ATF as Fork Oil??

Hi,

I'm out in Kenya and my forks seals have gone. New fork seals arrived and ready to replace but everyone looks at me askance when I ask for some 5wt fork oil (or fork oil at all!). The locals use ATF in their Chinese bikes' front forks. I read somewhere that ATF is about 5-7.5 wt. Can I go ahead and use it??

Cheers and thanks for any help,

John

I think that ATF is supposed to be closer to 10WT. I have heard people comment about it that is too thick for modern USD forks like on the WR. It would do if you cannot find anything else.

ATF was used on old-fashioned damper rod forks.

I've used ATF in most of my bikes. The WR is the first of 8 that's actually had fork oil in it and that's only because I paid enough for the bike to give a shi*

The damping is going to feel considerably different so take it easy the first few days until you adjust.

my riding buddy tom uses synth atf in his forks, & when he helped me (read: he did it) put my new fork seals in, we used that. It seems to work fine.

Thanks to you all for your input. Tracked down some WP fork oil in nairobi (at an obscene amount of KES).

Anyone fancy a trip to east Africa - there's a couple of big tanked Wr250R's available................?

John