Poll: How often do you service your fork?

Posted by: thaaad

Shots fired.

just a light volley across the bow

Posted by: Hepcat

Oh that Synchro he's the worst. Making honest people feel like they want to buy him a beer since 2003. Insidious.

Been 16 years reading his posts, any day now he's going to drop the unfailingly insightful and helpful even-handed act and reveal he's a troll after beer.

oh c'mon don't let my secret out!

I’ll buy Sync a beer, if only to discover the dark knight’s true identity.

Suspicions we're raised last week when he "helpfully" suggested we give up our beer to "lose weight".

Posted by: Hepcat

Suspicions we're raised last week when he "helpfully" suggested we give up our beer to "lose weight".

I was somewhat worried that comment would send the pitchforks and torches brigade to my front door.

Posted by: -Alex2-

Posted by: Hepcat

Yeah, you can go years with an under performing fork filled with dirt, but why?

A few reasons. For one, I wouldn't call it underperforming if I can't tell the difference and it doesn't hold my riding back. For another, I don't have a lot of spare time or money, so I'd rather spend them on riding than on maintenance. Finally, I know that a low-maintenance fork won't let me down in the middle of a ride. My Boxxer has let out all of its air on two occasions when I must have gone over the recommended service interval without realising it. Why would I rebuild that fork when I've got others that are always ready to go?

Every time I service the lowers I wonder why I hadn’t done it sooner. I always notice an improvement. Servicing lowers is very simple and only costs oil and time. I also notice that if I wait too long, the amount of oil in my catch pan does not seem to be as much as I put in after. I think you do slowly weep oil out the wipers as they cycle up and down hundreds of thousands of times as you ride.

There is also stanchion below the seals that isn't seen if the fork hasn't had the lowers dropped. 

I guess it's like your teeth, you can spend a little money each year, instead of spending a lot every ten years. Sure if you have forks that only get ridden a couple of times of year, one of spare bikes has seen less than an hour's riding since the forks and shock had a full service four years ago. 

Some servicing is expensive, I have an Ohlins TTX rear shock and it's service cost is roughly one third of the price of the shock. Per year. But it's the cost of ownership I guess.

Will Ferrell makes me laugh a lot.

Also, I ride lift-accessed every day from May to October and if you don't service your squishy bits twice a year you're gonna have a bad time.

What a great thread out of a total shit show. I learned some things about fork maintenance, had a laugh and hopefully no egos were crushed irreparably in the process. I have to say that even when things "get tense" on this board, it remains West Coast Chill.

I also have to say that we all used to service our forks soooo much less in the 90's.  I recall taking apart my Judy XC and finding the elastomers were falling to pieces. I'm pretty sure I just put them back in because I didn't have anything else to use in their place at that time. Didn't really notice a performance loss either ;) Those were the days....Also bombers did seem to go ages and always feel "good," but we didn't know better. Also, remember suspension stems - no maintenance needed there either.

When I met my GF somehow the topic of car oil changes came up as she was driving me somewhere. So I asked when she changed the oil last. She replied "I can't remember. The oil light hasn't come on and the car drives fine so it's not time yet."  Yikes!

Posted by: -Alex2-

Posted by: XXX_er

fork boots

That's interesting. I always heard that fork boots ended up trapping the dirt and accelerating wear. Thanks for that XXX_er

yeah the fork boots would trap a bit of water/dirt/oil, I regularly rode in the rain & put on a lot of trail miles in the mud some water probably came thru the vent holes in the bellows, some oil still snuck past the seals but the fork still leaked less oil/ looked cleaner than the euro forks from back in the day which were all terrible

I would undo the hose clamps push up the boots to clean whatever smoo collected there under the boot as a regular service thing

IME running fork boots was a net positive or i wouldn't have kept them on the forks

but there is no way anybody wants to run a fork with protective fork boots cuz it looks uncool