Just pondering where anyone has every tried polishing the inside of a fork stanchion in an attempt to make the air spring smoother.
What did you try and did it make any difference?
Sounds like a terrible idea.
The fork legs don't slide on the whole of the stanchion, just some appropriately placed bushes.
I've already resized the bushes. Outside of the stanchion is smooth enough. But there's a lot of resistance on the air piston. So I'm wondering if it's possible to do similar on the inside and reduce the friction as the air piston slides along the inside of the stanchion.
What's the issue you're trying to resolve? Once it's moving, the air piston has little friction provided you're using good quality grease. It's usually the initial breakaway that takes a bit more force. That's where the negative spring becomes useful so I'd be looking at tuning before I went trying to polish the insides. You might be able to undersize the main air spring seal depending on the fork.
And I guessing if you were at a point where the internal surfaces of the upper legs were the biggestcause of friction, you'd have already burnished the bushings and I'd image by that point, you'd have already polished the outer surface of the legs so I'd say use the same stuff you'd used on the outer surfaces.
Cerium Oxide is probably the best thing to use. How you'd get a decent polish inside the legs is another matter. Some sort of flap wheel on a drill I guess but the chances of messing it up would be high.
I'd have thought that seeing as the air spring relies on grease for lubrication, the surcae needs to be a bit rough (on a micro scale) so the grease has got something to cling to. If everything was a perfect mirror finish, the grease would just clump together rather than spread itself it nicely over the surface.
I'd just go with the most slippery lower leg lube you can find and make sure everything is nicely greased. Check the bushings with the front wheel installed, make sure the legs aren't splayed or pinched when its all clamped up.
You should order a Vorsprung coil kit. What you're proposing sounds like you are on an inevitable pathway to coil sprung righteousness.
It will make polishing air springs look a bit pointless in comparison.
Or, get a Lauf for the ultimate freedom from friction 🙂
It might get well end up being a Smashpot. I was just wondering if there was a relatively easy way to improve performance similar to have burnishing the bushings does.
Or perhaps it's the Grip 2 damper. The greatest damper in the world when it was released it seemed. Although people are willing to talk about it's short comings the second they released the Grip X2
Just fit a smashpot 😀 Then realise how poor the stock damper is so you send damper away to be tuned at shockcraft. That's what I did..
I've heard a lot about the Shockcraft tune, but most of it is from Dougle via MTBR. Although, I do agree that it seems harsh and almost impossible to balance. I've heard others say that the tolerance stack up is too inconsistent to allow a standard damper to be built. You're the first person I've come across who actually has one. How much difference to you fund it has made and how was it dealing with Dougle in NZ?
I sold my 36s with Grip 2 VVC damper after a year of fettling and 2 services. It worked well in the bike park, actually better than 2 forks I have had since but for regular trail riding I couldn’t get it to work to my liking or at least not killing my wrists.
I got DVO Diamond first and then Formula Selva coil. Probably would have gone for MRP Lift kit if it had been available then.
(I've never ridden one but) I always thought the good thing about the GRIP was that it worked really well, considering it was a 'budget' damper. In the Fox range, it's similar to MoCo as in, fitted to lower end forks but unlike MoCo, it actually worked quite well.
I didn't think it was supposed to be on par with the higher end stuff but it was pretty good for a basic fork.
I guess if the fork feels harsh all the time then it's probably damper related.
Basic GRIP works well enough (now available on Performance series forks) for many, I have no experience on GRIP 2 but it is GRIP 2 VVC which has inconsistent damping on each fork.
Now there are new and improved GRIP X and GRIP X2 models available. These are best things ever, until next thing comes along.
