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Leaking Fork Seal

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What are common reasons why a fork seal may leak?

OEM seals installed professionally in March by the great S101. Approx 800 off road miles on them since. Bike is transported with forks compressed on Joe Hauler. First picture is from 20 miles into the ride then 100 miles later - easy fire road.

Is this an Immediate Need fix or could I sneak another ride on it?  Is it standard to get both replaced together with fresh fluid during repair?

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Tim what up!! Long time man. Jon and I were just talking about you yesterday. 

Fwiw Since I started using one of these when strapping it down no more premature fork leaks for me:

X001-Y001.jpg

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yep tntmo has the trick. I cut a little more hook in the milk jug and it has worked 100% of the time for me. also if I bleed the air form the forks first, it seems like I get a little less oil leakage.

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Also all the usual and above checks. 1st be sure forks are properly aligned and torqued. Fork alignment is the biggest issue, that floating foot side  needs to be free before tightening. I've seen way too many home mechs get that all wrong and bind up the forks putting stress on the bushings and seals. 2nd tie down and use struts or even bleed after snugging down, then open after unloading to balance local/altitude/temp pressure, I constantly piss out and in air with my pro bleeders. 3rd us the simple cheap made for the job tool to do a scrape job. Fact is when everything is mechanically correct without 100s of wear hours, it is rare for OEM quality (SKF etc.) to simply fail without a mechanical cause.

 

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Symptoms can be

dirt in the seal

misaligned  forks

air pressure in the forks and transported with forks compressed  usually wont do this unless there are any other issues listed

worn bushings

a nick in the fork tube

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All excellent descriptions above.

Highly recommend, after next ride and it doesn't leak, pull one that leaked and replace fork oil, it's contaminated. Add either MFG suggested oil height, call your suspension shop see what they put in, or pull other fork that didn't leak measure fork oil height and match both fork legs to non leaked fork. If you do the latter, might as well put fresh oil in both forks, fork oil is cheap.

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Closing the loop on this - George dialed me in with new seals and fluid in a full fork service. He said the seals were shot. They work good as new now

 

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