Forum

Morning chaps...

I'm wondering if any of you may have some advice on what could have happened to my forks please..

They are a pair of RockShox Recon Coil SL 100.

All working fine last week when we were out, prepped the bike yesterday for last night's run. Headed out last night and down the road noticed the forks seemed really stiff. Met up with the guys and it seemed like the forks were in the lockout position (if that's what about 15mm travel and then stop is like) but no end of twiddling the lockout key would change it.

Removed the key from the top and turned the lockout bolt (in case key hadn't been doing it's job) but still no joy.

Only think I had done in prepping the bike had been turning upside down for cleaning etc.. I then removed the front wheel as I noticed it had been in a bit crooked. Lined it up straight, did up QR, re-aligned brakes and job done.

When out last night, I flipped it over again, released the wheel and tried it and it seemed to free up a bit, but when I put the wheel back in, flipped it back again and leaned on bars, back to restricted travel.

The feeling it give is a small amount of travel, then if you compress it a few times you get a physical hard-stop feeling down in the fork.

Got to get some work stuff done and then have another look, removing the wheel again and this time put bike on decking and press down on forks to see if frees up but wanted to get the ball rolling in terms of advice in the meantime.

Cheers in advance dudes.. Please help. I need to get my fix on Sunday morning

Ev

First you need to work out which side the obstruction is on, if itson the lockout side then its an issue with the damper, if its on the otherside its an issue with the coil spring, you can make a ghetto stethascope with a bit of hose pressed firmly against one stantion or lower and compress the fork till it binds up, then repeat on the other side.

once you've worked out which side is causing the grief (my money is on the coils spring side) you can dissasemble and rebuild making sure everything is aligned
[url=
http://www.sram.com/sites/default/files ... manual.pdf]recon tech manual[/url]

Yeah that's what I would do. Strip them down and rebuild. Hopefully nothing has broken but at least it's fairly easy to get parts. Sounds to me like and oil/seal problem. This might be worth a read: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic ... ot-working

Cheers guys...

Opened up the tops of both sides earlier and on the lockout side (damper), couldn't see anything obviously broken in the top tube.
I removed the lockout damper and cleaned the o-ring on it's base.
It looks like turning the key on top operates it's internals which seem to, for locked, allow oil from below to flow up through and into top tube and, for unlocked, prevent oil from below coming up through and into top tube (there's a hole in underside of damper which seems to open and close by operating the key, which looks like it would allow fluid to pass up inside damper and out into top of tube, above the o-ring... then oil would drain back down?)

I then opened the other side (pre-load) but there's nothing to see in the top tube...

So it looks like next step is removal of lower legs, draining by releasing the bolts underneath, tapping upwards to release, draining the oil and removal of coil and damper to see what's wrong..
It looks like the issue is in there somewhere as I am getting about 20mm of travel and lockout wouldn't give me that much. Maybe I've got some sort of air-lock in there from the half hour they were upside down?
If I compress them a few times It goes really hard with a bump and if I then release, the fork lengthens by a few mm and you can hear either oil or air doing something inside..

Update...

It looks like the seal between lower and upper legs has failed and the oil from the upper (lockout part) has leaked into the lower and thus prevents the damper on that side from compressing. This is why it only gets about an inch of travel before it then firms up...

Started another thread just now to try to get the bits I need individually to strip, replace seal, refill oil and re-assemble.

Cheers

I had the same issue, i sent mine back to Roch Shox and issue sorted. But replaced spacer last month and now the seal keeps popping off the top. good luck mate.

TF tuned sorted me out with all the parts, really quick and easy