Fox TALAS IFP

Serviced the 08 FOX TALAS forks last night for the second time in a few rides as they were feeling weird – kind of not sensitive to bumps and feeling choppy, but blowing through travel under braking. Air pressure in the main chamber is about 90psi for my 78kg, so i'm prob at the higher end of things pressure wise…

anyway, the manual tells you to put 150psi in the IFP chamber… will playing with this pressure affect how the fork feels?

I also had a ball ache with oil volumes – seems the fox recommended 160ml in the damper side is too much – on cyling the forks with not much pressure in, probably 75% into compression, the wiper seal blew out and pissed quite a bit of oil out… grrrr!

The IFP chamber I think is effectively the negative spring, so yes changing pressure will affect how the fork behaves. The higher the pressure in there the less the fork stiction should affect the fork movement. However you in theory need a special tool to access the IFP chamber alothough you can apparently also use a football inflating needle if you're brave. Have you ever taken the TALAS leg apart. They can be a real pain to setup properly. Unless you are very confident I'd leave to to TFTuned (or MOJO). TFT recently did a cracking job on my 07 TALAS forks, got them working really smoothly again.

yeah, I've had it all apart a couple of times. a footy adaptor works a treat on the IFP charging port… the TALAS side of the thing is a **** to put back together, but after much swearing it goes eventually. the ball bearing that indexes the lever is unfortunately somewhere in the dirty dusty end of the cellar though, so it's non indexing for the time being till i get a new one..!

i'm begining to think one of the internal seals may have swollen or something as it feels like there's a bit of friction in there.

extending the travel off the bike, you need to lift the front wheel up to get the fork to extend, it wont push the weight of the bike up like it used to…

I had a problem with the forks extending very slowly when changing travel, it turned out that oil had leaked in the IFP chamber, once cleaned out the travel change issue was cured. There is a thread on MTBR about the effect of the Talas pressure which is quite interesting http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=484078
I now run with no pressure in the Talas chamber and prefer the feel of the forks, so it is probably worth trying different prssures if you have the means to alter it.

The poor return speed was one of the things TFT sorted for me, seals had swollen. Became a real pain as I'd have to practically get off. Question though, if you've lost the ball bearing what's stopping your forks from losing travel. That was the other thing TFT sorted for me. The lever kept moving on it's own as the indents for the ball bearing were damaged. Made rocky descents a bit of a nightmare, started off at 140mm, ended up at 100mm and over the bars.

yep, noticed last night that the travel winds itself down. I thought it would just index the lever for feel, but it does seem like there's internal force trying to rotate the lever. think i've got some spare bearings from a pedal service years ago.

That's a great link to mtbr. i'm going to remove pressure from the IFP. I had similar not-getting-full-travel before this last service. I had problems with marzocchi forks in the past not getting full travel due to too much oil. It seems a similar issue with the Fox forks. When I reassembled I was getting the same problem as last time, blowing through travel and then no movement and massively ramping up just before the last 15mm. So this time I removed a load of air and compressed the fork… similar issue – went hard with 15mm to go… pushed harder, then BANG. wiper seals on both legs blew out and prob a good 20ml of oil bilged out of the damper leg and a dribble out the spring side. mopped up the mess, reinstalled seals, but some more air in… and magic, full travel accessible again.

I'm losing faith in the Fox manuals. There are loads of inconsistencies in the TALAS strip and rebuild manual! followed to the tee, you don't put FLOAT fluid in the IFP, don't put oil bath (10ml) in the spring side leg (both recommended elsewhere), and they miss out a couple of steps getting the lower legs and internals back together towards the end!!

I know what you mean about the manuals, its a bit scary when you've got several hundred pounds worth of fork in bits in front of you that look nothing like the pictures 😯 .

There's a little spring in there behind the ball bearing, makesure that's in there. Believe having them wind themselves down is bl**dy frustrating.

yep, it was the spring that fired the bearing across the cellar. I got away with it one time too many, I had a bad feeling it was going to go flying 🙂

the spring is still in place thankfully 🙂

might tape the knob in place for the time being!