A ball end 3 mm hex key seems to be the right tool to adjust the compression and rebound on my forks. With the handle bars above the fork tops there is not much room for my ball end hex key. I used a small regular "L" shaped 3 mm hex key and it started to chew up the aluminum adjuster.
Does anyone know of any special "shorty" tool or a home made solution? I do not want to remove my handle bars for every adjustment.
Thanks,
Dan
Did the 'L' style hex key not fit well?
Seems it would be less likely to chew them up than a ball-end.
i did an on line search for the hex size of the adjuster and came up with a few responses that said use a ball tip hex or suffer damages with one guy having to replace a adjuster. I assumed the chamfered edges of the ball tip would save the adjuster?
My "L" key damaged the adjuster slightly with some metal shavings left behind, it has slight chamfered edges. I have a straight ball hex that I used for the compression adjuster on the fork bottoms that seemed to work fine.
I might just make up something myself. :-\
My recommendation would be to go slow and get your eyeballs really close to what you are doing and stop if you see anything that looks like it might be a problem.
The closer you look the better chance you have of stopping a problem before it gets away from you.
And, use a quality name brand Allen wrench. And, even at that, examine and dress the ends as needed while avoiding overheating the tip. As for the ball ends, I'm not sure how you could dress those with any degree (no pun) of accuracy. :) Then heed Spike's advice.