Success with Motion Pro Seal Mate

[Jetpilot5]

A couple of weeks ago I noticed my left fork seal leaving an oily ring around the fork tube after a couple hundred miles.  I was a little surprised because the bike only had 8500 miles on it but it is an 07 and spent a lot of time sitting so I figured the seal had probably dried out and was ruined.  Some reading online showed that some people had success using the Motion Pro Seal Mate.  They're only $5 and I knew my local dealer had them hanging on the wall so I bought one and gave it a shot.  It took me three attempts and lots of bouncing the front end up and down but it seems to have worked.  I've ridden over 800 miles since I worked on it and it's still perfectly dry.

Certainly not a cure for a ruined seal but if you have some minor weeping and your fork seals have low miles on them I'd sure give it a try.  If it works it'll save you a lot of hassle and if it doesn't you're only out $5.

[M.Brane]

 Neat tool.

 I used to have fork seal problems too until I started doing two things:

 Keeping the fork tubes clean of bug debris

 Packing the area between the dust, and oil seals with grease to catch any crap before it gets to the oil seal.

[bikefreak47]

35MM film works as does a very thin feeler gauge blade. Cleaning the tubes after every ride helps considerably. Dead, dried bugs will chew up seals quickly.

[dietDrThunder]

As a corollary to this, I have successfully fixed dinged fork tubes using the method below. I'm referring to sharp-edged rock dings that cut up seals.

1. if there is a significant burr, take it down with a fine file...be very careful not to touch anything but the burr itself.
2. Change to a fine sand paper like 200 grit and use your index finger to sand the spot until it feels flat...there must be no burr left. Use very small motions so as to end up with the smallest possible area affected by the sanding.
3. mix up some JB Weld, and cover the spot you just made. Let it fully cure.
4. Use emery paper in strips...wrap the strip around the fork leg and use a back-and-forth sawing motion to sand down the JB Weld. Continue until the only remaining JB Weld is a tiny speck which is filling the crater left when you removed the burr.
5. Clean out the fork seal with a thin feeler gauge. If you're lucky, it's not ruined.
6. Ride.

[Jetpilot5]

Good advice on keeping the fork tubes clean.  I've been wiping them down after each ride but with virtually no winter weather here this year the bugs are thick.  Whatever I pulled or pushed out with the Seal Mate must have been really tiny because I never did see anything on the tool, maybe it got pushed past the seal and into the fork, I don't know.  I never even had a drip, just an oily ring so it wasn't much of a leak.

I have read of people using 35mm film or other thin plastic.  My concern would be tearing or breaking the home made tool while it's in the seal and having a piece get stuck below the seal level.  I suppose that could happen with the Seal Mate too, but it's pretty flexible and still stiff enough to do the job.

I hadn't thought of using a feeler gauge.  As long as you can be careful not to damage the seal I would think that would work fine, though it's smaller than the Seal Mate and could be tough to hold onto while you work it around the fork.  I try to always remember the first rule of home maintenance.  First, do no harm.