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Okay, so its Saturday and I've got some spare time this weekend. Not raining yet so let's get out to the gargre early and drag out the bike.

Those front fork stanchions are looking very sorry, and I've picked up some replacement forks at Buckets and Bits which will do the job nicely.

Looks to be a piece of cake to get this front wheel off. It's a little bit different to the RF, but easy enough to work out. Previous owner has done up the axle WAY too tight though so I decided to undo the fork bottoms and drop out the front wheel and worry about the axle later.

Forks not too hard to get out which is good, as a previous owner had been a bit rough and smashed the fork top trying to get them out before me. Lucky I'm replacing those forks eh? I'm also in luck - the bolts were put in with some grease so they undo easily. Thank goodness for that - allen key bolts can be a bitch, especially those 6mm ones - they seem to be my nemesis.

I used some 2000grit paper to clean up the stanchions on the replacements and pulled one of the PDF units off an old fork as one of the new ones didn't come with one.

Cleaned up the axle bits - they came up nice, and lubed it all. I'd thought the bearings on the wheel might be shot but they seem to be good - sealed ones - but I might replace them anyway in the future.

Only one glitch on replacing them - the bloody bolt on the bottom of the left fork broke. Dammit. So I'm going to have to move the stanchion from that fork (and the bloody PDF unit) onto the old fork lower. Never mind - I was going to do the fork seals so this gives me an incentive.