Borrowed a shockwiz to play with for the week, on setting up my fork I realised that I am not getting full travel from my fork.
It's an RCT3 160mm Pike.
Compresses to approx 30mm shy of the crown.
Forks have 0psi in (so should be easy)
Have tried the weird cable tie down the seal trick (slight hiss but hasn't resolved anything).
Any advice before I whip the lowers off an have a poke around?
Have you done both sides with the cable tie?
I believe I only did the negative side (google suggested), so could try positive side
Drop the lowers off and put the right amount of oil in. They might be overfull.
Fairly sure there is 5ml in the drive and 15mlin the non drive, but if the zip tie doesn't resolve I will make sure the correct levels go in.
When mine showed these symptoms, the bladder in the charger damper had shat its guts. A full service by someone that knows what they're doing sorted it.
Forks have 0psi in (so should be easy)
Only 0Psi when fully extended. Did you try with the top cap removed?
I didn't but did try depressing valve whilst compressing (so essentially 0 psi whilst compressed)
It’s ****ed then 😉
Just a thought before you pull the lowers off. Has it got too many tokens in it?
I did the seal burping thing on my revelations, has made them more sensitive. Let all the air out then burp the seals and compress the fork at the same time, you should be able to get them fully compressed this way.
This happened to mine. It was caused by air in the damper which meant the bladder expanded to much until it was constrained by the stantion limiting it's travel. I bought a bleed kit and bled it (without dismantling it and changing any seals) it hasn't happened again yet with a years heavy use.
I had this happen to my pike 3 times, it's caused by lowers oil migrating onto the damper, then the bladder is overfilled and presses against the stanchion body stopping it from reaching full travel. Correct amounts of lowers fluid were used every time
To check if you remove the damper and compress it by hand you'll get full travel as the bladder isn't hitting the stanchion.
A damper bleed will sort the issue temporarily for say 6 months, swapping to the skf damper rod seal made it last a little longer but it still did it around every 9 months.
Thankfully the problem isn't present on my new style 2018 pikes.
Surely its air not ail getting into the damper. Their should only be 15ml of oil in that leg. Either way get the kit and bleed the damper. Also if its an early fork you might want to invest in the updated seal head. The early one was way too short and let air in constantly. Mine was improved no end by making this mod
Air tends to result in cavitation and a loss of damping performance, but you won't get the above travel loss as it's compressible and won't cause the bladder to over-expand as happens when oil migrates through.
Dropped the lowers, checked (and replaced) the oil levels, all good.
Same travel missing
Put 130 PSI in bashed them around a bit, now missing about 10mm of travel.
I can live with 10mm missing until the winter, I will send them in for a service then.