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A small amount of oil appears to leaking [b]from the central dial hole[/b] in the compression adjuster knob at the top of the fork (Reba SL, 2009)- see photo below. It gets worse under big hits of full fork compression. I think there's supposed to be some kind of rubber topcap in there? ..but it was not with the forks when I bought them, and it wouldn't prevent oil escaping anyway, would it?
Either that, or according to the Rockshox webside - there's a 'floodgate adjustment' dial that lives in that hole on some models. Maybe that's snapped off?
Or maybe it's something else entirely..? 😕 What ya reckon..?
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I had this happen with my 09 SLs about 3 weeks ago. Consensus was that is was a seal packing up, and that I could carry on riding them but they would start losing performance.
Got them serviced by the LBS who replaced all the seals etc... and serviced the motion control and that fixed it. They also ride alot better, you tend not to notice as things detoriate slowly over time.
My LBS charged £60 for a service, £18 for a the RS seal kit and £21 for the motion control kit.
If I'd know it was going to cost all that I would have probably bought a cheap set of 2010 reba's from merlin (sold out now) and sold on the reba's saying they needed a service....
(someone will be along telling you it's simple to do yourself in a minute, but that's for people who are mechanically competant, which I'm not!)
EDIT - can't see your pic's at work, you should have a little blue top cap with 'gate' written on it.
I'm pretty sure you're meant to have some kind of dial or cap on there, mine have a little floodgate adjuster knob. Did you buy them new?
I've just checked - and there's definitely not supposed to be a floodgate adjuster knob on there. Mine have what RS call 'internal floodgate adjustment', which is achieved using a 2.5mm Allen head located some way down that oily hole.
there's definitely not supposed to be a floodgate adjuster knob on there
...but there is a small cover/push in o-ringed metal plug type thing that goes in there.
1. The seal at the top of your motion control assembly is leaking - this is common and easily fixed.
2. You should have a cap in the hole stop stop crap getting into the adjuster (which uses a 2.5mm (I think) allen key).
3. You don't sound like you've ever even tried to use the floodgate adjuster. Since you paid money for forks with this compression adjustment, have you considered adjusting it? 😛
I have the same forks. There is meant to be an Alu plug with and O-ring to seal the hole.
If you've ridden it like that for a while, your damping oil could be full of mud and water. It'll could also be short on oil, since, rather obviously, its been leaking out of the hole and the lower O-ring is probably borked.
You need to get it serviced, or service it yourself and get the replacement plug.