Motorbike fork oil?

[bertberr]

Funnily enough I bought some 5WT this afternoon, however, after looking at a 1 litre bottle on CRC for £13.99, I popped in to the local motorbike shop and got myself some Motul non foaming / synthetic etc etc, exactly the same stuff as CRC were selling, for £7.99 (one litre).

Got to be the way to go

 

[FMJ]

hope replacing the seals will fix the slow air leakage i seem to be having.

Like they say, hope springs eternal............

In the meantime, learn to change the oil in the shock. It's a very basic shock, and not that hard to do. New seals or not, there is no cure for AMPhysema. There's too much torsional flex on the shock shaft from the strut, and the oil migrates past even new seals as it twists. It only takes a very small amount of air in the shock to make it start wheezing. Usually a matter of hours of riding and it returns. The trick is to purge all the air when you're assembling it. That's one of the benefits of Dextron. You can pour a litre of it in a coffee can and cycle the shock through it's travel and re-assemble it while it's submerged in fluid. Stratos calls the method burping.

 

[RockiMtn]

Ughhh… so far i've only been able to find 10wt locally. I've read around and seems ATF is used as substitute quite frequently. How does one find out the weight for those? And should I be concerned with foaming if using ATF?

 

[mikeekim89]

i wouldn't reccomend ATF personally, it can be a bitch, just IMO

 

[FMJ]

ATF is 7wt. It doesn't foam in trannys. It wont foam in your shock. I used to use it in Maico forks when I raced MX BITD.

If you're really set on using fork oil, Maxima makes a 7.5 wt., or you can mix 10 and 5 wt. (of the same brand <--- important) to custom blend any wt. between 5 and 10.

*EDIT*

Don't use Bel-Ray. It has seal sweller additives. Ok for 230 lb. motorcycles. Not so good for 25 lb. bicycles.

 

[FluffyChicken]

As in PM.

The 50cc of 7.5 wt oil goes in the top (inside the stanchion) and is as far as I can tell (from not looking to hard) the damping fluid.
7cc of same oil goes in the bottom (so inside the lower legs) to lube the stanchions and piston rod thing and will help keep the air in a bit

Honestly just spend the pennies and get half a litre (500cc aka ml) only £6 or so, so whatever near you and it'll last for ages.
You'll need the fork grease as well to grease everything up, seals especially.

'Shell' is Marzocchis oil.

Absolutely no idea for rear shox's though

 

[Pist0la]

while we're on the subject of fork oil, would anyone happen to know if you REALLY need to use a different weight of oil in each fork leg on some 99/00 Boxxers??

the manual says...

Install 10 wt. oil into the left upper tube and 15 wt. oil into the right upper tube

i guess one is compression dampening and one is rebound dampening?

im not a mad DH-er, just the odd fast blast, so is it worth "forking out" (lol, get it) big bux on 2 different oils...+ new seals...its a little out of my price range at the moment, so im trying to keep spending to a low..

any help would rock my world...

 

[drystonepaul]

Different oil weights will effect damping speed. That is to say that a heavier oil, let's say 10 wt as opposed to 7.5 wt, will be 'thicker' and will make damping, whether compression or rebound, a bit slower.

 

[Pist0la]

i take it thats how you would make adjustments for you weight? on the earlier Boxxers, there does not seem to be a adjustment knob of any kind, you must have to do it internally?

 

[RockiMtn]

Honestly just spend the pennies and get half a litre (500cc aka ml) only £6 or so, so whatever near you and it'll last for ages.
You'll need the fork grease as well to grease everything up, seals especially.

i'd take anything right now if it was the right weight. i don't have a near by LBS, so I was hoping to save some travel time as well as some money.