Are my forks forked?

The thread in one of the (post) disc mounts is now bare. When they came my way a bit of loctite would keep things in place but a couple of screwings/unscrewings and the thread is no more and not even loctite can save the day.

Is there anything i can do to save them? Bear in mind that I’m on a budget and that the cost of replacing/fitting the lowers would probably be close to what I’d spend on replacing them (second hand, natch). Oh! And I don’t have any heavy engineering tools to hand.

So, are they, to all intents and purposes, done for?

Maybe you can have a helicoil fitted? Probably cost a fair bit tho

That’s a neat idea but, yep, they start out at c.£35 as far as i can see. The insertion tool (as seen here) will cost extra.

Still, it’s a start. Thanks 🙂

Take them to your local ( small ) motorbike shop / engineer. Normally only charge a tenner ish for a helicoil insertion.

Ooh I have some liquid metal which is an epoxy similar to araldite. The stuff can be drilled and tapped once set. You could try filling the hole up and drilling and tapping that out or getting someone with the tools to do it for you.

Cheers TheSwede – that’s a pretty neat idea, ta.

helicoil kit – see ebay – 20 quid

see also http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Form-A-Thread-Loctite-16-fluid-oz-LCT-37390_W0QQitemZ300252863720QQihZ020QQcategoryZ100952QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

To be honest I’d find a little old man in an engineering shop.

We used to have people who could make things ….

Thanks for that – i might give Form-a-Thread a go before I do anthing else. Cheers 🙂

What about tapping the hole out to a larger bolt size? Is there enough meat to do that?

Andrew, your lbs should be able to do this for you for pennies. Certini in Saltash usd to charge about a tenner. Atleast getting someone else to do it alleviates the possiblity of you damaging the forks further and at greater expense possibly

If you’re in the cardiff region (going by the nickname)then give me a call at Sunset,02920371321 on thursday, I should be able to helecoil it for you for a few quid.

helicoil. Don’t rely on chemical metal for a safety critical part. Your local engineering shop will helicoil it cheaply enough

Cheers Coatesy but I’m in Derby. I think I may well be coming round to TandemJ’s way of thinking regarding it being safety critical. I’ve got a decent LBS quite close. If not I’ll have to get the yellow pages out and look under ‘Engineering’. Rolls Royce are just up the road but I’m not sure they’ll find the time…

Just checked with my LBS and they reckon they can give it a go for a tenner. Smart.

thats good, you want someone who’s done it a few times before and has professional tools etc. Like taff says, you don’t want to botch it

To be honest I’d find a little old man in an engineering shop.

We used to have people who could make things ….

Amen, the number of small machining shops is falling rapidly – soon we’ll have no-one with the ability to make things from scratch if we dont support them.