Not seen this before. New bike so new forks. Just cleaning it and found one stanchion has a fair bit of oil on it, the other not. A closer look reveals the O ring is wedged in the seal, fortunately with just enough still poking out to retrieve it. Assume the seal is flexible enough that it’ll be fine, but bit of a bugger if it had gone right in!

I’d be requesting the shop I had just bought the bike from to do a lower leg service on the forks and replace the seals as part of that.

The seal on the fork could have become deformed if it has been like that for a while which it could have been since it was boxed up from manufacture. If the seal is deformed you could get premature wear on the forks.

That sort of thing should be picked up in the build inspection of the bike but could understand it being missed especially if only a little bit of the sag o-ring was showing.

It happened during the first ride last night – it wasn’t in there the whole time – and I spotted it this morning.

So while you were riding it the sag-marker O-Ring got caught under your seal?

How the hell does that happen?!

I don’t know. My fat(ter) mate had a shot on it before we left the pub, and I was concentrating very hard on the way back in the dark, so I’m not really sure.