This is driving me crazy, I bought a pair of Reba SL (29") off a friend who had not used them much. I stored them in the garage for a few months as I gathered the parts for my latest project.
Built it all up, the forks looked low so I pumped them up to 130psi both sides as I'm 200lb with no kit on. Few hundred yards in the test ride and the forks have no travel. Pump them up again and within minutes they are down again You could see oil leaking from the motion control top area and the pressure in the left leg had gone.
My friend tells me he will pay for the parts that need replacing if I can do the work, so I buy a motion control service kit and a dual air service kit plus lube and oil from TFT Tuned.
Even though its my first time working on Rebas the instructions on the Rock Shox site and the you tube video's make the job easy. I once again pump both sides up to 130 psi and I remember thinking the fork legs had not extended as much as I thought they would but to be sure I fit them to the bike and give them a short ride, their plush, their air and oil tight but hold on Houston we have a problem, there is only 2" of travel
A phone call this morning to TFT Tuned does not help, they say the problem could be a lot of things and advise to take it to bits and start all over again. So I have stripped it, checked every last drop of oil is right, removed the 15mm spacer to aid my cause, checked the shafts on both legs have about 5" of travel, re assembled it and guess what ? Even with the 15mm spacer removed I still have 2" of travel
Now I'm getting desperate, I want to ride at the weekend and a plush 2" travel fork is not going to help where I'm heading. Any advice that helps will be greatly appreciated - Thnx Paul
Mine had the same and it was the oil seals going. Can't help in terms of spannering as I sent mine back to Merlin and they sorted them for me.
All the oil seals have been changed for new ones and fitted with tender luvving care. I can't help feeling its something even more basic than that ❓ The travel is there until I invert the forks to add 15cc of 15wt oil to each leg and then push the legs up until I can thread the nut on the air side and insert the bolt into the right leg.
Once that is completed the range of travel is limited to circa 2" 😥
If you're pumping them up, then they're loosing the air, its nothing to do with the Motion control side, I'd go for a seal kit for the Air Spring Side.
Just read the last post...... have you tried new schrader valves in + & - Air?
Andy the air pressure is fine, by that I what ever pressure I put in, stays in.
I have another set of Reba's for a normal 26" wheel that work ok, I going to strip rhose and see if I can see any difference.
If after stripping the 26" forks I lose the travel on them then its clearly something I'm doing wrong but in my defence, I have an engineering background and I folled the Rock Shox instructions & youtube video clips to the letter.
Air leaking from +ve to -ve chamber which is pulling the travel down was my first thought
Do you have the correct amount of stanchion showing?
Can you remove all the air and fully compress the forks?
130psi sounds quite high too. I was 200lbs+ and only put about 115psi in my rebas to get 20% sag and 120mm travel
Bob, the total length of stanchion showing at maximum is 107mm and I can squeeze 75mm of travel out of that by inverting the forks and pressing them down, this is with no air in either side. Now this should be 115mm of travel as I have removed the spacer.
With air in them at 100psi in + & - the travel with the same amount of effort is circa 65mm. I'm stumped by all of this ❓
give me a call at the workshop to talk it through if you like, refer to profile for contact.
LoCo thats a wonderful offer and much appreciated 😀 There is one more test I want to try before I take up any of your valuable time - lets see how much travel I can get by draining the 5wt oil out of the MoCo.
Do the SL's have the -ve and +ve chambers, or just a single chamber?
If they have the two, you need to remove air from both, and then insert air in one (forget which) first, followed by the other.
br they have both and you pressurise the + first.
Well I can confirm its nothing to do with the oil level in the MoCo chamber, I bleed the + & - air pressure, then removed the MoCo damper and its oil and travel is exactely as before 😥
Sounds like too much oil in the lowers causing hydraulic lock, but can't see how it would get in there. Try rebuilding them without the lubrication oil in the lowers.
Other things to check-
The bump stops at the bottom of the lowers can get dislodged, make sure they're in the right place, they can jam halfway up and limit travel.
No air in the -ve at all, pressurise the +ve, bounce a bit, still no travel? Check the -ve pressure again - any air got in there?
Lowers off, uppers assembled, do you have full travel on both shafts? If yes, it's probably the first point.
😀 Yee bloody haa. First big thanks to Simon at LoCo, great service, great advice and great pricing. It cost me £67.50 to buy an air service kir, motion control service kit plus 5wt & 15wt oil and o ring lube from TFT. Simon does the whole service thing for £69.99 ❗ I'm not knocking TFT, I have used them before and their work was tip top but Simon's LoCo business is going to give them a run for their money.
The problem was as Simon and IA suggested, the rubber bump stop in right leg had flipped over, I would have thought that would have stopped me bolting it all back together but clearly it didn't.
Big thanks to everyone, having had these forks to bits 3 times in less than a week I feel I could do the job in my sleep. One last thing, whilst the travel is 115mm in theory, in practise its never going to be 115mm, there is a max of 118mm before you reassemble them after assemble that reduces to circa 110mm and then you set it with X amount of sag and you find the effective travel is closer to 85 or 90mm.
Glad to hear they're sorted and you can get out riding at the weekend. 😀