No, never seen that before. Maybe over tightened at some point in its life. Were you riding it when it failed?
No, wasn't riding mate. I'd noticed a bit of uneven tyre wear so lifted the front. Found the wheel bearings absolutely shagged. During wheel removal I thought it looked like a crack, but it was much worse. There's alloy corrosion between, so I reckon it's been like it for a while. I'm wondering if the vibration from the bad wheel bearing has caused a stress fracture. It's a bit of a worry, looking back at some of my journeys. I always torque everything to spec with a Snap-on wrench.
It’s known to happen with Ohlins forks fitted as standard equipment on various bikes, the pinch bolts get over tightened and crack exactly where yours have, you can change the fork bottom but maybe cheaper to buy a second hand leg.
Hi mate. When you say 'fork bottom', do you mean the anodised bracket bit alone, or the whole section including the chrome tube?
Paul at Racelab showed me a set of Ohlins like this in his workshop a couple of years ago... they are called "pinch" bolts for a reason he said.. get on ebay, there's sure to be forks available for a decent price
The earlier Ohlins on my rsv were 12nm, the Ohlins fgrt I now have on are 20nm, both are practically nothing and as you said they’re called pinch bolts for a reason.
If you go down the route of getting a leg and removing the alloy part, The bottom alloy bit has a small grub screw holding it to the stantion, this screws against the stantion thread , after you have removed the grub screw lightly spot drill the threads that the grub screw has damaged, It was only after removing one of mine I found half the threads stripped out of the alloy then finding the reason why.
Someone with a better memory than me will have to fill in the blanks, cannot remember which model it was, but there was a need to replace the lower axel/pinch bolt assembly when issues of corrosion appeared, again cannot remember if it was a recall or service advisory, but do remember my bike needing repair, just can’t remember which one it was.
Since posting earlier, I found some docs, it was on my 929, which now brings back the memory of it, corrosion where the inner tube met the fork leg axle bracket. They replaced both brackets, and the one thing I remember clearly was Honda blaming it on owners using the bikes in adverse conditions....ie wet and salt , same old, same old Honda UK
There was a recall on the 929 where the axle bracket could crack where the tube slotted in. I don't recall the corrosion one. I ignored the recall and then it cracked and opened up on track to about 3mm which made me redefine my response to recall notices
It can be caused either by over-tightening, or else from not tightening, or even not loosening, the 2 pinch bolts equally.