You put the left one back together wrong that's all

 

We had trouble getting the damper hooked back into the top fork nut while compressing the spring. In an attempt to try something, my buddy took a wrench to the long needle that comes out of the top fork nut. The needle ended up coming out of the fork nut. I was a little freaked out by this, but he didn't seem worried. It seemed like we got it back together right.

We finally thought to use wire under the nut at the end of the dampener to pull the dampener through the plastic pieces while compressing the spring and than sticking a 10 or 12 mm wrench under the nut to hold the spring and plastic pieces down.

 

We didn't take apart the right one all the way. My buddy felt confident that we knew exactly how much oil to put in after measuring the left fork. I wouldn't know how the fork is supposed to look other than the way we put it back together.

Is there anywhere to get a service manual for 05 forks? I only can find the 03-05 shop manual. Does that contain both 03 and 05 forks?

 

Just to make sure. Are you sure you're not talking about the rebound adjuster? It is possible to get that stuck by not installing the top cap correctly on the damper rod.

I'm not sure how it's possible to get the preload adjuster stuck though, because that is built into the cap and it only pushes on the spring.

 

I'm talking about the 22mm nut. Not the small screw adjusters.

 

Can anyone else chime in here? Did I reassemble the fork incorrectly, or do I need a new top nut and preload adjuster?

 

Just to follow up on an old thread:

I finally got around to trying to fix the fork. I figured that the adjuster was stuck in the standard position since I never moved it. I rode the bike for about a thousand miles with no problems, except for lowsiding at NJMP in April.

We cracked it open and I got the cartridge completely out of the fork cap this time. Last time we did not do this. I could see how the preload adjuster worked. It was bottomed out in the full soft setting. It just required a little more torque than I was comfortable doing without seeing the exactly how the mechanism worked.

Unfortunately, when reassembling the fork cap to the damper tube, we broke the damper tube. This happened when tightening the lock nut under the fork cap after seating the damper tube. The damper tube is pretty fragile, being hollow. My buddy was able to make a phone call though and pull a cartridge assembly out of his a**. I'm not sure what bike it came from, but it looked identical to the damper tube that we broke.

It turns out that breaking the damper tube was serendipitous. The rod that goes into the damper tube broke off the rebound adjuster last time we worked on the fork. I mention it in the first post above. I never would have known it we hadn't had to get a new cartidge.

So we get it all back together and the preload adjuster does its thing. Unfortunately, as TKSD hinted at above, the rebound adjuster only gets 2 turns out of the fork that we were working on. I know what's wrong with it, but now have to take the fork apart one more time

I have the Clymer manual and looked through it briefly before working on the fork, but it didn't say anything about the rebound adjuster screw. Today, I read the procedure for the 2003 section and of course it mentions it, just not in the 2005 section.