I recently had a customer come in that said he jumped the gate at a local race and that every since this happened he felt like his forks were "binding up." He thought that this was due to one of the forks being bent and when he called he was looking for a price on a new inner fork tube. I was immediately skeptical because of the fact that I have seen forks go through hard hits and abuse and come out without any sort of damage. Fork tubes on modern day motocross bikes are incredibly strong!
As I was skeptical, I asked him to bring the complete bike by so that I could check it out and see what was going on. Once the bike arrived here at the shop we could immediately see that there was a problem. When the customer untied the bike in the back of his truck the forks stayed down and had to be pulled up to full extension. Once the forks were off of the bike I began by pulling the inner cartridges out of the forks and checking the inner and outer tubes to see if they were straight. Just as I had suspected everything checked out fine. I immediately noticed on disassembly that the inner cartridges had negative pressure (more than I have ever seen in 20 years of doing suspension) as the dampening rods had absolutely no return once compressed into the cartridge. Keep in mind that the customer's suspension had been recently serviced (by a shop that is no longer in business) and only had 5 rides on it. Upon complete tear down of the fork the culprit was found to be extremely worn out floating or free piston seals in both sides. This small 10mm seal costs about $5 and is not typically replaced by your average service shop as the part is sometimes hard to find but it is essential to the proper operation of your forks. Here at the shop we do no just replace minimal parts just to get your stuff out the door and make a buck. We clean and check everything and if your suspension needs parts such as the these seals as well as others they are replaced. Our goal here at Mx Trend is to have your suspension function as if it did when you first bought your machine!
Needless to say our customer was very happy that he did not have to buy a new fork tube and that the bill was cheaper than he thought it would be. Whether you have us here at Mx Trend service or r
evalve your suspension or you decide to go elsewhere, make sure that you pick a shop that has a reputation and knows what they are doing when it comes to suspension as this was not the only issue that was found with this customer's fork and shock.
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