September 11, 2011 6:53 AM PDT
Carrie, You've got a point there you may have missed. I had an uncle who gave his jewelry wholesale business to his daughter and then when he died his daughter moved it to Florida. One of the things he taught her and me was if you dont know your diamonds then you better know your jeweler. The same is true for all mechanics, especially motorcycle mechanics. Get with my profile and comments and you'll get to know more about mechanics.
Now then, U have a seal problem. Not familiar with your year and model bike, however, some bikes have external drain plugs and some have plugs in the center of the lower leg requiring the axle to be removed. there is a sealing washer at that point and this could be your problem if your getting a puddle on the floor. If your leak is coming from the other end, blowing by the tube wiper, then undoubtably you need seals and wipers and an entire front end rebuild may also be helpful. It depends on the # of miles and, if done before, what parts were put in the forks. On my bike Honda used 10W fork oil and weak springs, soft everything and I rebuilt the entire front end. With OEM parts I got 23K out of it and with my current rebuild I'm now over 90K. Nope, sorry, whether or not you strapped your front end down so far that you bottomed out the forks, that is not what causes seals to leak. The valves in the fork tubes permit the fluid to pass thru and there is only so much fluid in the tubes. Unless you took it to a hack for service there is the correct amount of fluid in them.
I hesitate to say too much online in that every kid is a mechanic and the official, authorized certified "technos" out of the nearest "technos" school just may try to do it and end up screwing it up so you'd have no choice other than to bring it to me or keep your bike in the shop until your friendly, smiling OEM franchisee has enough work to keep me busy for 10 flat rate hours in 8 clock hours or to take it to a shop run by another real mechanic
.
What I will say is that new seals, tube wipers, springs, fluid and a few "O" rings including labor should cost you about $250 in a real shop run by a real mechanic OR about the same price in a "tehcno" OEM sales organization if they're capable of doing it, and in and around DFW, one of them may not even do it, never the less, charge you for it and tell you it was done. There
are some competent OEM shops around the country that really can do Honda machines well. Get with me and I'll give you their names and locations.
Get with me on my private email site, you'll find it on my business profile here at CycleFish.