just saw this post after commenting on the other one!
iirc cannondale didn't want the consumer taking the forks appart and hinted at shops not to sell those tools, the main reason i think was to stop the armchair engineer type person stripping the forks and then walking back in to the shop with their head hanging and a bag of mixed up bits! i have seen it myself. huge labour bill on that one!
i'm not saying you can't do it but i would say it's a hard job (especially if you haven't got the correct tools) and it can become abit of a jigsaw puzzle with no picture to go from. the most common problem was people not realising what is inside the fork leg, the inner slats, outer slats and the sliding bearings, also not realising that the slats are individually sized for each fork meaning it is very important to get them back in the correct order or replace with the same width slats.
my advice would be chuck it at a good recommended cannondale dealer and just pay the bill. gary used to take 4 hours start to finish doing them assuming no major problems and that was with experience doing them, so ask yourself the questions:-
can i get the tools easily? not really
how much are they gonna cost me? probably alot knowing cannondale!
have i got the parts readily available for when i find broken stuff inside? no, coz you have to strip to know what you need
can i actually do the work? possibly?
in all the frustation will i end up throwing the whole thing across the garage floor? definately!!
(no offence intended if you do know what you're doing!)
last but not least, how long can i do without the bike? ordering parts from cannondale takes atleast 2 weeks if the shop orders straight away. so 2 weeks for the tools, then you strip it, then 2 weeks for the parts and then rebuilding including frustration time = throw it in the bin an buy something else!
a cannondale dealer will post the cartridge and electrics back to the netherlands at a retail of approx £150ish all in serviced, the dealer should beable to do the fork leg itself for around under a £100, so £250ish all in doesn't sound too bad to me really, it's just the price of maintaing a very specific and quite complicated suspension unit. and remember that the ELO carbon lefty was over a grand a fork if memory serves so the parts were always going to be expensive.
i hope that hasn't depressed you! i think you need to weigh up the cost versus hassle issue!
i'd pay the bill and let someonelse have the hassle and get my bike back quicker.
