re. front suspension fix

[yeah!]

Howdi and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!

I may have had too many rum and cokes so please excuse my possibly poor description and rambling...it's down to 34 degrees celsius today but my place is still damn hot....40 degrees yesterday...the last week in december here in perth western australia averaged 39.4 degrees celsius. Yes we're tough in australia. My idea of a white christmas is the amount of zinc on my face....suntan cream... so...

I've pulled off my front forks this arvo and ready to fit my new hagon progressive front springs. The plastic spacer in my 2004 35,500km red bike is 120mm long and I'm replacing it with a spacer an extra 20mm, 140mm in total. This was suggested by Slartybartfarst in his epic 2009 front end fix....
.....I'm hoping he's my suspension guru....Red and black coloured bikes are my favourite...

My problem is in moving the lock nut that holds the spring in tension. It is hard down on the bottom of the thread and I can't loosen it to move it up the thread to leave the 13mm onto which the fork cap screws down so that they meet. Slartybartfarst's fix from 2009 suggests this and I'm trying it. My sag was 40mm and I want to get it 25 mm. My '94 VFR 750 is great with 25mm sag, track days and everyday commute.

My fork cap was screwed 23mm down onto the long threaded central shaft. ( alcohol is wonderful )...anyway....HELP!!!!!!

Does it matter if my lock nut doesn't meet my fork cap? If I crack the lock nut and screw it up to leave the mythical 13mm slartybartfast suggests, I've dropped 10mm preload and gained 20mm from the longer spacer.

I can't crack the locknut off the bottom of the thread...Stupid thing..

Any incredibly intuitive, miraculous or logical solutions gratefully accepted. The goal at the moment is 25mm sag.

Oh well, roger and out.

Yeah!

[shedmonkey]

I would persevere with loosening the locknut as potentially the rod could spin in use and could be nasty. Can you get mole grips through the spring and clamp onto rod(use a piece of ally plate to protect rod), or maybe gently warm up the nut. Good luck

[AZ]

I`ve just had the same problem with mine and i ended up using a very dense/coarse nylon webbing to protect the threads and then used mole grips/vice grips.Worked a treat with no damage to threads.Make sure you de grease threads as you don`t want any lube on them.

[yeah!]

Thanks a lot guys!!

I went and and got 2 fine metal thread nuts and used them as lock nuts....cracked very easily then.