The trouble with having a nice Mountain Bike is that it takes a lot of looking after. Not only that, but if you have nice components on it then when they wear out you want to replace them with bits and pieces that are at least equal if not better than the originals and that gets expensive.
Recently my Commencal Meta 5.5.1 has had its rear wheel rebuilt after I snapped 3 spokes, so I’m now thinking of getting a brand new wheel for it as well. The bottom bracket wore out so I replaced it with a nice shiny Chris King bottom bracket, the best money can buy apparently. I did a wiper seal maintenance on the forks and rear shock and replaced the bushes on the shock, but now there is some wear on the bearings within the suspension linkage so it’s in having a new bearing set fitted.
What’s more, the chain is pretty worn so needs replacing and no doubt that means at least one of the chainrings and possibly the cassette needs replacing too.
The welsh mud and grit and rain and various bits of forest all take their toll on our hi-tech full suspension Mountain Bikes. I’m sure they used to last longer than this!
I’ve been quite pleased with my Mountain Bike maintenance skills lately. I took the rear hub apart on my Commencal Meta 5.5 the other day and gave it a good clean and re-grease and last week it was time to service the air can and check the seals on my rear shock.
£50 worth of bits and bobs!
Jon wanted to do the same so we bought all of the relevant bits and pieces and decided to do it together. I can’t believe I spent over £50 on a collection of washers and seals, but thought as it was the first time I was doing it and the shock was still under warranty that I had better do it the right way with all the right bits and pieces. In the future I’m sure many of the bits, especially things like the bushes could be obtained at a fraction of the cost.
I’ve got a Fox Float RP2 on my bike and Jon has a Fox Float RP23 on his so they are a little different but the procedure was the same for both.
1. Let all of the air out of the shock.
2. Remove lower end of the shock from the bike. We had a bit of problem with this on my bike but once we worked out how the rocker system was put together it was easy.
3. Crack open the air can.
4. Remove the shock from the bike.
5. Clean and re-lube everything.
6. Add Fox Float Fluid.
7. Reattach to bike
Bush Removal Tool
Jon followed this, but I had a bit of play in the lower bush, so I added an extra step of replacing the bush using a little bush removal tool to remove it and replace the bush and the reducers with new ones. That all went well too and the little tool I’d bought from eBay made it really easy to do.
I then added the correct amount of Fox Fluid to the chamber and reattached it to my bike. Jon had a little bit of trouble re-attaching his, but I won’t embarrass him with the details. Once I took a look and spotted his mistake it was as easy as could be.
We then checked it all and got out and rode! Well, actually it was quite late by now so we didn’t, but I have since been for a ride and all seems fine. I can’t feel much difference other than the fact that there is now no play in the lower bush, but I’m sure servicing the shock regularly will prolong its life and the life of the various seals and washers. The fact that I can’t really feel any difference in the shock itself probably means that I serviced it at the right time, before it started having any degradation in its functionality.
We’ve now ordered some suspension fluid and expect to be doing the same for our forks later in the week.
If this is a task you’ve been thinking of doing but have been putting off, then just do it, it’s actually a lot easier than it looks and you need very few tools to do it.
