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Hi all,
Over the past few rides I have noticed that my pikes (dual position air) have started to lose pressure.
This seems to happen intermittently, i.e. it will go for several hours riding with no loss of pressure at all, but then every now and again they will seem to lose a significant chunk of pressure all at once.
for example last night I was out, started at 100psi; checked a couple of times during the ride and no change (including fully bottoming the fork out a few times), but when I got back to the car and checked, over the last third of the ride it had dropped to 70psi. (I'm always checking pressure set in max travel mode)
Anyone had this issue at all? Any diagnosis?
In terms of causes, the only things I can think of is that I have somehow botched up the lower leg oil change I did recently, but I can't see how that would have affected it.
Also there are a few marks on the air-side stanchion where I hit a rock a while back. However this doesn't affect the air piston (which contrary to what a lot of people think, sits fully inside) so I can't see how that would cause it either.
Would really appreciate it if anyone has advice to share of possible causes. I really don't want to have to send the fork back and lose riding time!
PS they are RTC3 2015 version
Could you have damaged a rubber seal while doing the lower leg's?
I had something similar on some Blutos (=Reba) - I changed the oil in the lowers and afterwards the air side would 'burp' air on occasions - pressure stayed steady otherwise. I opened the air spring up, and there was barely any grease on any of the air spring seals (almost none, in contrast to the great big gobs of red grease that I've seen in my other forks).
I think what happened was that I cleaned the air piston rod when I had the lowers off which stripped whatever grease there was off it and made it too dry to seal against the negative piston reliably.
I greased it all up and put it back together and it has been fine since
thanks both, sounds similar issue tillydog, will give it a look. I also cleaned the piston rod, however I didn't remove much (if any at all) grease from memory.
(PS - sure I didn't damage anything)
I didn't remove much (if any at all) grease from memory.
Neither did I, but seeing how little grease was in the air spring when I dismantled it, I can only think that wiping the oil film off the piston rod was enough to upset things.