be separately tightened on each side for different types of tracks or riders along with their style of riding. I made sure to set my forks on an extremely tight setting so that it wouldn't buckle if I go over jumps.

The nuts at the top of my forks right under my handlebar cover are what can bleed out the air inside the fork tubes. They can also tighten the resistance on my forks. Also, the other picture of the rear of my bike, the swing-arm is clearly seen. The swing-arm is the name for the thick piece of metal connecting the rear shock absorber to the rear wheel of the motorcycle. The resistance can also be changed on this, which I found out a while before my forks had failed.












Question To Make You Think: Have you ever taken something apart and then tried to put it back together again? If so, explain in the comments what it was, why you took it apart and if you were able to put it back together again. Ex-Legos/The TV Remote/Some sort of collection.