i read somewhere on here that fox forks needed to be serviced every 15 hours, well rock shox are the same! i do mine what needs to be every two weeks and its starting to annoy me. lower leg strip down is simple enough but a pain in the arse in a flat!

to add insult to injury minor leg wear (very minor) has occured, sent them back for them to say that they haven’t been maintained well enough! they’re only 10 months old.

question is, are any of the other manufacturers any better?

Should i play hell with fishers?

In my experience Marzocchi are better than Manitou are better than RockShox are better than Fox.

I think they put short service intervals on their instructions just to cover their arses, but with a good design and decent seals and wipers it shouldn’t be necessary. Not sure how far you’ll get with Fishers but if you’ve done all they say you should have then I’d try them.

RS Pike = 15ml of oil to lubricate it whilst it gets abused: not a lotta oil!!!

dunno why they only put 15ml in, probably to save weight! not sure what’d happen if you put more in, poor design

its a cop out from all these manufacturers, because when they put service intervals on like this it completely negates warranty issues?! all they say is ‘they haven’t been serviced enough’ when the fact is that service intervals like this are a p**s take.

I have to do mine soon.

I’m starting to wonder about mtbs and prefer the darkside but either way you get used to servicing bits.

Just done my hubs again.

Do spung forks need this much servicing?

I didn’t do anything with my RockShox Tora for 2.5 years apart from cleaning and lubing externally. Then sent it to TFT for some love – no problems at all.

I’m watching my F120s very carefully (10 months old).

do your tora’s have steel legs? i think they do and i don’t think they have any anodising, maybe thats a better design? definately not any worse than my £900 lyrics!!!!!

PSA

I’ve ridden my fox talas forks for about 3000 miles offroad and have never serviced them. Have lifted the seals twice and put some oil in the wipers to keep them smooth. Think the bushes are going now, but no other wear is evident. I reckon if you fiddle too much the seals will get stretched etc. and allow dirt in, causing wear…

This is exactly why I bought Maverick forks. I know they have their haters but at least they are easy to service and have a good warranty – although not stripped them myself yet 😯

I’m with ScotlandTheScared. I’ve not done anything to my Rebas in the couple of years I’ve had them and they seem to be doing fine, and I’m not a fan of taking things apart and putting them back together again too often if there’s nothing wrong with them.

This is purely hypothetical, but I wonder if MTB’s have to have quite baggy wiper seals to prevent undue stiction, because the rider and bike package is so light compared to an MX Bike.

Either way I tend to pop some lube on the outside of the stanchions by the wiper seal once every few weeks and it seems to do the job. I then only do a full strip down once a year.

This has stood me in good stead and my 5.5 year old Fox Floats have no visible stanchion wear at all. The only damage to any of my stanchions is from gritty mud on a pair of Reba’s!

With regard to Lyriks, I have heard that they are best stored upside down as it keeps the seals moist and performing better.

upside down? interesting?

The 15 hours “service” interval is in reality a wipe down and inspection of the wiper seals, and maybe a bit of fork oil to keep things smooth. Not pull them apart under lab conditions and replace everything.

I work on a four year sevice cycle.

its a lower leg removal which is simple but a pain in the arse to do every 15 hours!

Worth remembering that a warranty is in addition to your staturary consumer rights that a product should be fit for purpose. Personally I think it’s a bit of a joke to expect that much attention for a fork.

One of the reasons I’ve gone for Magura forks this year.

dunno why they only put 15ml in, probably to save weight! not sure what’d happen if you put more in, poor design

You will probably blow your seals or get hydraulic lock, as the oil displaced by the stanchion has nowhere to go.

Wonder why open bath fell out of favour. Seemed to work pretty well in MX comps and their ilk. Perhaps with long travel + large stanchions the weight of all that oil slopping around starts to get pretty significant.

There’s considerably more space in there than 15ml. You could get away with 40 easily – I used to in my nixons that have the same design.

TBH, I’ve considered putting something like a 2.5mm thread tap through the casing between the upper and lower bushes, and a similar drain point at the bottom of each slider leg. I could seal them with an appropriate screw, and then draining out old semi bath oil, and putting in new would be a dead easy.

I think my old MX comps had 150 -200ml in each leg. Thats not far off a pound of oil , so I reckon your’re right about the weight thing.

had a set of pikes for nearly 3 years, never serviced, still work great, i do give them a clean and put a bit of lube on after most rides and thats it.

You can vastly extend the service life between full lowers service if you wipe the seals and uppers clean every ride and top up the lowers oil with 5ml of oil every couple months, (ie: remover lowers bolts, pour in some oil – no dismantling).

Personally I perform the wiper clean every ride and then a lowers service every 20-30hrs on RS/Fox forks OR immediately it any oil has appeared on the uppers, (a first sign of a dirty seal).

Stuff all that, – I change my bike more often than I service my forks! Lube the stanchions, pump the forks, wipe clean -job’s a good ‘un. When they break down, take them to the shop, – at least you don’t look like a prize numpty by having tried to fiddle with them yourself, it only makes things worse, and more expensive! 😉

Its still a p**s take. The race for light weight stiction free forks has led to companies cutting corners for the sake of weight. To produce a product for the mountain bike market that in theory you couldn’t do a solo 24hr on is absurd, because techically you’d void your warranty.

Things have to change and reliability has to improve. Its not just my lyrics, there’s countless people on here that have had problems with fox too, including one of the guys I ride with.

To add insult to serious injury we pay up to £900 pounds for these poorly designed products!

it’s a right pain. try running a mtb chalet with hire bikes and your own bikes – all getting about 4-5 hours riding per day!

Ride em til they break then get a new set. Works out cheaper than servicing the bloody things.

The service intervals are a piss take.

had my fox vanillas 5 years and never touched them

Ride em til they break then get a new set. Works out cheaper than servicing the bloody things.

A litre of fork oil is about a tenner and does 33 odd services so the cost doesn’t seem too bad to me. ’tis damned annoying though.

There’s considerably more space in there than 15ml. You could get away with 40 easily – I used to in my nixons that have the same design.

Have you tried that on RockShox? I was using 20ml in my Revs for a while, but they kept blowing the wipers out. Pikes might do better as they have a proper oil seal, but Revs (and I think Rebas, Recons etc as well) don’t.

TBH, I’ve considered putting something like a 2.5mm thread tap through the casing between the upper and lower bushes, and a similar drain point at the bottom of each slider leg. I could seal them with an appropriate screw, and then draining out old semi bath oil, and putting in new would be a dead easy.

An oil port seems like a good idea, but If you want to simply replace the oil, you don’t even need to remove the lowers anyway … just undo the bolts, drain the oil, and squirt some new stuff in with a sryinge.

Telescopic forks need servicing frequently because they’re fundamentally a bad idea.

yes. Pikes here. I’ve not tried it on revs.