fork seal 'popped'

m00nbadger

hi guys

Was out on the weekend, did around 20 odd miles round sherwood pines. Next day I had a little tootle about on it on the roads, nothing major, and noticed that the left hand for seal had popped off. by popped I mean its had slid up the stantion and is no longer secured in place. this happened possibly at the same time I was manually pumping the forks riding round and could tell the fork pressure had considerably reduced. was able to manually 'force' it back, but of course I nursed it home and haven't ridden it since

my thinking here is that hopefully a service and new seals etc should be fine, but just concerning this has happened out of the blue.

Forks are a couple of years old, and I've never serviced them (yes I know, very poor form there). Forks have seen maybe 750 miles usage of road/off road usage in that time. bike has sat for about 3 months before getting a good ride too, so not sure if that's hastened something like this happening? fork is a rockshox reba solo air 100mm travel from 2014

Just looking for some reassurance and/or advice that this can happen, and a service is hopefully enough to remedy the issue

Thanks

02gf74

Strange. The seals I've seen are metal and covered with plastic so are pretty firm making it a devil to remove.

In theory you should be able to tap it down, may be take forks apart to see what is going on inside and do a service, replacing the seals at the same time.

The Rookie

It happens, and for a number of reasons.

Most common is if they are single air forks and the main seal leaks a bit, through the lower part of the stanchion and the pressure pushes it out.

A big hit pushes the stanchion down and that can create enough pressure in the lower to pop it out as well.

You can tap it back in, but best to schedule a lower leg service soon and replace them