tstuna

hi guys. firstly i'll do the done thing and say "I'm new!" and hello to you all :-) i own a 95 foxeye fzr600, my first road bike and its a hoot. i have a blown fork seal, so i have decided to strip the forks down, clean them and put new oil in whilst i am doing the seals. webbs in peterborough were kind enough to photocopy the exploded diagram from the workshop manual for me so i know what goes where, but i have now stumbled on a probem. i cant get the inner and outer stanchions to seperate so i can get to the seal and drain the remaining oil and clean them ! (i have only tried on one fork leg so far) i took the forks off the bike, put the inner stanchion in a vice and un-screwed the large allen hean bolt in the bottom of the leg, as i presumed this would then allow me to seperate the leg parts. nope! then i went to the top of the leg and un-screwed the spring retaining part. still no use! out came the spring, but the damping rod is still firmly in the leg. then i remembered under the dust seal is a circlip. remove that, no change! the damping rod moves freely up and down, as does the whole fork assembly. the problem seems to be that when i try to pull the two parts of the legs apart, something (on the damper rod??) only allows me to go as far as the fork seal. sooo.... if anybody can tell me what i've missed, no matter how simple its most likely to be, that would be greatly appreciated :-) Cheers Dave