Hi all,

I’ve just given my Rebas a full service – including spring & damper.

I took my time and followed instructions on the SRAMtech YouTube channel as well as the SRAM service manual.

That said – I’ve obviously done something wrong because although they are holding air – they are very soft. They’ll easily bottom out. I’ve put 140psi (+ & -). The lockout is also not locking out fully at all.

The only extra step I took was removing the 20mm spacer to increase the travel to 120mm.

Any thoughts on where I may have gone wrong? Damper or spring side?

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated!
Thanks!

negative piston upside down maybe, meaning neg. air just goes into the lower legs.
and oil level in damper maybe 2 to 5ml low as guides are sometime a touch out. 😉

^ Damper oil may be too low. Had a similar problem, you know when you’ve got it bang on when the lock-out lever locks the forks out perfectly at the 100% position… with too much oil the forks lock-out too early, with too little this happens… IME 😀

Thanks guys!

I definitely put 123ml 5wt oil into the damper side. Defintely definitely definitely!!… I think…

I’ll strip them down again and re-assemble… what a PITA! Another weekend with no riding 🙁

Oh hang on… I don’t need to strip them down to top up the damper oil do I… You can tell I’m new at this 😉

Are you sure it was the travel spacer you removed and not the neg air piston? And did you definitely put the air spring assembly back together in the right order? I suspect that there’s a problem in the air spring side rather than damper side

It was definitely a 20mm spacer 🙂
And I’m sure I put it all back in the right order… I triple-checked that when I did it.

I’ve just let all air out. When I compress the forks they go ALL the way down (dust seals touch the crown / no stanchion showing). Is that to be expected?
If I lock them out they go about 60%.

If that’s normal – then my next step will be to add an extra 10ml or so of 5w tomorrow and see if that make any difference.

Am I ok to just pull out the damper assembly and top it up from there?

If they’re very soft with air in, then there’s a problem with air side. The damper side has virtually no effect on the force required to compress the forks unless locked out.

The lockout problem is damper side. Before you top up, you might to measure how much is still in the top side of the fork to make sure it’s not leaking down to the lower legs.

It’s highly likely that despite thinking that you’ve followed the instructions close enough, you probably haven’t. Sorry about that.

I’ve just topped up the oil with an extra 10 – 15ml… and it feels loads better.
With lockout engaged I can now only compress it by about 10-20mm.

We’ll see how it goes on tonight’s ride I guess.

Thanks for the help all 🙂

All good after the ride.
Feeling a bit smug with myself 😀

🙂

Add another 10mm as you shouldn’t really get 20mm on full lockout.
10mm of travel is good. 😉