My forks were not feeling great – diving more than they should.

At first I thought I was just riding badly, but then I went to service the lowers and when I let the air out of the main chamber; the forks sucked right up into a “bottomed out” / full travel position.

On the plus side, I now have an excuse for pussying out on the gnarly sections these past few rules, and I feel a lot better about that. However it does pose the problem of how I am gonna get the bike running again.

I think this means that I have a load of air stuck in the negative chamber. By repressurising the fork positive chamber I can measure that I have about 30 to 40 psi trapped in the negative side (I need this much positive pressure before the fork equalises and extends to full travel). Ive tried cycling the fork by hand to release the trapped air, but its made no difference.

My questions are:

1) Is this normal?

2) Have I any chance of fixing (or temporarily improving) this on my own without any special tools or new seals?

3) Have I no choice but to send this off to the Fox service centre?

I should mention that Im in NZ at the moment and sending things away to the local service centre would lose me probably a couple of weeks on the bike especially at this time of year – trying to avoid that if poss!
PS no, I don’t expect a lot of sympathy either 🙂

A lower leg service could sort this. Nothing special needed just take your time and follow the instructions. Transfer port could be blocked or a seal gone. You’ll find out once you’ve got them apart.

Just remembered older 36’s used a metal spring rather than an equalising air chamber. Either way the problem will probably be a seal or blocked port. Taking the lower’s off and removing the air spring assembly will at the least release the pressure and let you figure out what’s wrong.

get stuck in. If you don’t suss it the worst is you’ll have to send them off.

Thanks for the encouragement – a glimmer of hope then, maybe.

OK, Im going in…..wish me luck!