Putting Fork Gaiters on a VX 800

This page documents the installation of fork gaiters on my VX-800. I have other pictures of the bike and of a road trip available. All of the pictures are at a much higher resolution than what is displayed on this page. To see any of the pictures at full resolution, click on it. -- Fred Morris

Before

Here is what the forks looked like before. You can see that the fork tubes are in good shape.

During

	The process is this: Put the bike on the center stand and block under the engine; the bike is front-heavy when on the center stand, and if you don't block it it will fall on its nose when you try and remove the front wheel. Disconnect the front brake caliper from the forks. This needs to be done so that the forks slide all the way out of the triple clamps. Remove the front wheel. Loosen the triple clamps. Slide the forks down. Slide the gaiters on. Slide the forks back up. Retighten the triple clamps. Reattach the front brake caliper. Reinstall the front wheel.
The hardest part for me was detaching the caliper; I doubt it has ever been taken off the bike before. The other difficulty was getting the bottom of the gaiters over the bottom of the forks; I ended up removing the front fender.		note the speedometer cable and the brake caliper detached from the forks

After

Here it is, in punk-ass red!    note the close fit. i had to remove the fender to get the bottom of the gaiter to slide on to the bottom of the fork

rev.date: 04-Jul-2003

rev. by: Fred Morris