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ZN1300 Fork Oil Maintenance
Last Update 8/22/08
This page shows how to disassemble the front forks on a Kawasaki ZN1300 Voyager. These do have air in them so you should bleed off the pressure first before breaking the air line to the front forks. There's a manual air pressure release if you need it that should be hanging off under your left sidecover next to your battery. You pull the pin and it lets the pressure off the system. These have an air crossover tube that shares the air pressure between the 2 forks. Make sure you don't damage the tube or your forks won't hold air.
When you pull the top cap off you'll have the allen head nut underneath.
When you pull the nut you have to be very careful when you get to the last few
threads as your springs are putting tension on this nut and it can go flying off
if you don't hold pressure against it. The spacer goes under the nut and
the washer under that and then the spring. On re-assembly, the washer lays
on the spring just the way it's shown laying on the table in the image.
I had the forks off to replace the steering stem bearings which I cover in
another tech article. Before I put them back on I figured it would be
smart to replace the 20 year old oil in them! Who knows if anyone else had
every done maintenance on these forks. From looking at the bikes I've
bought in the past I find that owners rarely do anything to a bike until
something's broken. If you buy a bike from somebody that's followed the
maintenance intervals in the manual even loosely, they're the exception rather
than the rule.
I'm not talking about just those 'other' people, I'm talking about myself too. Mechanics let things slide on their own bikes a lot of times because they're tired of working on bikes after all the others they've repaired. Besides they know they can fix the problem when they have to and they tend to ride a lot, so sometimes it's hard to find the time or to get motivated to do stuff to your own bike.
This is looking down in the fork tube from the top. You probably can't see
it but there's a slider in the bottom with a hex head fitting. To pull the
slider you need a wrench which is basically a long bar with a proper size nut
welded to the end of it that will fit in the hex head. You hold the slider
so it doesn't turn and break the bolt in the bottom of the fork leg. Then
you can pull the slider out if you need to get it apart to clean it good or get
all the oil out. I think on most bikes you can replace the fork seals
without separating the fork tubes from the bottoms. The majority of the
oil in your leg is on the bottom side of this slider.
Pull this drain screw to get the oil out but be ready with a drain pan as it can
squirt out. If it's not real bad I usually pull the screws and work the
forks all the way compressed and all the way extended till I work all the oil
out. Then I put the screws back in and drop in a few ounces of clean
oil. I work the forks up and down some then pull the screws and work this
oil out as before.
I put the screws back in and drop in a little less oil in than it calls for to fill the fork and work the forks up and down until I'm sure I've worked any air pockets out. To finish, make sure the forks are extended all the way and check your level per the specs in the manual and bring them up to the proper level. One thing you'll notice a lot of times is that one fork may have a lot more oil in it than the other. This isn't good for proper handling manners on the road and it's one of the main reasons you want to check your forks and the steering stem bearings on any bike you buy. I use Amsoil fork oil in all my bikes and all fork oil comes in different weights to suit your needs. david@kz1300.com
NOTE: On these newer browsers I've noticed that they don't always display my large images in full size when you open an image from the thumbnails. Once you click the thumbnail and open the larger image, if you 'mouse over' the image you should see a " + " symbol or some other indicator like a box with arrows usually on the bottom right edge of the image. If you click on the indicator, then the image will expand to it's full size which displays full screen on computers that use a 800 x 600 resolution setting for the monitor. If you click the indicator again it will go back to the smaller image. Some people use a resolution setting of 1024 x 768 or higher on their monitors and for those users the images will appear smaller than full screen in size. You can change your monitor settings easily enough if you desire. Also, the indicator I've noticed is slow to appear even after the image appears to of completely loaded. The indicator in Netscape seems to be a lot faster to display than the one in Internet Explorer.
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