Hi

The Motion control on my fork isnt pulling back any more and sounds full of gue when i turn it. I got the forks 2nd hand and are 2 years old and as far as i know have never been serviced, but aside from the motion control they work fine.

I got quoted about £50 to service them and ive looked online at doing it myself. Being as i have none of the kit am i better off paying to get it done?

Im likely to get a new bike next year so its not like im going to get much use from the stuff i buy.

Cheers

Joe

you only need a 24 mm spanner you really should have the rest hanging around. IMHO it is pretty easy to do and I would not be paying more than £20 to get it done. Cant recall bwhat makes MC stop working but is that not just lack of oil? All your bikes will need maintaining and I prefer the DIY approach

Normally I would say do it yourself however, if you were quoted £50 for a service, by the time you've got tooled up you'll have spent half of that, I say pay for the service.

I've recently taken the plunge and done this service myself. I can recommend the following step-by-step set of photographic instructions as a good guide to seeing how it is done.

Step-by-step intstructions

One or two pointers though… be sure you check the exact year of your Reba model against the tech specs on the SRAM website (under 'tech docs for dealers' or something like that). The volumes of oil vary between years, and vary between chambers.

You'll need some 15wt oil and 5 wt oil, plus some other standard tools. Circlip pliers can be had off eBay for £4 delivered. A 24mm socket you should have lying about somewhere? And the only other vaguely specialist thing is a 'soft' mallet made of plastic or wood or something similar. I made do with the wooden handle of a file. Plastic syringes are also invaluable for ensuring you get the EXACT amounts of oil into each chamber.

Tip 1: When tapping the schrader air valve rod off its seal at the bottom of the fork, cover it in something to protect it – I used an old Schrader valve dust cap. Otherwise you could easily damage the valve or the thread. NB. It does require a bit of a bash to get loose.

Tip 2: Ensure ALL the oil is extracted from the damping cartridge chamber, otherwise when you fill it up with the 'correct' amount of oil, it will have too much in, hampering your fork's performance considerably. To do this, push the damping rod up and down while the fork is upside down and the excess oil should squirt out.

Tip 3: Use syringes to precisely fill each chamber with the correct amount of oil. It just won't work well otherwise.

Tip 4: A spot of grease around the fork seals will help them slide back on over the stanchions again.

It sounds like a nightmare, but it isn't – be brave! It's certainly not worth spending £50 letting someone else do it. Basically, if you can build Lego you should be able to service these forks without issues – they're pretty robust! It's worth it once you have them serviced yourself andd they're all running peachy.. 🙂

All your bikes will need maintaining

I've only got one! The more people i cycle with the more i feel alone in that! 🙂

Nuke – that the thing, i only need to do them once i reckon and i'll need a pump, 3 type of lube/fluid and a syringe from what ive seen and maybe a set of seals and that looking like the same money.

Cheers No-Eyed-Dear – can i get by with a normal pump and a tyre presure gauge?

It's certainly not worth spending £50 letting someone else do it.

Not in terms of tools/labour cost but in terms of their experience it is…might be something simple, might not. After 2 years without servicing it sounds like its well over due for some TLC.

… you'll definitely need a shock pump, if that's what you're asking. 😉

Yeah i was asking that backwards 🙂

Thats a good walk through guide though, i'll price up what i'd need to buy and then decide.

i have recently taken the plunge and tried servicing forks sucessfuly done a recon and a vanilla r its not to dificult