Managed to drop bike on a rock this morning and have scratched left stanchion on my 3 yr old Reba’s. In upper half of travel, fairly vertical and not deep. Can just feel with finger and more so with fingernail. So i have used back of a teaspoon to smooth edges and have put on a light coat of nail varnish, which I will leave till tonight or tomorrow evening to dry (in unheated integral garage). I have masking tape which I will use to isolate area and I have fine sandpaper.

Any tips of best way to do next bit ? Forks don’t owe me much but would like to get another year out of them really

Says for a motor bike but its the same principle

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYapCo9ao2Y[/video]

thanks, hadn’t seen it with superglue before. Is that better than nail varnish ?

Use superfine wet and dry rather than sandpaper. I used Audi clear coat lacquer from a car paint touch up kit. That worked really well

Anyone else read the title as Pork Scratchings ?

car paint lacquer is a good call, I have some of that too !

Sandpaper is wet and dry, wasn’t sure about the run off going near seals, suppose can tape them over (was going to do it with bike upright in workstand)

Pork Scratchings ? Nah, have you been to Specsavers…. 🙂

If you’ve smoothed the edges and you can barely feel it with your finger/finger nail, then i wouldn’t worry and id not bother with varnish etc on the basis what are you going to achieve? Theres no pressurised air in RS lowers that could escape and, if the scratch is in the top half if travel, given the minimal amount of time itll act as a ‘channel’, its not going to cause any increase in dirt/water ingress behind the seal.

Crack on riding them and maybe throw in a lowers service in the spring 🙂

read this earlier thread

Thanks, had looked for that one but missed it, cheers

on the sandpaper front, is 600 grade fine enough, or should I get some 1200 or finer ?

I’ve got something similar on my 36s

Mojo advice was “it’s wear and tear – don’t worry”. Ingress of dirt etc wouldn’t be too bad and the cost of replacing bushes and seals was significantly less than replacing csu or worrying about repairing stantions

Your damage may be more than mine so I’m not claiming it’s infallible

^^ yeah, did wonder about leaving it, but thought might as well give the nail varnish route a go…

I did my 36s with nail varnish & 1200 W&D. If my wife had bought the right shade of gold nail varnish you’d have never known there was a scratch afterwards; you certainly couldn’t feel anything.

I’ve tried this repair a few times now and can’t really get it to work. Every time the nail varnish simply wears away from the scratch on using the forks. Totally cleaned with alcohol beforehand, left to cure for ages, polished back. Movement of the forks (and mud) causes the repair to wear away.

Not sure what everyone else is doing differently! But can’t get it to stick..

To be fair mine came out well, can’t feel the scratches at all. But I haven’t ridden them yet so it might all come off after one ride

I got a big scratch on my fork and tried all of this stuff. I took the burrs off with wet and dry but couldn’t get a good result filling the score with either nail varnish or epoxy. The fork still works fine and I’m slowly getting over it.