Rock Shox Rebuild

I'm not the most mechanically inclined person, but I manage. Over the past few years, I've taught myself a lot about bicycle maintenance. I built my own bike from the ground up. I've figured out the basics of hub bodies and pawls, bottom brackets, derailleur adjusting and such. So when it was time (actually much overdue) to rebuild my fork, I figured I could manage that too. I couldn't justify a new fork, and to be honest, I'm really happy with the fork I have -- a Rock Shox Duke SL. It's done a great job of eating bumps and never bottoming out and it's light and relatively stiff. I really have no complaints.

To be honest, I was more than a little nervous about taking the thing all to pieces and tryin got put it together again. I had Humpty Dumpty visions of my fork never going back together again or not functioning the way it should afterward. When I got the rebuild kit in the mail, that didn't help my nerves any. There were at least forty little O-rings and other small rubber and plastic parts. None were labeled, although they were divided into bags with various lables. Most of those lables were for features that I knew I did not have on my fork. Turns out, RS ships sort of a generic rebuild kit and lets you sort out what you need and what you don't.

So I open it up and pour out the oil -- foamy. Not necessarily a bad thing, considering I knew the seals were shot. Foamy translates to air in the oil. Other funny colors might mean water, which could mean rust inside. I took my time cleaning everything with degreaser and rinsing with alcohol then blowing dry wtih compressed air. Not as bad a job as I thought. She cleaned up nicely and I found very few signs of wear with the exception of a mangled O-ring that came out when I drained the oil.

I had more Humpty visions when I started to put it back together. With all the O-rings removed and everything cleaned, I realized that the instructions I downloaded from RS did not really match what I saw inside the fork. I was able to compare the new rings against the old and figure it out. The only real hiccup was putting the damper in the wrong leg, which I figured out pretty quickly.

Sporting new seals and O-rings, the fork feels like new. Now if I could only remember how to adjust it.