Common suspension fork failures

cdale1

I am currently looking at the design of a suspension fork for a mountain bike in a report for university.
I need some information on common breakages which are found on suspension forks and how/why they occur.
If you have owned a set of forks which has broken i would be grateful if you could provide me with the following information: Where (on the fork) the failure occurred, reason for the failure i.e. front end collision, a photo of the broken fork.

Thanks in advance

cooldad

One point. If this is university level, you need to be a bit more precise with your language. A breakage due to impact and a failure are not necessarily the same thing.
What are you trying to find out?

waby1234

I've got one for you;

Suntour Epicon - red rebound adjustment knob always snapping off. It's on the bottom of the fork so gets knocked.

bluechair84

Pace RC41, snapped magnesium IS caliper mount due to me letting go of the bars down Fort William... Nothing wrong with the forks, they impacted rock and cracked. I was using them, and crashing them, way beyond their design limitations.

the only picture i can find atm... but you get the idea.

Thewaylander

Most common failure i hear of on forks is worn out stansions, this is due to play in the seals and more often than not is casued by lack of servicing

King_Pin_Rich

One point. If this is university level, you need to be a bit more precise with your language. A breakage due to impact and a failure are not necessarily the same thing.

Agreed, Notwithstanding the issue of trying to differentiate between the two.

bennett_346

You might have more luck asking this on Pinkbike, the people on here are way too pussy of riders to snap forks.

cooldad

OP seems to have gone away anyway.

bluechair84

I think he predicted his number of posts with his username...

dan shard

cdale1 wrote:

I am currently looking at the design of a suspension fork for a mountain bike in a report for university.
I need some information on common breakages which are found on suspension forks and how/why they occur.
If you have owned a set of forks which has broken i would be grateful if you could provide me with the following information: Where (on the fork) the failure occurred, reason for the failure i.e. front end collision, a photo of the broken fork.

Thanks in advance

Buy a set of Rockshox Lyrics 2 step, use for for a week and youll see every possible failure mode of a set of forks

/personal experience

Petty Vagrant

Rock Shox SID Race Lite 2010

Snapped clean across the bridge of the lowers - riding single track in Essex. Nothing special!!

Sent back to Rock Shox who admitted that they should not have snapped and would replace them under warranty.

Cool!! .....Except they said that everything else on the forks need servicing/repairing/replacing and hey could do this work for £483!!!!!! Yep, over £120 more than I could by a new set for!!! Cheeky feckers!!!

Ended up buying a nice set of Fox instead. Rock Shox are not my favourite people at the mo!

Northwind

There's something wrong with my Boxxer Teams, they didn't instantly turn me into Sam Hill.

My Revs have just blown up again... TBH I think it's an underlying fault that's never been fixed, rather than a run of seperate failures. Positive air spring leaks a little, charges up the fork lowers, pops the seal out. Irritating.

dan shard

I genuinnely detest my Lyriks. Already spent a fortune replace the mission control damper which is pretty much the entire contents on the right stanction, and now the air spring is fecked so the entire contents of the left stanction. There I am happily blasting down a black descent and suddenly Im down from 160mm travel to absolute zero travel, even when its totally unweighted. I have to stop, pull the forks to seperate them and then carry on. It usually sorts itself out for a bout 10 mins and then dops again...not great when you only notice mid jump

Northwind

Is it a 2-step?

dan shard

how did you guess lol

Northwind

Rockshox finest hour. Get em warrantied or if they're out of warranty, coil time...

(I've got a practically unused 2-step spring here though if you're out fo warranty and need a cheap replacement... They're the final version so supposedly reliable but I'd run out of trust)

dan shard

Northwind wrote:

Rockshox finest hour. Get em warrantied or if they're out of warranty, coil time...

(I've got a practically unused 2-step spring here though if you're out fo warranty and need a cheap replacement... They're the final version so supposedly reliable but I'd run out of trust)

Yeah theyre out of warrenty. Can you PM me how much you want for the 2 step spring? Theyre a 2008 model so as long as it fits I might take you up on that