A friend of mine asked me to look at his fork as he wanted the forked spring changing.

When I got the bike I pushed down on the bars and it all felt groovy. I pressed a lot harder and noticed it would not go past 80mm of travel (shown be 160)
Know I am heavy guy compared and it’s a soft spring. It is a proper hard stop. So,I removed the spring and cycles the fork and it’s just fine. So I thought something must be wrong with the spring. Put in the supersoft and the same thing?

Any ideas?

Sounds like the damper is hydrolocked.

Hydrolocked is when the the seals on the rebound part of the damper degrade and let the oil into the lowers and this stops the forks compressing fully. You need to get the forks serviced properly.

Nope fine without the spring

They need taking apart and servicing. Essentially on the spring side of my RC2DH’s there is simply a spring and lower rod so little to go wrong. Not the same but my forks were horrible when I got them. After I serviced them I had to change the spring from a soft to a medium and add a few preload spacers as they oil was brown sludge and had changed the characteristic of the fork.