{"id":4509,"date":"2012-10-09T00:18:56","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T04:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/?p=4509"},"modified":"2012-10-09T01:29:51","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T05:29:51","slug":"fox-f29-rlc-seal-and-oil-replacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2012\/10\/09\/fox-f29-rlc-seal-and-oil-replacement\/","title":{"rendered":"FOX F29 RLC Seal and Oil Replacement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><\/p>\n<table cellpadding=1>\n<tr>\n<td bgcolor=\"black\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/gallery\/v\/acquired_stuff\/titus_racer_x_29er\/IMG_7100.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/gallery\/d\/102580-2\/IMG_7100.jpg\" height=427 width=640 border=0 title=\"Reassembled FOX F29 RLC fork with very clean controls and SKF low friction wipers \/ seals.\"><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Today I did my first seal and oil replacement on a FOX fork. I&#8217;d watched Erik do his before, but it was a few years back so I didn&#8217;t remember much about the process. While I took my time this was easier than I&#8217;d expected, and almost everything went smoothly.<\/p>\n<p>To do this work I&#8217;d purchased a bottle of 10 weight (Green) Suspension Fluid, a SKF low friction seal kit, 5mL packet of Float Fluid, and a seal driver tool to help seat the seals. I&#8217;d also picked up <a href=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2012\/10\/08\/graduated-cylinders-for-oil-measurement\/\">some graduated cylinders<\/a> for measuring the oil, and a friend made me <a href=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2012\/09\/21\/custom-26mm-fox-32mm-fork-top-cap-socket\/\">a very nice tool for removing the top caps<\/a>. These parts all worked out very well, and following FOX&#8217;s documentation for <a href=\"http:\/\/service.foxracingshox.com\/consumers\/Content\/Service\/Forks\/F-Series\/F29erRLC_RL.htm\">seal and oil replacement<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/service.foxracingshox.com\/consumers\/Content\/Service\/oil_volumes.htm\">oil volumes<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/service.foxracingshox.com\/consumers\/Content\/Service\/QuickTech\/SKFsealtoolsInstall.htm\">use of the seal driver<\/a> I had no problems getting everything together.<\/p>\n<p>The greatest difficulty was removing the old seals, but a little persistance on the first one paid off, and then using this as a model I was able to get the second out much more easily. There were a few small things learned that&#8217;ll make the work easier next time, including:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&middot; The foam rings take very little time to soak up oil when pre-soaking them.<br \/>\n&middot; Once the damper is in place, there&#8217;s not much room below the damper cap for adding oil unless air is let out of the spring side to collapse the fork. After this there&#8217;s a plenty large space to pour in the oil.<br \/>\n&middot; Tilting the fork while adding oil to the damper side makes things slightly easier.<br \/>\n&middot; The nuts on the bottom of each fork leg are identical.<br \/>\n&middot; Crush washers stick solidly to the nuts on the fork legs and blend in. The replacement ones, before being crushed, fit much more easily.<br \/>\n&middot; Suspension oil tends to get all over the place. Even with wiping the entire fork down there is still an oily residue which leaves a nice sheen, especially if the fork is a bit weathered and becoming matte.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I received this fork when I purchased this bike in December of 2009. Since that time I&#8217;d put around 5000 miles on the bike, but never rebuilt the fork nor replaced the oil. While I&#8217;d been particular about keeping the stanchions clean I was not shy about riding it in poor conditions. FOX <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ridefox.com\/service.php?m=bike&#038;ref=shsidebar#service\">recommends changing the oil every 30 hours on forks<\/a>. I definitely exceeded this, yet the oil in the fork was still quite clear, the foam rings mostly clean and oil-saturated, the stanchions unmarred, and there was still a fair amount of oil in the various chambers. The only way the stanchions look not-new is some fading on the portion which was exposed to sunlight. <a href=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/gallery\/v\/acquired_stuff\/titus_racer_x_29er\/IMG_7098.jpg.html\">Here<\/a> is a photo of the disassembled uppers and lowers showing nothing more than a slight bit of fading.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully after the work I&#8217;ve done the fork continues to work as reliably as it had for these past years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I did my first seal and oil replacement on a FOX fork. I&#8217;d watched Erik do his before, but it was a few years&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2012\/10\/09\/fox-f29-rlc-seal-and-oil-replacement\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">FOX F29 RLC Seal and Oil Replacement<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-making-things","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4509"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4513,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509\/revisions\/4513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}