How often should they be changed?

Officially as little as three months I think. I change mine every 6 months or when they start feeling loose when I take the lowers off for a quick-service. When you buy new seals they should come with the foam rings and crush washers

just changed mine tonight as they looked grubby – 4 months and about 1k miles. What about the rubber seals?

Err – why don't you just clean them?

they were dirty even when given a clean. I have new ones so i put em on. Not exactly a costly item. If they clean they clean and i have spares, if not i am about a quid out of pocket by replacing them.

Been running mine for 18 months (more than 1000 miles) and Mine are nice and clean although I have replaced them with the Enduro ones so I don't have to clean them as much hopefully 🙂

how do ya clean em?

Clean them in fresh suspension oil

Squeeze them through with fork oil , then squeeze between workshop towel then rinse through with fork oil – do it a few times and they come out like above 🙂

theres a difference between a bit of staining and actual dirt. They're only there to hold oil at the top of the fork, they don't need a decent tolerance like an oil seal.

I don't think I've ever changed a set of foams 😳

I normally just clean them under the tap and squeezing them between fingers then leave on kitchen roll to dry out. After that put some Fox FLOAT fluid in small container and drop the foam rings in to soak. Put back on forks and pour rest of float fluid back into the bottle.

I rinse them with a bit of fork oil, put them back in the fork dry (after I've squeezed out the dirty oil on a workshop towel) and then charge them in-situ with a small syringe and fully synthetic motor oil.

It saves oil all over my fingers and fork like that pic above.

Getting oil on your fingers? Are you a hand cream model or sommink ? 😉 Trouble I found with putting them in dry is that the foam rings dont soak up the float fluid (viscous oil) very well – I find it best to squeeze the seals in a pot of the lube and then they get soaked and the fload fluid lasts longer + it also lubes the seals at the same time 🙂

I followed foxyrider's guide that was posted on here a while back for doing a lower leg service and the foam rings came up a treat.

As mentioned above, the float fluid is very viscous & the foam is quite 'closed cell' so the rings require a fair bit of squidge, soak, squidge, soak to get them nicely saturated.

Getting oil on your fingers? Are you a hand cream model or sommink

No, but it saves alot more cleaning up. Commonsense innit? Maybe not. 😐

Fair enough on the foam rings and float fluid. I'm using a motor oil on all my forks these days, even my old 2003 Fox vans. Its less viscous and soaks in better.

i use this stuff from halfords…

surely thesse people know what they're doing with oil and it makes sense to use the correct stuff for the job??

Think we have beg to differ on that SO – A quick wipe with workshop towel? Not sure its common sense as I have loads of that 😉 Just the way you do it – I have to wipe the uppers off etc anyway so wiping a bit off the fork crown is not a biggy 🙂

You don't have to beg. You can just differ. We're all grown ups here, right?

😆