First Generation Africa Twin Suspension Issues

The first generation Honda Africa Twin has been known to prematurely wear the coating off of the inside of the fork tubes, which usually results in high stiction. Having owned Honda products before, this sounded odd to me, and I wasn't having any symptoms.

Around 8,000km, the right fork seal began seeping noticeably. I dissassembled both tubes, and inspected for wear in the usual spots, but found none. The oil was gritty to the touch though. This made me think that the premature wear issues may actually be fork seal wiper issues, allowing dirt ingress. The dirt then wears out the fork tube coating.

I installed a set of upgraded fork seals that were known to perform extremely well in the dirt bike competition world, followed by a neoprene fork wiper. Normally one would need to disassemble the forks to install the neoprene tube on upside down forks, but I found a brand that used a cleverly located zipper to allow installing it while the suspension was still on the bike.

At 30,000km I disassembled the forks again for inspection, and noted that while the fork oil was dark as is usual after that amount of time, there was no detectable grit. The fork tubes were in perfect condition.

While my sample size is admitably small, I suspect what is happening is that dirt getting on the stanchion tubes is working it's way past the seals, contaminating the oil. The fork bushings then take that dirt and start lapping away the coating on the inside of the fork tubes. Catching a leaking fork seal early is critical to prevent this, in my opinion. The addition of a neoprene dirt wiper seems to have completely eliminated any dirt ingress.