I bought a used Pike RCt3 and noticed that the LSC dial had little to no affect on compression. A bit of research suggested the cartridge probably needed bleeding due to a leaky seal on the damper shaft. The leaky seal is a known issue that RS have addressed via a new design and the new seal is included in the 2016 service pack. I decided that if I was going to remove the damper to bleed I might as well service and replace the seal (I’ve always serviced the revs that I had and found it fairly straight forward).
Anyway, it looks like the fork has probably had a hard life, the threads on the LSC needle were damaged and the low speed adjuster plug that the LSC dial sits on looks like it has been forced at some point which to me suggested the LSC dial has been forced beyond it’s end stop – I’m speculating though.
I came to the conclusion that the damaged thread on the LSC needle probably didn’t make a big difference as it still screws into the compression assembly OK. Stripped and rebuilt the damper but when re-assembled the 3 position Compression Knob can be adjusted beyond the 3 supposed positions – sort of an RCT infinity. Initially I thought it was just he knob not seated on the cam head but that is definitely not the case. Removing the knob and using a 15m socket to adjust the cam to the open or closed position just results in continuous 360 degree movement. I assumed that something was seated correctly, so re-built and initially, it seems like the cam rotation has defined start / stop points but after at some point this reverts to full infinite rotation. I’m pretty sure the circllips are seated correctly so my assumption is that something is broken internally.
Looking at the compression cam and compression piston designs it’s not clear to me what if anything actually stops these rotating within the housing and thus results in the infinite rotation ?
Anybody experienced this before ? I think it’s probably time to call Loco and see if is OK for me to send them in to his workshop.
