Fork-specific grease and oil – necessary?

I reckon I’ve got to replace the wiper seals on my recon, so I’ve got some new seals and foam rings on the way. The online guides say I ought to use Judy butter and red rum, but I am a bit skeptical about that.

Is there any drama if I just use Teflon grease to fit the seals and fork oil to soak the foam rings?

Some general purpose stuff will damage seals or plastic parts. That’s the reason behind suspension grease. Any suspension grease will do, doesn’t have to be Judy butter.

Guide on the RS website? My RS guides for Reba/Pike/Rev etc don’t make any mention of grease…just soak the foam rings well

Teflon grease (and most other types too) will cause rubber seals to swell, there are a lot of seals in a set of forks so it would do a good deal of damage. It would be better to not grease at all than use a non rubber safe grease. TBH I grease my recons and it doesn’t have that great an effect on performance, I’m sure you won’t die if you just don’t grease them.

You can get some suspension oil from a motor bike shop and it will be just fine in the lowers (make sure it’s the same weight – I think it’s 15wt for recons).

Oil weights vary between manufacturers and this difference can have an effect in the damper; making it too fast or too slow, again you can just try it. If you can’t adjust your damper to the setting you want with a certain manufacturers fluid, you can just try another – it won’t damage the fork and you won’t get killed (probably).

I use RS fluid in the damper.

Thanks for the advice.

I’ve only just realised that Red Rum is, in fact, just branded fork oil. I’ve done a full service a few months ago, so I’ve got plenty of fork oil anyhow.

CRC seem to be out of fork grease at the moment, so I’m just going to try to get the new seals in without greasing the recess in the lower leg.

Should be fine now – I didn’t replace the seals when I did the service, and have just noticed the fork is leaving really gunky crud on the stanchion again, it is also feeling a tad notchy – probably meaning the oil I added has been depleted by the poor seal.

The dry weather means the fork is getting an absolute hammering at the moment!

Should be fine now – I didn’t replace the seals when I did the service, and have just noticed the fork is leaving really gunky crud on the stanchion again, it is also feeling a tad notchy – probably meaning the oil I added has been depleted by the poor seal.

I’ve owned my recons since 2011 and serviced a few times, I haven’t touched a single seal, just renewed fluids. Unless the seal is cracking/splitting, I don’t see the point in replacing it.

Rock n Roll Super Slick grease is supposed to be good. I’ve used Judy Butter with good results and have just finished a tube of some no-name stuff which was also great