Anyone restore fork tubes?

[SurlyBoy]

Franks Forks will make a new set of XS1B tubes for $350. I spoke to a place on MA that hard chromes hydraulic cylinder rams. It'd be about $150 to have the existing tubes stripped and rechromed. If I have to have them machined to get the pits out then it could be another $100+. So almost the price of new tubes on the high end. Just wondering if anyone has gone that route and if it was worth the hassle to save $100

 

[angus67]

The tubes are pretty thin stock. Machineing them might make them too thin.

 

[gggGary]

Decorative chrome platers fill pits and flaws with copper, smooth and chrome over it. Pretty sure the hydraulic repair guys do something similar. Rams are always getting dinged.

 

[SurlyBoy]

The guy I spoke to at the hydraulic repair place said that they have the rams machined to fix the damage. He didn't go into detail but I presume that they fill weld the damaged area and then machine them back to the original OD. I could probably do that part myself. Not sure if my lathe is big enough but a guy I work with has a bigger lather that he uses for gunsmithing. Most of the pitting is up at the top. I think I'll wait until I pull them apart and have a better luck. I might take a stab at it in any case, just as a learning exercise.

 

[fredintoon]

Decorative chrome platers fill pits and flaws with copper, smooth and chrome over it. Pretty sure the hydraulic repair guys do something similar. Rams are always getting dinged.

Hi Gary,
I had a stint as a machinist in a hydraulics repair shop one time.
Because cylinder rods get bent more often than they get dinged and the surface would need to be
centerless-ground to fit the rod seals after re-plating, it's more economic to replace them instead.
There's a rack of various diameter hard-chromed rod lengths.
All the machinist has to do is cut the rod to length and machine the ends as required.
The only trick is because the hard-chrome surface don't like being cut, even by tungsten carbide tooling,
the first cut squares the rod end and the next cut starts from the end to peel the chrome off from the underneath.

 

[gggGary]

I have suspicions that Franks tubes (at least in the past) were decorative chromed not hard chromed or the plating was quite thin. A lot of franks extended tubes have passed through here, the chrome was worn off just above the lowers on every set I have seen. In their defense extended tubes do flex, even more than the stockers. (I do have a brand new set of franks XS1 tubes, three years in the box, they look good,............)

 

[angus67]

Ill bite gggary....how much?

 

[gggGary]

Sorry angus they's just wait'n patently for the special day when my round tuit finally arrives. NFS

 

[angus67]

Here ya go