Ryan's Fork

Turning our attention to bike maintenance, Ryan and I did an overhaul on his mountain bike fork.   The fork is about six years old which was enough reason to strip it down and at least change the oil.  I do not believe he's had any problems with it other than thinking it felt soft of late.

 Into the work stand and off with the fork.

On my first motorcycle I did a fork seal and oil replacement job but never on a mountain bike. I've always wanted to get inside a suspension fork and see what's going on in there.  As it turns out there's a lot more going on in the bike fork than there was in my moto fork.

Getting inside a Rock Shox Reba Dual Air fork.

We tore it down, replaced the fork seals and wipers with new Enduro seals from Real World Cycling, and replaced some o-rings too.  The instructions from the SRAM web site were pretty thorough as well as the instructions from RWC.  Keeping the parts organized is an important part of this job. 

 Ellen was on hand for some help and QC inspection.

We reassembled the internals and proceeded with oil filling.  There was only one major spillage but we'll pretend that didn't happen.  However, the stain on my workbench may make it a tough cover up.

 Not the best angle for a picture, but i was supposed

to be holding the fork, not taking pictures.

With the fork back together and the air chambers pumped up we reinstalled the fork.  There was no trail testing today but as far as we could tell it was ready to go.  I think Ryan will have some playing to do with the rebound adjustment and maybe the positive and negative pressures, as we set it back to the default settings.  It was a good project and now I'm motivated to figure out what preventative maintenance I should be doing with my fork.

 While we were working on Ryan's fork

Daniel built "Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse".