EZ Steer installation

The EZ Steer kit came the week before the long President's Day weekend. John and I were both off so we decided to attack it over the weekend. The EZ Steer assembly is a beautiful piece of machining. It comes with fork extensions and new tapered bearings. I removed the front wheel while John was finishing up some travel. I organized and marked the hardware as I removed it and put the parts on the work bench. These instructions from Steve Saunders were my guide. John was coming out later in the day, so in the meantime I removed the trunk... ...the top shelter... ...and the forks. I put them in the vice and drained them. When I removed the fork cap it came off with a lot more pressure than I was expecting. The cap and top spring went flying across the garage, and it sprayed my work bench with old, stinky fork oil. I put new Delray 10W fork oil in to the recommended height (5.5"). The new Progressive spring in place. I used a Quick-Clamp to hold the tube up but it didn't work very well so I used a hose clamp instead. Anyone who has put a fork back together knows what a pain in the ass it can be to get the fork cap back on. It took some effort to get it assembled. I was standing there admiring the assembled fork when I realized I had forgotten to install the fork extension. @#$! The reassembled fork with the extension cap. On the second fork I used a bar clamp to minimize the exploding fork cap. Live and learn. By now John had arrived. We took a pizza break, then John finished the second fork. It was time to remove the old triple tree. We removed the handlebars and the wire ties to make room for the top tree plate. The turn signal canceller runs up inside the triple tree stem. The hardest part was continually loosening cables to allow enough slack in the turn signal canceller harness to be able to disconnect it. Finally we got it. Since I've had the triple tree off my GL1800 I already had the special tool for the top nut, and in no time the old triple tree was off. The top bearing race came out easily using a long screwdriver to pop it out. The bottom wasn't so easy. My GL1800 had a couple keyways to allow the bottom race to be knocked out, but no such luck here. How did Steve do it? He made a tool to fit over the lip of the bottom race. John came up with a different idea. He stuck a flat bladed screwdriver into the gap above the race and I hit the screwdriver with a punch...kind of like is shown in the above. It really only works if you have two people, but it works well. The EZ Steer kit comes with grease to pack the bearings. It is orange and is the stickiest, stringiest stuff I've seen. Since it's John's bike he got to do the honors of packing the bearing. Ha! The EZ Steer assembly in place. It's a shame to cover it up. The new rake makes the front tire set 2-3" farther out. I had allowed two days to do the rake kit, but we finished a day ahead of schedule. That doesn't happen often! The trike kit isn't scheduled to be here for almost a month. Back to trike main page.