Dirty fork oil syndrome

[JoeMaico]

Bummer. That is what I expect to find on mine when when I take them apart again. Oh well, if find a spare four grand laying around some day - I will put a set of WP Cone Forks on it. Until then, I just hope that Beta will replace the prematurely worn parts that show up. Or, at least sell the replacements at a prorated rate.

joe

[Enmerdeur]

I am going to refresh the oil, index the for 180 degrees (wear is on the back of Fork only), reduce torque in T clamps. Going to run it another 10 hours and then check it. If no improvement I will get them hard anodized. From what I have seen here though I doubt results will be any better after the 10 hours.

[Enmerdeur]

Interesting development. As I was reassembling the forks back on the bike there was some misalignment with the T-clamps. Last ride I did have a pretty good endo on the bike on day two and kept riding the bike as is on day three. Could have caused some abnormal wear.

Any way got things back in alignment and will give it a 10 hour run

[oldman]

I am going to refresh the oil, index the for 180 degrees (wear is on the back of Fork only), reduce torque in T clamps. Going to run it another 10 hours and then check it. If no improvement I will get them hard anodized. From what I have seen here though I doubt results will be any better after the 10 hours.

So are our Sachs fork outers not already hard anodized? If so I can't see that fixing the problem unless they are just doing a piss poor job of anodizing them. As I stated earlier my shock had 40hrs when I revalved it and the anodizing inside it was still perfect all still looked new so that leads me to believe Sachs knows how to put on a good anodized finish.
The stepped wear pattern my inner tubes have on the lower edge where the bushings contact them leads me to believe the bushings are not floating and moving on the inner tube freely as they should causing stiction and binding resulting in the rapid wear.
But I don't know. Just trying to figure out the root cause of the problem.

[Enmerdeur]

They are not hard anodized. You can't have such bright colors like gold and red with hard anodizing. It is very dark in color





I used to work with hard anodized parts and made the mistake of tying to drill a part after it had been treated. You can't drill it with a standard drill. It will dull the drill.

[celler]

They are not hard anodized. You can't have such bright colors like gold and red with hard anodizing. It is very dark in color





I used to work with hard anodized parts and made the mistake of tying to drill a part after it had been treated. You can't drill it with a standard drill. It will dull the drill.

Interesting. Years ago I also regularly had parts hard anodized and they came out the dark green shown in your picture. I would get sprockets and wheel spacers done and the life was much better than stock. I was told at the time that we could use a black hard coat but it was never nearly as hard as the green. It satisfied the medical requirements but we never used it is we wanted a hard surface. Move forward 20 years and I hear about the black can be hard coat but I had my doubts and was always curious why I never saw the "good stuff" that was green in color.

[bryanaverill]

I'm familiar with hard anodizing. I've spec'd it for a few parts I've designed. Combined with a roller burnished bore, you get a very tough surface.

Is it normal for forks to be hard anodized? I didn't think it was. It seems like most of the bores I can remember were just bare aluminum, polished finish.

[celler]

I'm familiar with hard anodizing. I've spec'd it for a few parts I've designed. Combined with a roller burnished bore, you get a very tough surface.

Is it normal for forks to be hard anodized? I didn't think it was. It seems like most of the bores I can remember were just bare aluminum, polished finish.

The green anodizing I saw years ago was a rough surface compared to the in treated part.

[twowheels]

The surface roughness of the anodizing reflects the pre-treated surface finish of the part. The final surface roughness is a small (proprietary) multiple of the original. A process called sealing reduces this multiplier but lessens the hardness.

[oldman]

This is what my fork oil looked like. Terrible! 18 hrs since it was new. Self destruct mode.

Because of the dirty metaled fluid and wear inside the upper fork tube and the wear pattern where the bushing fits on the lower tubes Beta is sending my dealer new upper and lower fork tubes along with new bushings and seals to be covered under warranty.
The problem now is that both upper and lower tubes are on backorder. Since Beta is sold out of these parts I suspect I'm not the only person having this problem.
My bike is a 2017 300RR, 3 months old, has 58hrs on it.