i think ive got a problem with my forks…revs 426 air u turn

i had a real muddy rid about two weeks ago and a lot of mud had got past the seals and contaminated the lower leg oil .

anyway i whipped the lowers off and prised out the wiper seals and foam rings, give everything a good clean and put it all back together with some fresh oil, no problems!!

anyway its the first time ive been out on them since rebuild and they dont feel right .

basically ive set them up as i always have with 150psi pos and 145 neg , they feel flat as a pancake! they sag down to 100mm from 130mm and just stay there ??? it takes me to bounce up and down on them quite hard to move, whereas before they used to be really responsive to the smallest bump??

i cant think i did owt wrong when rebuilding them (done it plenty of times )

any ideas whats up with them ???

is it time to get tf fettled???

cheers

steve

Does sound a bit odd – revs are fairly bombproof.

Take the lower leg bolts off , let the air out of pos and neg, and see if the lowers slide easily up and down the stanchions when moved by hand(i.e. with the two rods disconnected). This will tell you if it’s the lowers sticking.

Have your foam rings dislodged in the lowers? Sounds to me like something is causing friction.

With ~20psi pos and neg, can you move the air spring rod up and down. Does the damping rod move smoothly?

Can you get full travel more easily than you did before?

Try resetting the pressures before you do anything else.
Let both + & – out
Set +
Set –

In that order!
🙂

with no air in the fork the sliders are not moving very well at al??

seem to rmember the lowers were quite difficult to get on ??

whats going on like.

cheers

steve

If the loweres were hard to get on and now don’t move easily my guess would be you have displaced something when reassembling. Foam rings, seals, bushes in that order. You need to strip them again and see what is wrong.

Never use force to put them back together – if they wont go back easily something ain’t right

with no air in the fork the sliders are not moving very well at al??

Well they won’t because there’s now no spring! Pump them back up again as described above….. but see below

[/quote]seem to rmember the lowers were quite difficult to get on ??[/quote]

Should be very easy. I’ll bet you’ve folded a seal over, or one of the foam rings.

cheers for that i ve took the lowers off and nothing seems amiss?? foam rings still in place and the only seals are the wiper seals which were not folded over etc?

took foam seals out and when i went to put the forks back together the lowers went on abit but then went really tight whilst trying to get them on full??

does this sound like a bushing problem??

rebound and air rods move up and down no problems and quite freely??

i also have a slight clunking/knocking when riding over rough ground?

i am stumped??

Push both rods into the stanchions (i.e. let all air out etc) as far as they’ll go. Then slide the lowers onto the stanchions and try to mark on the lowers when they start to stick. You can then narrow things down. For example, if the lowers go on fine for the first 4 inches, your seals & foam rings are fine so it must be the bushes.

There are two bushes in each leg and it does sound like your lower one is binding.

You’ve not had a big crash recently have you? Just wondering if the stanchions or lowers could be twisted a bit..

Oh – another idea is to only slide one lower leg on, if you catch my drift. This way you can track down whether it’s one lower leg, one stanchion etc that’s causing the problem.

thanks for that RicB , i havent had a crash on them at all to be honest but, i do notice that when i brake hard i can see from the top that the wheel pulls towards the brake side of the fork?? as though they are twisting??

the lowers go on fine past the wipers and foam rings but then get “stuck” a bit? i guess thats the bushes is it.

can bushes be replaced then?

Do what ric says with one stanchion at a time.
Btw what oil have you used to lube the lowers? I wonder if the bushings have swelled? (Did this to some rst 461s by spraying gt85 in them- D’oh!)

i use motorcycle oil 15wt. as recommended

Probably not that then unless it had seal swelling agents in it- unlikely these days i would have thought.

Bushings can be replaced but it’s a send-to-TFTuned job, along with £80 or so.

My guess is that you somehow didn’t put the seal/wiper assembly back in the legs correctly. This will increase friction, worsening the further the stanchion is slid into the lower leg.

I just can’t see how your bushings got tighter, as I’d expect them to get looser as they wear. If you peer down the fork leg with a torch you can check the state of the bushings.

Try taking the leg seals out, then sliding the lowers on. This will tell you if it’s bushings or not. Obviously, don’t put oil in the lowers as it’ll go everywhere when you do this!