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troops,
looking for a bit of advise on my pikes if possible.
I've a setup of 2008 pike 454's....dual air, u-turn model.
just had them serviced, received them back on thursday last week and fitted them to my bike on sunday am.....all went well. Last night got the bike out on my drive to set the sag, rebound and test things out before using the bike in anger.
so I set about looking at the sag (before I started I made sure the compression adjuster was open and that the floodgate was also open, rebound set to fast) from my notes...I set the + chamber to 160 psi, the - chamber to approx 140 psi...didn't quite get the sag I require, so try out different psi settings. This went on for a wee while trying things out etc etc.
eventually decided to let all the air out of both the + & - chambers, should'nt be a big deal I thought. No sooner had I did this then the forks started to compress....and compress......and compress.
when done I had approx 20mm of stanchion visible, couldn't see the travel markings on the side of the stanchion, also couldn't see the u - turn air decal also on the side of the stanchion.....the fork had compressed so much that the lower had covered all this up.
no big deal, I thought....I put some air in the chamber.....jobs a good un.......wrong!
I put in approx 200 psi in the + chamber, could just make out u - turn air on the stanchion....put in 250 psi.....could now see all the u - turn air....but couldn't see the travel markings. Didn't put in anymore air after that!
then tried putting air in the - negative chamber, let all the air out, turned the bike up side down, let air out from - chamber while upside down.....and numerous other things. No matter what I try I cannot get the travel markings on the stanchion to show!
travel adjust still works, rebound also works.
so that's my tale of woe.
just wondering if anyone else has seen a problem like this? and if so how did you fix it?
I was getting to the stage where I was thinking I'd have to take the form back off the bike and physically try to extend the fork (not sure if this will make matters worse)
the guy who serviced the forks is a decent guy so will also get in touch with him and see what he says.
karma in advance 😉
Well, the thing that's pulling the fork down is too much pressure in the -ve chamber. Fact.
The question is, how is it getting there? If you've let all of the -ve air out, then pumped the +ve chamber up, it should extend the fork.
So do that first. Make sure the -ve is totally empty....
If the fork does not extend, try letting ait out of the -ve chamber again. If there's more air in it, you have a leak from +ve to -ve and something is wrong. i.e. The O ring is defective. Easy to replace if you know how, but if they've just been serviced, back they go again.....!
^As PeterPoddy says.
As PP says (Hope you're feeling better 😀 ) Says reset and try again, if still have issues most likely a faulty O Ring, also check the inner surface of the upper leg as if the surface the O ring seals aginst has a lengthways score in it this can also cause transfer of the air between the chambers even with new seals in the air leg.
LoCo, Thanks for asking, I'm sloooowly getting there. Still a bit deaf and blocked but not feeling ill anymore 🙂
lads, last night I tried two different fork pumps and both report no air in the negative chamber. Even had the bike upside to let air out the - neg incase it's being trapped for some reason....fork still does not un-compress.
see if this makes sense and I'll give it a go this evening
1. turn bike upside down
2. let air (if any) out the -neg chamber
3. turn bike right way up
4. let air (if any) out the +pos chamber
5. now pump air into +pos chamber
6. fork extends and all is good in the world 🙂
7. if fork still doesn't extend then check to see if any air in -neg chamber
have I missed anything?
cheers
Take the air valves out to check definatly no air in them, it maybe that they have had the dampers chamber put together compressed causing a vacuum which will pull the forks up when no air is in them, this in itself isn't too much of a problems and shouldn't cause a problems once you get the pos and neg. chamber pressures setup.