Mechanics Quick Question Thread [Ask Questions Here]

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Mechanics Quick Question Thread [Ask Questions Here]
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O+
Posted: May 17, 2021 at 8:06 Quote
That would be my guess as well from the description. Are you the original owner and how old is the fork because it could be a warranty issue.

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 9:06 Quote
Hello Mechanic Lounge.
I'm just finishing converting my garage to a workshop and am about to order a new bench (will be about 2m long and 75mm deep). Exciting times as it is almost ready - I need to put down some workshop pvc flooring as it floods a bit in the corners and at the sides (sloping site so it's half buried).

My question is, can anyone recommend a good bench vice for general bike maintenance and repairs? I'll have a bike stand too so the vice will be more for smaller components. Will a 4 inch be enough or is it worth getting a 6 or 8 inch? What do people use in bike shops?

Thank you for taking the time to read and any replies are appreciated.
Gavin

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 9:35 Quote
Only real thing with vises, is that it should not be one that has a swivel base. While yes, they are handy, they have a tendency to fail at the worst times. Other than that, I'd suggest a 6 inch, but a four inch is adequate imo.


tremeer023 wrote:
Hello Mechanic Lounge.
I'm just finishing converting my garage to a workshop and am about to order a new bench (will be about 2m long and 75mm deep). Exciting times as it is almost ready - I need to put down some workshop pvc flooring as it floods a bit in the corners and at the sides (sloping site so it's half buried).

My question is, can anyone recommend a good bench vice for general bike maintenance and repairs? I'll have a bike stand too so the vice will be more for smaller components. Will a 4 inch be enough or is it worth getting a 6 or 8 inch? What do people use in bike shops?

Thank you for taking the time to read and any replies are appreciated.
Gavin

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 9:38 Quote
radatabs wrote:
seraph wrote:
Lock rings are designed around the Centerlock standard, not the rotor. All rotor lock rings will fit all Centerlock hubs.

Except Fulcrum which need their own specific lock ring. Don't ask me how I know Madder

Technically Fulcrum doesn't use the full Centerlock standard. They fit Centerlock rotors but they use an externally threaded splined interface instead of literally everyone else.

O+
Posted: May 17, 2021 at 9:55 Quote
Already answered.

O+
Posted: May 17, 2021 at 10:01 Quote
tremeer023 wrote:
Hello Mechanic Lounge.
I'm just finishing converting my garage to a workshop and am about to order a new bench (will be about 2m long and 75mm deep). Exciting times as it is almost ready - I need to put down some workshop pvc flooring as it floods a bit in the corners and at the sides (sloping site so it's half buried).

My question is, can anyone recommend a good bench vice for general bike maintenance and repairs? I'll have a bike stand too so the vice will be more for smaller components. Will a 4 inch be enough or is it worth getting a 6 or 8 inch? What do people use in bike shops?

Thank you for taking the time to read and any replies are appreciated.
Gavin


I'd also suggest a bench more than 75mm deep... unless it's a bench for ants?Big Grin

O+
Posted: May 17, 2021 at 10:52 Quote
I tried out a friend's coil shock (Marzocchi Bomber CR) that had just come back from service at Fox on Saturday. It's 210x55mm, whereas the bike it's on (Canfield Riot) takes 200x57mm. I understand there could be issues with top-out clearance and changing geometry with a longer eye-to-eye shock, but I figured it would probably work pretty well with the offset hardware I used. Certainly I hoped it would work better than the Monarch Plus that my LBS "rebuilt" but still sounded terrible and leaked oil.

The first interesting thing with the Bomber CR was that it was very difficult to compress with the spring unloaded (i.e. the preload collar backed off so the spring could rattle around). It would extend back to full extension quickly, as if there were air being compressed inside the damper unit. Question #1: if you remove the coil from a coil shock, should you be able to compress the damper by hand, and will the damper stay in that compressed position, or rebound to full extension?

The next point is that, after considerable difficulty, my friend and I managed to install the shock on my bike by installing the rear shock bolt, compressing the damper (NOT the 500lb spring) and holding it so it didn't extend itself, and installing the front shock bolt. The offset hardware did not quite make up for the extra eye-to-eye length of the shock, hence the need to compress it slightly to install it. Question #2: is it bad to ride a coil shock (in particular, a Marz Bomber CR) without letting it ever reach full extension? I just measured the eye-to-eye length of the shock as installed, and it's about 205mm, so I'm missing the top 5mm of shock travel. I know that running an air shock in such a way that you never get to full top-out could be bad for the negative spring, but this shock shouldn't have that problem...right?

After finally installing the shock, I went for a 2-hour ride at Galbraith that was mostly defined by small- to medium-sized jumps (e.g. Mullet, SST). I'm pretty light--maybe 150lbs kitted up--but an hour into the ride, by BB/linkage area was covered with oil, the compression knob was stuck, and there was a sticky or notchy sensation about 40% into the shock's travel. The road section at the end of the ride included the most pedal bob I've ever experienced. Question #3: did I blow up the compression circuit, and more importantly, how (if at all) is that related to the damper's "air spring" feeling (Question #1) and me running the shock such that it stops short of full extension by ~5mm (Question #2)?

This shock had previously been to Fox twice with the same symptoms I am now experiencing, so I'm not too surprised it exploded on the first ride back from service. Given that it was quite the ordeal to get it on the bike (especially installing the damn offset hardware in new bushings), and that it still feels much better than the Monarch Plus I had on there previously, I'm inclined to keep riding it for a while.

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 11:01 Quote
noone1223 wrote:
Only real thing with vises, is that it should not be one that has a swivel base. While yes, they are handy, they have a tendency to fail at the worst times. Other than that, I'd suggest a 6 inch, but a four inch is adequate imo.

Great, 6 inch it is, thanks. I saw some swivel base ones but will stick with fixed. Simple is better sometimes

Cheers


tremeer023 wrote:
Hello Mechanic Lounge.
I'm just finishing converting my garage to a workshop and am about to order a new bench (will be about 2m long and 75mm deep). Exciting times as it is almost ready - I need to put down some workshop pvc flooring as it floods a bit in the corners and at the sides (sloping site so it's half buried).

My question is, can anyone recommend a good bench vice for general bike maintenance and repairs? I'll have a bike stand too so the vice will be more for smaller components. Will a 4 inch be enough or is it worth getting a 6 or 8 inch? What do people use in bike shops?

Thank you for taking the time to read and any replies are appreciated.
Gavin

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 11:02 Quote
bishopsmike wrote:
tremeer023 wrote:
Hello Mechanic Lounge.
I'm just finishing converting my garage to a workshop and am about to order a new bench (will be about 2m long and 75mm deep). Exciting times as it is almost ready - I need to put down some workshop pvc flooring as it floods a bit in the corners and at the sides (sloping site so it's half buried).

My question is, can anyone recommend a good bench vice for general bike maintenance and repairs? I'll have a bike stand too so the vice will be more for smaller components. Will a 4 inch be enough or is it worth getting a 6 or 8 inch? What do people use in bike shops?

Thank you for taking the time to read and any replies are appreciated.
Gavin


I'd also suggest a bench more than 75mm deep... unless it's a bench for ants?Big Grin

Ha, *cm. Those ants can stay away from my bench.

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 11:29 Quote
toddball wrote:
I tried out a friend's coil shock (Marzocchi Bomber CR) that had just come back from service at Fox on Saturday. It's 210x55mm, whereas the bike it's on (Canfield Riot) takes 200x57mm. I understand there could be issues with top-out clearance and changing geometry with a longer eye-to-eye shock, but I figured it would probably work pretty well with the offset hardware I used. Certainly I hoped it would work better than the Monarch Plus that my LBS "rebuilt" but still sounded terrible and leaked oil.

The first interesting thing with the Bomber CR was that it was very difficult to compress with the spring unloaded (i.e. the preload collar backed off so the spring could rattle around). It would extend back to full extension quickly, as if there were air being compressed inside the damper unit. Question #1: if you remove the coil from a coil shock, should you be able to compress the damper by hand, and will the damper stay in that compressed position, or rebound to full extension?

The next point is that, after considerable difficulty, my friend and I managed to install the shock on my bike by installing the rear shock bolt, compressing the damper (NOT the 500lb spring) and holding it so it didn't extend itself, and installing the front shock bolt. The offset hardware did not quite make up for the extra eye-to-eye length of the shock, hence the need to compress it slightly to install it. Question #2: is it bad to ride a coil shock (in particular, a Marz Bomber CR) without letting it ever reach full extension? I just measured the eye-to-eye length of the shock as installed, and it's about 205mm, so I'm missing the top 5mm of shock travel. I know that running an air shock in such a way that you never get to full top-out could be bad for the negative spring, but this shock shouldn't have that problem...right?

After finally installing the shock, I went for a 2-hour ride at Galbraith that was mostly defined by small- to medium-sized jumps (e.g. Mullet, SST). I'm pretty light--maybe 150lbs kitted up--but an hour into the ride, by BB/linkage area was covered with oil, the compression knob was stuck, and there was a sticky or notchy sensation about 40% into the shock's travel. The road section at the end of the ride included the most pedal bob I've ever experienced. Question #3: did I blow up the compression circuit, and more importantly, how (if at all) is that related to the damper's "air spring" feeling (Question #1) and me running the shock such that it stops short of full extension by ~5mm (Question #2)?

This shock had previously been to Fox twice with the same symptoms I am now experiencing, so I'm not too surprised it exploded on the first ride back from service. Given that it was quite the ordeal to get it on the bike (especially installing the damn offset hardware in new bushings), and that it still feels much better than the Monarch Plus I had on there previously, I'm inclined to keep riding it for a while.

There are many different things wrong here. But I will answer your questions in order.

Question #1: if you remove the coil from a coil shock, should you be able to compress the damper by hand, and will the damper stay in that compressed position, or rebound to full extension?

With the shock off the bike, and no spring fitted to the shock, you should be able to compress it by hand. There will be a reasonable amount of resistance though, and it will re-extend by itself when released. With the rebound wound to minimum, it wil take (very rough guesses here) 1-2 seconds to fully extend. With the rebound set to maximum it will take much longer to extend, or even not extend at all.

Question #2: is it bad to ride a coil shock (in particular, a Marz Bomber CR) without letting it ever reach full extension?

Technically no. The shock doesn't care if it never reaches full extension. HOWEVER if the shock can't reach full extension, then something must be stopping it from extending. Most likely your swingarm or rocker link is hitting some other part of the frame. It probably makes quite a loud clanking noise when it does this too. This is really really bad. You are absolutely going to break your bike if you continue. I can't advise you strongly enough that you should absolutely take the shock off your bike immediately.

Question #3: did I blow up the compression circuit, and more importantly, how (if at all) is that related to the damper's "air spring" feeling (Question #1) and me running the shock such that it stops short of full extension by ~5mm (Question #2)?

You have blown the shock up. I'm now thinking the thing that was stopping the shock from fully extending was the compression knob impacting some part of the frame at some point in the stroke. Basically you now owe your buddy a new shock.

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 13:15 Quote
tannerzinck wrote:
Shamu7 wrote:
Hi,

This is my first ever post so apologies if it's in the wrong place. I'm carrying out what I now realise is long-overdue maintenance on my SR Suntour Raidon Forks (SF16-RAIDON-XC-DS-LO-R-15QLC32-CTS-29). When stripping them down, I was surprised to find fragments of what looked like very thin metal strips/shims (that would have been circular if they'd been whole) inside the Bottom Case Assembly.

I looked at exploded diagrams of the forks and bought Dust Seals and Oil Wipers in order to rebuild the forks. I put them back together, soaking the Oil Wipers in suspension oil and lightly lubricating everything with SRAM butter where necessary. Once reassembled, I was disappointed to find that there's a slight amount of play in the forks - between the Upper Assembly (gold coloured stanchions) and the Bottom Case Assembly. This seems to be because the only contact between the upper and lower components is at the top of the fork, where the Dust Seals and Wipers are located (apart from the fixing bolts at the bottom of the forks). This got me wondering whether the 'shims' that came out of the Bottom Case Assembly were some sort of additional guide that may have been preventing this play...? About halfway down the inside of each leg of the Bottom Case Assembly there is what looks like a small recess that may have originally held some sort of shim or guide in place, but the exploded diagrams don't appear to indicate that anything should be located here.

So the question is (finally) - Can anyone tell me what these thin metal fragments may have been, if there may have been some sort of additional guide in the Bottom Case Assembly, for example? Or, alternatively I guess, does it matter if there is a very slight amount of play between the Upper and Lower Assemblies? I know these are only reasonably low-end forks, so wonder if this might be expected compared to really high-end forks.

Sorry for the length of the post but wanted to try to include enough detail. Any help anyone can give will be very much appreciated.

Do you have any pictures? It kind of sounds like those thin metal strips used to be the bushings that are pressed into the lowers for the uppers to slide through

Thanks for the reply. No, unfortunately I don't have any pictures. What you say would make sense to me. Sounds pretty terminal... Would you agree?

O+
Posted: May 17, 2021 at 13:18 Quote
gabriel-mission9 wrote:

There are many different things wrong here. But I will answer your questions in order.

Question #1: if you remove the coil from a coil shock, should you be able to compress the damper by hand, and will the damper stay in that compressed position, or rebound to full extension?

With the shock off the bike, and no spring fitted to the shock, you should be able to compress it by hand. There will be a reasonable amount of resistance though, and it will re-extend by itself when released. With the rebound wound to minimum, it wil take (very rough guesses here) 1-2 seconds to fully extend. With the rebound set to maximum it will take much longer to extend, or even not extend at all.

Question #2: is it bad to ride a coil shock (in particular, a Marz Bomber CR) without letting it ever reach full extension?

Technically no. The shock doesn't care if it never reaches full extension. HOWEVER if the shock can't reach full extension, then something must be stopping it from extending. Most likely your swingarm or rocker link is hitting some other part of the frame. It probably makes quite a loud clanking noise when it does this too. This is really really bad. You are absolutely going to break your bike if you continue. I can't advise you strongly enough that you should absolutely take the shock off your bike immediately.

Question #3: did I blow up the compression circuit, and more importantly, how (if at all) is that related to the damper's "air spring" feeling (Question #1) and me running the shock such that it stops short of full extension by ~5mm (Question #2)?

You have blown the shock up. I'm now thinking the thing that was stopping the shock from fully extending was the compression knob impacting some part of the frame at some point in the stroke. Basically you now owe your buddy a new shock.

Thanks for the reply. A few quick itemized responses:

#1: It sounds to me like the damper was behaving normally, except it was very difficult to compress by hand when it was off the bike. I'm pretty confident I wound the compression dial all the way open before attempting to compress it by hand, but the symptoms were consistent with heavy compression damping and middling rebound damping.

#2: I didn't notice any top-out clank when riding, but it's definitely there. I checked the position of the linkage before riding and was surprised that I couldn't find any unwanted points of contact between frame triangles and/or links, but I just found one: the drive-side chainstay hits part of the bashguard at top-out now Eek . I'm going to remove the bashguard and see what the next point of contact is, will most likely be the lower link onto the BB shell or the shock eyelet onto the seat tube.

#3: The one part of this scenario I'm confident in is that the shock is not contacting parts of the frame during any part of the stroke. Here's a photo of the shock installed on the bike:

210x55mm Marzocchi Bomber CR installed on Riot. Shock is partially compressed so measures 205x50mm.

So, I don't really understand how I managed to blow up this shock. My friend previously blew it up twice (mounted to a Stumpjumper Evo) and had it warrantied, and he joked that I would blow it up on this ride. Just disappointed that I actually managed to do it so quickly. I have previously had serious issues with linkage play on this frame, which most likely caused the demise of my Monarch Plus, but I swapped the linkage bearings right before putting on the Bomber CR and could not feel any linkage play then (or now).

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 13:19 Quote
mtbman1980 wrote:
That would be my guess as well from the description. Are you the original owner and how old is the fork because it could be a warranty issue.

Thanks for your help. Yeah, I am the original owner. I do feel as though it's my fault more than a warranty issue because it was only after looking online quite recently that I realised quite how often forks need maintenance. I've had the bike about 3-4 years and I've ridden it a lot in all sorts of weather on mainly red trails so they have taken a bit of a beating.

O+
Posted: May 17, 2021 at 14:39 Quote
Shamu7 wrote:
mtbman1980 wrote:
That would be my guess as well from the description. Are you the original owner and how old is the fork because it could be a warranty issue.

Thanks for your help. Yeah, I am the original owner. I do feel as though it's my fault more than a warranty issue because it was only after looking online quite recently that I realised quite how often forks need maintenance. I've had the bike about 3-4 years and I've ridden it a lot in all sorts of weather on mainly red trails so they have taken a bit of a beating.

Yeah if it's 3-4 years without service your fork is probably toast

edit- you could send them in for service and new bushings might be able to be fitted as long as there is not other damage that makes it worthwhile to purchase a new fork.

Posted: May 17, 2021 at 18:52 Quote
My oneup v2 dropper has all off a sudden started going up without me doing anything. Yes I did everything with the barrel adjuster to where the cable was super tight and super loose, nothing helped. Any ideas about what's going on? Maybe bad cable housing?(looks clean though and no kinks). Please don't tell me I need a new cartridge ):

Thanks


 


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