View attachment forks001.pdf
Thanks Dave. Need a bit of explanation though (sorry), as I haven't been inside my ST forks yet and don't really know what I'm looking at here. Just need to get some fresh oil in there!
The right fork has a cartridge design, which includes a damper rod that extends up to the top of the fork inside the spring. The end of that rod threads into the bottom of the fork cap.
1. With the fork on the bike and the top triple clamp bolt loosened, break the fork cap loose, but don't remove.
2. Remove the fork tube from the bike.
3. Now remove the fork cap from the fork tube, the damper rod should remain attached to the fork cap.
4. Slide the upper part of the fork tube down enough to expose the top of the spring, there will be a nut at the top of the damper rod (14mm open end wrench)
5. Hold the nut with the 14mm wrench and remove the fork cap from the damper rod.
6. Now you will see a slotted retaining clip that's like a big flat washer, it is held in place by the nut on the end of the damping rod and holds down the spring/spacer. You can remove it by compressing the spring by hand and pulling it out because the slot is the diameter of the damping rod. After doing that, there's nothing left to hold up the damping rod and it will slowly sink into the fork.
7. At this point you can remove the spring from the fork tube.
Now, to put the clip back in place upon reassembly, its helpful to have something to hold the damping rod at its highest position while you put the clip back into place. I've done this job many times, just not very recently so I can't recall exactly how I did this before, but I don't have the special tool. I may have yelled to the wife to come hold this thing while I put the clip back into place, or I may have been able to do it with my own two hands, which is difficult but not impossible. I think I may have also used a strong magnet to hold the rod in place as well.
You can loosen the top nut a bit to remove some of the spring tension, which makes the job of putting the clip in place a bit easier. Just be sure to expose enough threads above the nut so that the fork cap can properly attach to the top of the rod. I forget the exact dimension, its in the shop manual and its something like 10mm if I recall. If you do loosen the nut, just measure the distance from the top of the nut to the end of the rod before loosening the nut, and put it back to that dimension after you're done.
So the tricky part is to keep the damping rod fully extended with one hand, while compressing the spring with the other hand, and putting the clip back into place under the nut. I think I held the magnetic pickup tool in the palm of one hand, and used my fingers on that same hand to slide the clip into place under the nut. If you have a helper to hold the rod up, then its a piece of cake.
Sometimes if I'm lazy I just pour the oil out of the little gap in the clip and use a very small funnel to put the new oil back in through that same gap, that's also an option.
Edit: attached scan of manual page for visual aid.