Bike repair: Fork and brakes

Today was a crappy weather day, cold and rainy all day. Usually my seven year old son and I go for a 15k ride every Sunday. I take it easy and he rides his little butt off! He is amazing. He wants to go a little farther every week. Someday when he is older (I think he said 12) he wants to do the squeezer race with me.

Well today I decided to change the brake pads, since I've been killing the brakes with all of that mud, especially yesterday. I also was getting the feeling that I was losing the back brakes in a real hurry.

Never did this before, so today I figured out a good method of tightening the pads right to the rim with the adjustment on the lever all the way out. As soon as I was done with tightening the cable, I returned the lever adjustment back, and it was just the right distance from the rim for good braking/no interference.

I also learned how to tension the two arms so that both sides go back and forth to and from the rim the same way, using the screws that tension the springs.

I was trying out the brakes when I noticed that the front suspension was really stiff. I decided that since I bought my new bike, I wasn't going to get a new fork for the old one. I also figured that since I was getting the new bike, and just in case I really messed up the forks by ruining them in taking them apart, I had nothing to lose but time, trying to remedy the problem while using my new bike.

So I decided to take apart the fork (cheap RST Omni 191 CL?) and learn about the innards of it. After removing the front wheel, I removed two screws from the bottom and was able to pull it off (also removing the wheel sensor wire and the brake cable). Man what a mess in there. rusty crap all over the place, and a bit of dirty water too. I cleaned all of that off with rags, a steel brush, and some steel wool. The upper part of the fork had some black stuff on it (on the chrome) that I thought at first was chrome rubbed off, but to my delight it came off with some oil (and elbow grease) via a steel wool pad. I wasn't sure about how much grease to use, so I packed it full, figuring excess would seep out into the upper part of the fork, which it did.

I reassembled the whole thing and pushed down on the fork before putting the wheel on. The fork moved easily, whereas before it wouldn't budge. I continued to reassemble and then went for a test drive down the street. Well I couldn't believe the difference. I should have done this long ago.

Sometimes you gotta fool around a bit to learn something.