Tool Fabrication...Ugh!

This morning I spent some time, again, fabricating a necessary tool. I was reminiscing back to a day, when I was working on my Suzuki SV650 where I would have to keep making tools in order to complete projects. I thought that one day, I would have enough money that I didn't have to keep making these stupid tools anymore! Well, here we are some 10 years later. And yet, I am still making tools!

If you've ever had to remove damper rods from a fork, you'll feel my pain. Sometimes you can get lucky by shoving a broomstick handle (or some wooden dowel) into your fork tube, and you might have success in getting your bottom allen bolt out, which was the case with the Suzuki. For the RD, not so much..... Mind you, this bolt has been in there for probably 42 years (translation = forever ). There is a bean shaped nut on the top of the damper rod and a broomstick handle wasn't about to help me out. I looked online and of course this tool from Yamaha is no longer available. (These are the perils of working on a really old bike.) After scouring the Internet, I found some (but little) help. And I came to the realization that I would, yet again, have to fabricate another tool, especially since I was going to have to remove 4 damper rods and I didn't want to leave the extraction method to luck.

First I wanted to get a real idea of what I was dealing with, so I found an old can of Play-doh from another tool-making time, stuck it on the end of a socket and shoved up against the damper rod nut to get an impression. It turned out pretty nicely :)  From there, I could see that I needed a 12mm socket, so I ran down to Home Depot and bought one of their cheapie house brand sockets for under $3. I took an angle grinder to the sides of the socket and relieved two walls and presto! we have a tool!! It worked like a charm! So it only took me two days to get the damper rods out.

Now I just have to run these down to the machine shop to have the tops lathed off and I can start building up the forks. In the meanwhile, I'll strip the paint off the lowers and give them a quick polish. I'm going to try and use as many of the original parts as I can- lowers, damper rods, etc., only swapping out the bent fork tubes. Busy with work, it may take me a while to get this stage done, but I've been dreaming about this for so long, a couple more weeks won't kill me.