Fork Stop Plate Inspection

Nomad2day

Longhair Redneck Geek

Jan 11, 2009

#1

I have my bike dis-assembled for the winter months and 10K service stuff and went to finish dis-assembling the lower triple tree so I could polish it out on my bench buffer. What I found kinda surprise me. It has 4 torque head bolts that mount it to the lower tree. They were loose and both of the roll pins that stake the plate down were sheared in half. I have to extract the broke pieces out of the lower tree. Due to the 4 mounting bolts being loose you can see where the bolts had walleyed the aluminum around the holes and the stop plate was working back and forth some against the aluminum. If you got some slot in the front end give a look here too....

alhall88

UAW

Jan 11, 2009

#2

I had the same problem when I took off my stock front end. The stop plate is hardened steel and the roll pins were just put in I believe for the drilling and tapping of the lower trees. In the aftermarket front ends you will not see the holes for the roll pins. I replace my screws as well with a grade #5 bolt. You don't want to go to hard like a grade #8 because the hardened stop plate may snap them.

Nomad2day

Longhair Redneck Geek

Jan 11, 2009

#3

alhall88 said:
I had the same problem when I took off my stock front end. The stop plate is hardened steel and the roll pins were just put in I believe for the drilling and tapping of the lower trees. In the aftermarket front ends you will not see the holes for the roll pins. I replace my screws as well with a grade #5 bolt. You don't want to go to hard like a grade #8 because the hardened stop plate may snap them.

Al I figured it would be a common problem. With the CNC technology I doubt it would need anything to drill and tap the holes in the proper place every-time. We do it at work all the time on our CNC machines. I would guess it is for nothing more than making sure a operator installs the stop plate in the correct orientation and not 180 out and then torque the bolts.

Nomad2day

Longhair Redneck Geek

Jan 15, 2009

#4

After some more thought, I believe the roll pins are installed to take the shock off of the bolts when the forks hit the end of the travel. The spring steel they are made of can take the abuse much better than the bolts holding the plate in place keeping them from strssing.
Neil in Tenn