Hello there,my 160 pikes have lost around 50mm plus of their travel.This is a new issue to me and appears to be caused by damper side,as problem is still there with air and Indeed air cap removed.Anyone got any ideas what’s causing this strangeness?

Tried burping the lowers? If there’s any pressure in them you can release it by carefully sticking a cable tie between stanchion and seal.

Yep,released lowers fully and made sure both shafts were extended before bolting back together.

Ignore this 😉

Charger damper?
I had this recently and had to bleed it.
Epic bleed solutions sell a kit and have instructions on how to do it.

I have been ignoring it Ben,but the Welsh rocks are a bit Heavy going on the hands after a few days.
Spawnofyorkshire-Im guessing that could be the issue,although I only ever had dampers get knocky with air in them before.

If they’re the charger damper, the bladder might have burst, dropping all the damper oil into the lower leg. Fairly easy to pull it out and check.

It sounds like an air side problem. They have more pressure in the negative air chamber than in the positive and have become sucked down into the travel. You might be able to temporarily fix it by putting 100+ PSI in the positive air chamber and then stretching the fork (grip the front wheel between your legs and push/pull up on the bars) if it doesn’t extend fully with the extra pressure in it.

I don’t think that’s happened tillydog as damping still works and no excess oil came out when I released lowers .
I don’t think it’s that either rickdraper as fork isn’t sucked down into travel,sag and ride height are normal.

I don’t know how old your Pikes are, but the earlier version had an issue with the charger damper seal head which allowed oil to leak out and into the lowers. It reduced travel and affected damping – does the three-position semi-lockout work still?

The easy wy to check is to drop the lowers off and see if there’s a shedload of damper oil in the damper-side lower – it’ll be obvious as soon as your release the bolt that locks the damper rod to the bottom of the fork as the oil’ll run out.

When it happened to me I lost travel – the oil in the fork lower means the fork can’t compress – the damping still sort of worked, but not quite right, and the quasi-lockout stopped working properly too.

If you’re certain the air side is okay then you’re going to have to pull the damper anyway, so you might as well drop the lowers off and see. It’ll only take you five minutes and you’ll know for certain whether the damper has dumped oil into the lower. Sticking a zip-tie past the wiper seals won’t tell you that.

Edit: ignore what I said about dropping the lowers. Hadn’t realised you’d done it already. If it were me I’d try bleeding the damper. It’s slightly fiddly, but not particularly difficult.

I have been ignoring it Ben,but the Welsh rocks are a bit Heavy going on the hands after a few days.

Ha, I meant ignore my comment, after I edited my first when I read you’d had the lowers off (Or rather when I read it the second time).

I had the same issue, air in the damper caused the bladder to press on the inside of the stanchion, stopping full travel. The epic bleed kit fixed it for me

Sorry I didn’t read it right. I thought it had lost travel instead its not achieving 50mm of travel.

I would say but likely needs the damper bleeding. If its an older fork that hasn’t been serviced it might still have the old damper sealed which was pretty useless. The new one is an improvement although they still requite servicing as the damper does still slowly suck up lower leg fluid.

Thanks for the help guys,I’ve just fixed these relatively easily Rick and others were on the money.The damper had been drawing in lowers fluid as suggested ,I just released this excess and fork is back working as it should again,I guess over time this will happen again but at least I know the fix and cause now.Shame I couldn’t get it done at the beginning or indeed during my trip as it would of been kinder on the old hands . Thanks again.

There is an updated seal head.

Also make sure not to over fill the lower oil.