So a friend did the lower leg service on his X fusion slides, all done fine barring a small error on volume conversions – I thought it was a lot of oil – but reassembly has proven a nuisance.

Basically they fit together grand until a point where in the foot nut just barely protrudes from its hole in the base of the leg.

The xfusion video shows a tool – as best I can tell an elongated capture nut – to screw on and pull the foot nut through the lower leg.

As far as I can guess the issue is the air locking in the lower once the foot nut closes the hole in the leg.

Any suggestions on how to get the lowers fully seated without the tool or where to find the tool for a reasonable price?

Cheers

The foot nut I refer to isn’t really a nut, but I don’t know what else to call it, is essentially a threaded bolt type bit at the base of the air spring

Can you turn them upside down and use gravity to get the bolt to drop through, then add the oil using a syringe past the bolt before tightening? Used to do it this way on Marzocchi forks a few years ago.

The issue here is that the actual nut that you’re trying to fit has a recess for a crush washer meaning that the thread starts too far away to get a decent enough grip on the small amount of thread showing.

What I’ve done is get a spare nut and file off the bottom so there is no recess left and it is flat across the bottom. This then allows it to get a grip on the threads. You use this one to pull the threaded end of the damper rod through then remove it and refit the proper one with its crush washer.

Hope that makes sense and helps

That’s grand thanks Matthew,

Been toying with the idea of trying to sort a makeshift tool, hadn’t even thought of something as easy as filing a nut!

Matthew, do you know what the thread size is?

Not off the top of my head no. Sorry. I used a proper X-Fusion foot nut and just filed off the flange to amke it flat.

No worries, will just measure myself and see if I can find something suitable to make the job even easier