Fork restoration - part 3 - fixing the stanchions

With the fork legs sorted I turned my attention to the fork stanchions.

Bad news, there's a bit of pitting near the fork seal area that will damage any new seals. I checked with some local firms who deal with re-chroming but none of them wanted to help out with such a small job. A quick internet search turned up pittedforks.com but they wanted £156 to re-chrome them. Ok, they would have done a lot more than just re-chrome but £156 was too much for a bike of this age / value.

Next option was to price up some replacement stanchions. No luck there either. I couldn't find anyone selling some.

Last option, araldlite precision adhesive.

The idea with this stuff is that you mix it up and then apply it over the pits in the stanchions. When it's dry you take some medium grade wet and dry paper and sit there for friggin' hours (6hrs in my case) sanding away at the dry adhesive until it's level with the chrome. That fills the pits in the chrome and, even though the stanchion looks a bit naff with the pits still visible, they don't do any damage to the seals.

Here's the stanchions, one of them with most of the dry araldite sanded down and the other one untouched (Yes, I did put too much on and it dripped down - oh deep joy - not)

If you are planning on doing this yourself I have a tip for you. Don't. Seriously, it takes forever so if you have a life get a firm to do the work instead, or if you have the option just buy some new stanchions.

If you didn't read that last paragraph I have a further tip for you. Get the araldite precision stuff (blue packaging) and not the red stuff (which is rapid I think). Not sure why but that's what I was told!

Like I said, the pits are still visible after all this hard work so I'll fit some fork gaiters once they are back on the bike so you won't even see the hard work! At least the fork oil seals will appreciate it.

Next, putting them back together...