A friend is helping me to service my Reba Race forks.

I bought the seal kit from TF Tuned, but the foam rings don’t match the ones inside the forks.

The old ones are about 6(ish) mm high, and white/grey colour. The new ones are about 3mm high, a denser kind of foam, and yellow in colour.

Of course, I can phone TF or another expert tomorrow, but in the meantime, while the forks’ internals are all over the shed, any ideas what’s going on?

Does the kit have the black oil seals that go in first? followed by the foam rings then grey wipers? If so it’s fine. 😀

What he ^ said. The foam rings in some Marzocchi forks were replaced by, err, nothing, leaving a gap you fill with grease instead. As long as you have an oil seal and a separate dust seal you’re good.

Thanks for responses.

The kit did come with black oil seals, but these aren’t a feature in these forks. We assumed these were for other forks, as the kit is a “32mm kit” rather than a Reba-specific one.

Replace the old big foam rings with the black wipers then new smaller foam rings then grey outer seals, with as much 15wt oil dribbled into foam rings as you can get before you reassemble. All will be fine :D.

I got the same kit and bottled it – decided to rinse out the big foam rings with fork oil and put them back in along with new grey wipers. What put me off is the v. tight fit of the oil seal. Once in they’re not going to be easy to get out. If you do decide to get the black oil seal in then might want to think about using the right tool to get it in straight.

julian has it. Oil seal at the bottom, thin foam soaked in oil then wiper on top. I use a socket to push the oil seal in, seems to go in square. Works better than the ones with just wiper & foam

Thanks for your help, everyone. So it looks like this is a design improvement that can easily be retrofitted?

However, while we were waiting for your helpful responses, we were getting hungry, and my mechanically wise friend made the executive decision to reassemble with the old rings doused in oil, as did empy, it seems.

Now we understand the situation more fully, next time the forks come apart we’ll install the new yellow rings and the black seals instead.

Thanks for your help.

Clive