Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere. I've had a look!
Thanks to all the excellent advice on here, I got hold of a 2012 XT660Z with 2468 miles for �4k. It hasn't been out in the rain! As part of the farkling for a long trip I've got Ohlins front springs. On dismantling the forks the oil in one leg was blue, and the other black (as in dirty), and the springs were different lengths (about 5mm). Rather than get hold of a Yamaha damper rod holder, I had a hunt on t'Interweb and found a damper rod holding tool for a GPZ900R here: http://www.gpzzone.co.uk/acatalog/Tools.html (scroll down) For the sake of a Tenner (�10.12!) I thought I'd have a try.
Happy to say it fitted perfectly, and you can see the indentations half way up the wedge where it was forced into the inner tube by me hitting the assembly bolt with an impact driver.

[/HTML]

Good find. Does anyone know if this is the same size needed for the XTR?

Thanks for the find and test. I could dismount the left fork leg only with the maximum preload set... but no way for the right leg. No luck with the wood stick technique either.

Is the socket size 1/2" or 3/8" for this tool?

It's a 3/8" drive. Like you one leg was easy and the other took a bit of thumping before it released. I didn't put any heat on the leg to ease the loctite, but there wasn't any evidence of any on the bolt. Good luck!

Very cool. I guess you just put this on an extension bar down inside the fork and hold the insides still with a ratchet or something? I've only ever used an impact gun to crack the bottom bolt while the fork was still under pressure.

We put a load of extension bars onto the tool, and locked one into a vice. My mate held the forktubes onto the tool and I did what I do best ... hit it with a hammer ... no finesse here!

Hammers are under-rated

Well the GpzZone tool didn't work for me. It looked exactly like on trangwales last pictures after hammering it in to the rod, but the rod kept sliding around it.

To be fair, note that i don't have access to an impact gun.

So i decided to try an even cheaper route (and i wish i started with it ). A very logical route may i say, i'm surprised i could not find it on the net.

- Get a metal tube (or square tube), that goes with some room inside the rod (i took 12mm steel tube, 1m long, could be a bit smaller)

- pierce it to 4mm about 20mm from the end, tap the holes
- pierce as large as you can on the top (optionnal)
- screw a 15-20mm M4 screw in the small hole (the larger possible screw that will fit in the inner diameter of the rod)
- put a bar/big screwdriver through the big hole (or simply grap the bar with locking pliers)

yes you got it.. slide your "tool" in the rod, swear and try until the screw gets frankly inside one of the compression holes at the bottom of the rod (marking the screw direction at the top of the tool helps a lot). Well done, now you have a firm grip to the rod, you can break the screw loose.