Hitchcocks Forum

For years I have never done anything in the way of maintenance to the forks on my Bullet. It does seem to be riding a bit rough and I am not sure how to check the oil and refill/top up if necessary. Do the two chrome screws on the casquette give access? Can you put a dipstick down? How to judge the right leve? What oil to use?

i hope this helps

As above, if it's not been checked for years, it wants changing. You can't really measure the level like you would with a jap bike because you can't take the spring out without dismantling the whole fork. So drain then refill with the correct volume is best bet. They were massively sophisticated for their era (2-direction, oil damped cassette) but are very agricultural and short travel by modern standards. A few mm in oil level each way is unlikely to be noticeable. Likewise anything but a very gross difference in oil viscosity will probably not be noticed.



200ml per leg. I use ATF in my forks. Others use 20w-50 engine oil. The lattwer will tend to give a stiffer ride. The former is probably more tolerant of neglect and mechanical abuse. Interestingly, Halfords do a multigrade fork oil now which I've started using in my sportsbikes, very pleased with it so far, especially following very hard use which can lead to a lot of heat generation and a loss of damping due to thinning of the single grade oil.

I use ATF as well, find it just the job. It may seem strange to use an oil designed for automatic transmission in a telescopic fork but Honda actually stipulate it for some bikes.

Mmmm, just watched that video. What the guy didn't do was to pump the forks a few times to get rid of the remaining oil.

The 1985 Ford Laser (built by Mazda) I once owned stipulated Dexron 11 for the 5-speed manual gearbox.

Honda were recommending Dexron ATF for fork oil back in the 1970s,,,,,,,,,,,, I still use it in my CX,,,,,,,,,,, and my Transalp,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and my Bullet,,,,,,,,,,, and years ago I had a Rover P6 3500S (that's the manual version) and Rover recommended ATF for the gearbox on that too,,,,,, it's quite commom I believe.

the video is only partially right, just loosening the bottom nut won’t get al the oil out.



due to the construction of the fork stud and collar theres stil a good amount of oil there.

especially when maintenance has been a while, all the grime will sit there.



so you’ll be adding fresh oil to the grimy oil in the bottom, which will make the whole oil change a bit useless.

and you’ll have more than 200ml of oil in the fork, as it has not been drained correctly.



the only way to get all the oil out is to take the wheel out, take the fender off, take the bottom nut of (loosen the nut before you remove the wheel) and pull the bottom leg off far enough of so al the oil will drain out.



remove the leg completely and clean the inside, so that the fresh oil is actually fresh.



in some rare cases you’ll need an impact wrench to lossen the bottom nut when the fork stud is not tight enough in the leg.

its the speed of the impact wrench that will loosen the nut the torque no so much.

Down here we just remove the top nuts and the oil runs out.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. Emptied out some pretty manky looking stuff and replaced with fresh ATF. Quite a lot of gunge in the interior of the drain plug.