Lots of people seam to be wearing through fox stantions, is it because of the seals? Am I better off changing them for some after market one straight from new? Also If I drop the lowers every couple of weeks how long do you think the stantions will last with standard seals?

Seems to be pretty random to me, some seem to suffer lots of wear in no time despite regular servicing(my last set of stanchions went in 16 months), others go on for years(my previous forks were probably 3yrs old, with very occasional maintainence, before they needed replacing).I’ll be giving mine a full service in the next week or two, and will be replacing the seals with SKF jobbies from Loco as i’m hearing good reports on them.

I personally don’t think the seals will damage the legs. I’d make sure everything is clean, serviced & the foam rings are full of the blue lube. I fitted the SKF seals to my 36’s & it’s reduced the stiction a lot 😀

Clean the stanchions after every ride and spray them with silicone spray afterwards.

I then spray them just before i ride.

No problems here.

So SKF seals rather than the enduro ones? and Juice Lubes fork juice should keep them good.

I ride 2 to 3 times a week, not touched my forks since new in march and have no problems, used juice lubes fork juice on my my float 32’s and rp2 shock for the first time last week and it felt SOOOO good so smooth and stiction free, i am going to strip them down and service them over xmas and fit the low friction seals. Might try out the air can volume tuning kit on the shock too.

Drop the lowers and change the both oil regularly and you’ll have no problems – this applies to all forks.

Will be droping them as often as possible. As soon as they arrive I was planning to drop the lowers, I dont trust the factories to put enough oil in the right places, and possibly fit either the enduro or skf seals, maybe even cut the spring for 150mm travel

It shouldn’t need doing, but checking oil and foam ring lube straight from the factory is a must-do. My 2010 36 RLC rings were totally dry from new and had only around 10ml of oil in the left leg. This is not an uncommon issue with Fox, as you seem aware of, and many people see it as a necessary chore when buying their forks.

Didn’t know it was common with Fox, but factories will save where they can, any new bike or fork should be stripped and rebuilt with quality grease and oil IMO (just lowers is fine on forks), most high end bike shops will do this and I think TF Tuned do for forks. Amazing how little grease some bikes come with from factory.

Anyone know if Fox uses SKF seals in the 2012 forks FIT cartridges too, or just for the stanchions?

Personally I think there are 2 reasons why the wear seems worse on some fox forks than others.
1: the brake is mounted on the left lower leg so when braking going down bumpy tracks it tries to bend the stanchion agaisnt the lower and put a lot of load between stanchion and bush and squeezing the oil out from between the 2 surfaces.
2: The oil quantity in the left leg is very low in some models Talas is around 15ml for some forks. Thats 3 tea spoons, to lube a 140mm stanchion. That added to a bit of grot and water contamination makes a nasty combination.
In the vanilla coil forks there is a lot more oil in the left leg.
Keep them clean change the oil regularly and replce the lower leg bushes as soon as any wear is felt.