Rockshox fork stantion (Rantette)

Ramsey Neil – Member
Marzocchi manage a 3year warranty with no service intervals

Um… No they don’t. 2 year warranty and various bits of servicing every 25-50 hrs and that’s with lubricating the seals very ride.

Feeling all the singletracklove. 🙁

A lesson learnt, need to drop the legs and give them a lube/service every 8 weeks.

Will be doing my Sid XX’s on my other bike soon as don’t want them going the same way. youtube is my friend for instructions.

I will wait for merlin Cycles to put an offer up and get some new SID’s, works out cheaper if I sell the knackered ones on fleabay.

rockshox lip seals go jazzy when you take the lowers off. they stop working properly. disposable items, innit.

LoCo : Every bike (or set of forks we sell) whether that be fitted wi Fox/Rockshox whatever, we drum it into folk that they need regular servicing and it’s dependant on use and riding conditions, we show them the wall of fork shame but to be honest you can’t tell some folk or get it across to them – some folk run their brake pads so far down that they end up using their backing plate for a braking surface without realising or paying heed to that screeching metal on metal noise, others run their FS linkages/bearings into the ground so much that you can pick up their bike by the saddle to do the drop test and the rear of the bike goes “KLUNK” and wobbles about. Others run their rear shock pressure so low that it damages linkages and breaks frames due to continually bottoming out on drops which the frame design is obviously not intended to cope with, others screw the fork rebound right up as they think a boingy fork works best…..every day is a lesson in abstract idiocy.

The amount of mechanical ineptitude that folk show is truly astounding but i guess it keeps me in work 😀

BTW – i service my Fox Talas every month and i religiously clean the stantions with silicone spray after every ride and cycle them a few times without pressure to release the dirt/dust, i guess i’ve serviced them 6 or 7 times since last october, i’ll be selling them at the end of June to get the 2014 Talas so someone will get a decent. well looked after fork

what’s Marzocchi’s SID competitor

Nearest equivalent is probably these that I’ve been considering for my XC hardtail.

Corsa Superleggera

I will wait for merlin Cycles to put an offer up and get some new SID’s, works out cheaper if I sell the knackered ones on fleabay.

Why are you replacing them at all for a little bit of wear?

somafunk, we keep the really bad/good ones for show mind you, I’ve also got a set of Showa usd forks off a Ducati 916, that have worn through the ti nitrite coating on the stantions 😉

bigrich – Member

rockshox lip seals go jazzy when you take the lowers off. they stop working properly

Colour me unconvinced!

dan1980 – Member

Ramsey Neil – Member
Marzocchi manage a 3year warranty with no service intervals

Um… No they don’t. 2 year warranty and various bits of servicing every 25-50 hrs and that’s with lubricating the seals very ride.

2013 Marzocchis with an open bath damper have a 3 year no servicing required warranty .

others run their FS linkages/bearings into the ground so much that you can pick up their bike by the saddle to do the drop test and the rear of the bike goes “KLUNK” and wobbles about.

😳

Good deal then, but only as good as the quality of the fork. If it isn’t as good as they claim, your going to be without a fork regularly while it’s away being serviced under warranty. Maybe it’s just a case of marz buying their way back into the game, given their virtual disappearance for a few years.

You may well be right there , they have done themselves no favours over the past 5 years . Interestingly a friend of mine who is pretty knowledgable about these things recons that the old Bombers had 25 microns thick anodising whereas Fox and RS only use 5 microns thick .

Fork servicing… madnesss.

My Fox 29er forks are on 6000miles now and have never been touched apart from water and a bit of fork juice.

LoCo – Member
somafunk, we keep the really bad/good ones for show mind you, I’ve also got a set of Showa usd forks off a Ducati 916, that have worn through the ti nitrite coating on the stantions

They all do that sir, along with flaking engine paint and rubbish rockers 🙂

Its all down to weight now though, my old bomber mx comps were great at the time, but would be pretty heavy now.

njee20 – Member

I will wait for merlin Cycles to put an offer up and get some new SID’s, works out cheaper if I sell the knackered ones on fleabay.

Why are you replacing them at all for a little bit of wear?

This wear on the coating and wear on the bushes is causing them to almost lock out at times and are very sticky.

C’mon grum….tell us the story…..i guess you you were just riding along and the back end fell apart? 😀

LoCo, i imagine you get a helluva lot more forks in for servicing than we do though so i guess it pays to offload them for scrap – the company that comes up with a suitable process to recoat worn stantions is gonna make a fortune. My motocross bikes with Showa USD never had a problem with worn stantions despite being used in hellish conditions but i guess they were built/designed to a suitable functioning strength rather than with a nod to weight weenie/seal stiction issues. How did someone wear out Ti Nitrite coated legs?, i bet they ran the bike during the winter without washing the salt off.

I’ve four sets of RS forks, the oldest of which is into it’s eighth year now and still going strong. I don’t really do much to them, other than to service the lowers every few months or so and even then, the oil is usually the same colour as when it went in. The foam rings do require careful soaking in order to remove dirt.

I wonder if there’s a geographical constant to the reports of worn stanchions, lots of people here service their forks more frequently and thoroughly than I do but their forks last half as long?

I have been known to clean any mud from my stanchions and seals mid ride, just to be on the safe side and I guess that the really gritty stuff is going to cause much more damage than fine Kentish chalk.

Forgive me if I sin (i.e. I’m wrong) but I never really used to hear about stanchion wear. Has something changed?!!!

Colour me unconvinced!

what colour is unconvinced? you want I could make up a bath of food dye and you could wallow in that?

rockshox seals are a wear and tear item, and taking the legs on and off both wears and tears them

what colour is unconvinced? you want I could make up a bath of food dye and you could wallow in that?

Similar to murdered out. 😉

bigrich – Member

rockshox seals are a wear and tear item, and taking the legs on and off both wears and tears them

As does moving the forks up and down but I don’t replace them every time I do that.

what colour is unconvinced? you want I could make up a bath of food dye and you could wallow in that?

New shade from Farrow & Ball, my wife is thinking of using it for the bathroom

I wonder if there’s a geographical constant to the reports of worn stanchions

I dunno where you ride but the majority of the 7stanes are coated with a layer of whinstane or granite dust that can quickly turn into a microscopic grinding paste with a smattering of water and mud added to it that resembles valve grinding paste and is just as abrasive, if this leaks down the seals then it’s a matter of a few rides at most before the fork stantion is fubar, I feel the use of products such as the fork brace neoprene splashguards such as the Rapid racer products accelerate stantion wear by not allowing water and mud to pass through the brace so i prefer to use the Mucky Nutz bender fender as they seem to protect the stantions to a greater extent from debris and water/mud.

Yes the type of mud/soil/rock affects the amount of wear, peat stains the paint work too.
Oh and Powa fenders are the best thing for keeping stuff off the stantions, avoid the stantion covers unless you remove and wash them ever ride.

Others run their rear shock pressure so low that it damages linkages and breaks frames due to continually bottoming out on drops which the frame design is obviously not intended to cope with, others screw the fork rebound right up as they think a boingy fork works best…..every day is a lesson in abstract idiocy.

Two side to every story, n’est-ce pas? I’m struggling with my new Fox CTD rear shock. I don’t think I’m an especially fast rider and barely get more than a few inches off the floor, but if I set the sag as it should be I’m blowing through the travel easily. Do I need a different shock tune? Does your average mountain biker even know different shock tunes are an option…at more cost? As for your rebound comment, why is someone an idiot for using the extremes of the adjustments available to them? At worst they’re in the range the forks are designed to work in and at best they might have spent hours experimenting with the settings and found these work best.

Perhaps your shop could run some practical courses on how suspension should be set up as well as how to service it. I’d come, depending on where you are of course 🙂

We’re planning to offer some course in basic servicing and maintainance later in the year when it quietens down a bit, for local clubs to start with and see how they go.

Where are you based Loco? Might be good that

These “My shiny forks got a slight scratch and the man in the shop say’s I’ll die if I use them” threads just make me giggle…

I recently rebuilt an ancient old pair of Psylo SL’s for a hack DJ bike, scuffed “Ruined” stanchions, knackered wiper seals all sorts of apparently fatal issues, cleaned up, rebuilt and oiled and working perfectly, not a hint of stiction and even the compression damper actually still works.

The Marz forks on My main HT are coming up on a Decade old, the stanchions are spotless and they work a treat…

And my ~8 Years old Boxxers have some light wear on one stanchion but are still lovely and smooth through their travel and do the job.

I’m hardly OCD about maintenance, and I’ve not treated these forks well so how come my crappy ancient forks all seem to work fine while half of you seem to have constant issues with worn stanchions and supposedly state of the art forks under 2 years old all wearing out?

You need to get you hands dirty girls, stop putting off the maintenance tasks or delegating to the LBS mechanic once you’ve bolloxed them through neglect.

South Wales, between Cwmcarn and Gethin (where Bikepark Wales is being constructed) So a weekend of riding within 30 mins of the workshop if courses are on a Friday night. 😉

The current CTD’s generally need an improved or custom compression tune/set-up – ie: increased rising rate as otherwise they do tend to blow through travel such as you are experiencing, we have used Jaytech and MOJO for custom tunes based on rider weight and riding style/bike set-up. I don’t have direct experience of LoCo’s tuning work or others such as TF Tuned but i’m sure they are are equally as good going by reports on here and other forums.

As for the comment regarding rebound i stand by it, if your rebound was working to such an extent that the forks reacted or kicked back violently then at the very least that will lead to a loss of traction on the front end, especially when banked over at speed which would either result in a faceplant or loss of control.

We try and offer advice when setting a FS up for folk and we often head out for a first ride wi them as the 7stanes trail at Dalbeattie is only 20mins away from us – once the air pressure is set up and we have the rebound where we feel the fork is tracking correctly all that’s left is to show the customer what the other modes or settings such as climb/trail/descend are for. I’m all for Fox trying to simplify the variable modes but i feel they dropped the ball slightly with the 2013 range of CTD equipped forks/shocks.

We try and offer advice when setting a FS up for folk and we often head out for a first ride wi them as the 7stanes trail at Dalbeattie is only 20mins away from us – once the air pressure is set up and we have the rebound where we feel the fork is tracking correctly all that’s left is to show the customer what the other modes or settings such as climb/trail/descend are for.

That’s a great idea/service.

I’m still in denial about the CTD shock, thinking that one day I’ll get it just right, but at the moment I’m not quite happy with it. I’m a little angry about having to possibly spend more money on it to get it to work as I expected it to out of the box.

My sympathies to the OP.

Just a thought before you get rid of them …..

I’ve seen reasonable success (if your afforded the liberty) of stripping and servicing the fork and whilst the fork is apart adding a travel spacer.

If the fork is in 100mm mode say and is showing 20mm of wear on the exposed stanction then adding a 20mm spacer will drop the worn part into the legs.

I appreciate this is a work around (if possible with your fork) but may breathe some life into a fork you are destined to scrap/eBay.

I’ve friends that have had good success with Fox forks. Worn stanctions in 120mm mode. Travel dropped to either 100 or 80mm and then regular service intervals.

As I say it’s a work around but could be worth a shot.

Just don’t do it then sell them on 😉

We’re planning to offer some course in basic servicing and maintainance later in the year when it quietens down a bit, for local clubs to start with and see how they go.

Is that wise? Equipping people with knowledge that helps them avoid needing your services so often?

How is the development at Gethin going? any proper news on that? it’s been coming for well over 2 years now…

stilltortois, air volume spacer should sort those issues 😉

cookeaa, just air can and lower legs services and setup advice/service. We can do these jobs but really they’re home service/routine maintainace jobs and people will buy seals, oil, etc from us too.

They’re building Gethin now, have a had a few boys in who are working up there, think it’s coming along nicely.

To my shame i’ve never done a lower leg removal and clean on any of my forks.

To be honest it looks fairly straightforward.

Am I right in thinking (even though all the videos don’t show it) that you could do it without removing the forks from the bike.

Sure can rich, if you have everything set up on your work bench beforehand it should take less than 15mins with a bit of experience behind you to drop the lowers, clean/relube the foam rings, inspect the stantions and refit and fill with the correct weight and volume of oil.

letmetalktomark – Member
My sympathies to the OP.

Just a thought before you get rid of them …..

I’ve seen reasonable success (if your afforded the liberty) of stripping and servicing the fork and whilst the fork is apart adding a travel spacer.

If the fork is in 100mm mode say and is showing 20mm of wear on the exposed stanction then adding a 20mm spacer will drop the worn part into the legs.

I appreciate this is a work around (if possible with your fork) but may breathe some life into a fork you are destined to scrap/eBay.

I’ve friends that have had good success with Fox forks. Worn stanctions in 120mm mode. Travel dropped to either 100 or 80mm and then regular service intervals.

As I say it’s a work around but could be worth a shot.

Just don’t do it then sell them on

Posted 4 hours ago # Report-Post

Cheers for that advise, will look into that first.

(Its lucky I have two MTB’s as it gives me a bit of thinking time)