Make Dre-XT-Stueck great again - Forks and brakes (part 1)

For the better part of the last year, the old Dre-XT-Stueck served in a lot of roles, most prominently as my daily ride to get to work and general run-around in town. It's not like it wasn't comfortable or reliable enough – much the contrary to be honest – but it lacked in two main areas.

1. Brakes and suspension
2. downright horsepower

As the old girl is a type 55A, which means it's a smaller-bore version of the XT600N, type 43F, it also means it originally runs both the very first version of the XT brakes and forks. At a casual first glance both calipers look rather similar. 

The particular issue with my Gen 1 caliper was that it tended to fade terribly after a few repeated harder stops. Also it tended to feel a lot more wooden. (It should be noted, that both calipers at the time of comparison have been freshly and relatively freshly overhauled and were in fully working condition.) On both calipers the brake-piston is the same diameter, but the one crucial difference is where the pads are guided: Gen 1 is using a screwed in guide rod, which gets all sorts of stuff thrown at it, where as the later model only guides the pads with two noses, reducing the risk of pad stiction in the caliper. 

The new brake caliper (and fork legs) came in as part of a trade for the troubled XT600 Tenere and actually worked. 

Turns out, I hadn't prematurely ordered a stainless steel brake piston and fresh seals. Also as the Dre-XT-Stueck is being used all year round (more or less), the stainless brake piston should last notably longer than the OEM chromed mild-steel one.

The casual oberserver will not that the spacing of the mount points is radically different than on the older caliper, which in turn also meant that the actual fork legs had to be switched out as well. 

Generally I drain the old oil and then flush (multiple times) with Diesel. Usually it's a case of draining the forks and then rinse them once with Diesel and it's good. In the picture below you see what came out after the second go. I suppose these were still filled with the original oil.

As the oil-seals still were up to the job, I left them in place and filled the forks to Tenere specs + 5percent (600ml) and they appear to be damping very nicely and stiff.

One of the things that annoyed me in the past was that I was only able to affix the front mudguard with two bolts as one of the rear ones had snapped in its bolthole making the whole lot a rather flappy affair. 

As usual methods hadn't worked, the triples had to come out and a nut was tig welded on. As a certain someone suffered a bit from "my-foot-slipped-off-the-clutch-mista-officer"-syndrome on the tig-pedal, it formed a rather elegant blob of molten metal.

Regardless of which, the stub then came out nicely.

Luckily the headstock bearings (I had bought a new set of fresh tapered roller bearings) only needed a bit of fresh grease, but otherwise were in good condition. Top-tip: don't skimp on the grease and also add some to the bearing cover cup. As that extra-grease prevents water from coming in. 

And that's it - the Dre-XT-Stück is sorted in the suspension department (at least the front end). Now I hear you say, hey why didn't you go with forks from something a tad more modern? Firstly these were essentially more or less free and due to the Tenere springs and oil-level a reasonable amount stiffer and quite frankly these make for a deniable asset in the case of a police control.