Something very wrong with my forks

[Chris71]

Resisted the obvious 'forks f*cked' thread title, but that appears to be the case...

I have a pair of RockShox Revelations which have suddenly stopped working. The compression has gone incredibly stiff all of a sudden and it feels like there's no spring or damping at all on rebound - I went a couple of yards down a trail last night and could hear them physically clunking.

I've got a RockShox service centre near me and the bike needs to go in for some attention anyway, but is there anything simple I should check before handing it over to the professionals? All the adjusters appear to be in the right sort of place and I haven't left it on lockout or anything silly.

Weirdly, there doesn't seem to have been any gradual deterioration. The bike hasn't been ridden for a couple of months, but the forks were fine last time.

[P-Jay]

I'd just a seal has gone somewhere and either oil has leaked or gone somewhere it shouldn't get them booked in and stop using them immediately or you might cause expensive damage.

[CoolC]

http://cdn.sram.com/cdn/farfuture/_jmMO0ji6VdpAPF5...

Get busy with the toolbox

Seriously. There are so may internal parts to shocks that I'd be nervous about going inside unless I was completely confident I could finish the job.

Any one of those parts could have come adrift, and as said above, I'd not use them in case it caused serious un-repairable damage.

[anonymous-user]

P-Jay said:

I'd just a seal has gone somewhere and either oil has leaked or gone somewhere it shouldn't get them booked in and stop using them immediately or you might cause expensive damage.

This, its highly unlikely to be terminal. Same thing happened to my Rebas, send them off to TF Tuned or book a service with a good local service centre.

[Chris71]

Thought so.

Looks like it's still economical to get them serviced, even at £95 a pop...

[P-Jay]

pablo said:

P-Jay said:

I'd just a seal has gone somewhere and either oil has leaked or gone somewhere it shouldn't get them booked in and stop using them immediately or you might cause expensive damage.

This, its highly unlikely to be terminal. Same thing happened to my Rebas, send them off to TF Tuned or book a service with a good local service centre.

Oh I doubt it's terminal, but if it's audibly "clanking" then two bits of no doubt expensive and fragile bits of metal are hitting each other, stop now, before they break I say.

[Chris71]

P-Jay said:

pablo said:

P-Jay said:

I'd just a seal has gone somewhere and either oil has leaked or gone somewhere it shouldn't get them booked in and stop using them immediately or you might cause expensive damage.

This, its highly unlikely to be terminal. Same thing happened to my Rebas, send them off to TF Tuned or book a service with a good local service centre.

Oh I doubt it's terminal, but if it's audibly "clanking" then two bits of no doubt expensive and fragile bits of metal are hitting each other, stop now, before they break I say.

Yep, very much my thinking. Only took it round the block and headed back as soon as I realised just how wrong the forks were.

The guy at the LBS is clearly a master of understatement, because he returned it from a service noting that 'something wasn't right' with the forks.

[budgie smuggler]

Chris71 said:

Resisted the obvious 'forks f*cked' thread title, but that appears to be the case...

I have a pair of RockShox Revelations which have suddenly stopped working. The compression has gone incredibly stiff all of a sudden and it feels like there's no spring or damping at all on rebound - I went a couple of yards down a trail last night and could hear them physically clunking.

I've got a RockShox service centre near me and the bike needs to go in for some attention anyway, but is there anything simple I should check before handing it over to the professionals? All the adjusters appear to be in the right sort of place and I haven't left it on lockout or anything silly.

Weirdly, there doesn't seem to have been any gradual deterioration. The bike hasn't been ridden for a couple of months, but the forks were fine last time.

The likeliest explanation is that the damper has st itself, and the oil has ended up in the lower legs. Buy a seal kit or send off to LoCo, TF, J Tech etc.

If you want to open them and check it for yourself, it's easy to tell if this is what's happened, as should you remove the lower legs, there will be far too much oil (approx 130ml) as opposed to the 5-15ml that should be in there. It's not a major fault, just an o-ring that's worn/damaged.

The irritation is that (I think - can somebody confirm?) you will need internal and external circlip pliers to get to the right bit in the forks.

Edited by budgie smuggler on Tuesday 13th August 16:02

[Jimbo.]

Fairly common thing with Rockshox, or at least was a couple of years ago.

[neenaw]

budgie smuggler said:

The likeliest explanation is that the damper has st itself, and the oil has ended up in the lower legs. Buy a seal kit or send off to LoCo, TF, J Tech etc.

If you want to open them and check it for yourself, it's easy to tell if this is what's happened, as should you remove the lower legs, there will be far too much oil (approx 130ml) as opposed to the 5-15ml that should be in there. It's not a major fault, just an o-ring that's worn/damaged.

The irritation is that (I think - can somebody confirm?) you will need internal and external circlip pliers to get to the right bit in the forks.

Edited by budgie smuggler on Tuesday 13th August 16:02

Sounds very much like this. The seals can go hard with lack of use and allow air or oil past them and into the wrong chamber.

If you're reasonably competent with a tool kit the forks are pretty easy to strip and rebuild, I was a bit nervous before i did my first set but was amazed at how simple they are inside. You can usually get seal kits fairly cheap on eBay, motorbike fork oil is pretty cheap and works perfectly on MTB forks, the only other thing you'll need is a set of circlip pliers. You can buy pliers that can work with both internal and external circlips for not a lot of money.

If the worst comes to the worst and you strip the fork but can't get it back together you can send all the bits to TF Tuned or somewhere like that and they'll still service it for the same price, a mate of mine had to do this!

[AGK]

I had a problem with my Pikes a few years ago that was similar so I sent them off to TF Tuned and got a call a few days later to say that it wasn't a big job to sort and they ended up doing it for less than they had said over the phone originally!

Top bunch and wouldn't hesitate to use or recommend them!

TBH for the cost of a service it isn't worth messing about with something you don't know about or are confident enough to fix. Especially if there is something wrong but you don't notice that it isn't right.