I, too, need to do this and I have been putting it off for at least two years. There is something I don't understand in the picture. I was going to drop the wheel, mudguard, stays, stanchions and old gaiters out of trees as one unit, replace the gaiters and shove it back together. Am I missing a critical point that would preclude this approach? I have never had the front end apart since putting it together around 2006 (when I first met some of you guys), which means I've only put a whole front end together once, and then it was from the top down. (A7 barn-find front end not together enough yet to say it's together).
Richard L.
Probably not missing anything Richard, to be honest.
For my today's jobs, most people would drop the stanchions one at a time and fit the rubbers from the top. I think that is accepted practice and I have done that in the past.
But, with AMC teledraulics (they have external springs and big diameter gaiters), if you take all the studs/fasteners that locate the mudguard and brake anchor arm out of the
sliders, you can pass the new prophylactics up from the bottom. (That sounds terrible, but you know what I mean!)
My A10 and also my B31 had metal shrouds as stock so I never had condom failures with them - so I don't know if you can do the same with gaiters on Beesas. Plenty of people here will know though, as I imagine the quality and lifespan of the rubber bits available for all marques is equally questionable.
If stanchions aren't hard-chromed (and teledraulics aren't), it's not a job to leave for ever, because rust will eat away just north of the bottom yoke where moisture collects, and can seriously weaken the front end. I have had to junk a couple of pairs of stanchions in my life due to this, with the wall thickness down to two-thirds or even a half of what it should have been. Scary, because even a minor shunt would be pretty bad news if a stanchion snapped..
