Fork Service.

After damaging my freehub in the Lakes I thought I'd take the opportunity to strip my coil fork down and give it a good service as it was sticky, rattly and squeaky - all the things a fork should not be. Thankfully, Rock Shox provide a pretty detailed service manual for it. Also thankfully it's a very basic coil fork so there's not a lot to go wrong and not a lot to service.

Stripping it down took a couple of hammer blows on the bolts on the bottom of the fork legs to persuade the lower legs to part company from the stanchions. Once they were apart it was fairly easy to see that there was no grease or oil remaining in either of the legs.

I stripped the spring out and also the damper, emptying the oil into the jar of bike related old fluids that now resembles the rhubarb gin our neighbour gave us. It has a cheeky nose with a hint of apples and engine oil. A bit young, could do with laying down for, say, 35 years until it's past it's half life.

Everything was cleaned and re-greased with SRAM Butter supplied promptly and efficiently by the folks at Bikegoo (along with some 5wt and 15wt suspension fluid) and reassembled. I used a bamboo cane with tape around it to get the right fluid level in the damper leg and my set of baking measuring spoons from the kitchen to get the right volume of oil in the bottom of the damper leg. Improvisation is our watchword!

The fork in the work vice, just after filling the damper leg bottom with oil

All in all, it took a couple of hours to take the fork off the bike, strip, clean and reassemble it.

Best of all, it's now like a new fork! It sags gently when I sit on the bike and bobs gently with pedalling. Taking it down through the old Riddlesden golf course it ate up all the bumps and more. It has also delayed my decision to change to a better air fork now it has some new life back in it. I should have done it sooner and it will certainly be on the regular servicing list in future. Happy bike fixing times :)