Revelation Fork Fault?

[Mikerb]

Looking for some advise re the fork on my Levo Comp. The shop set my sag. I took a first short ride and thought I would check it.....lots of mid stroke support but also firm overall. I checked the air pressure....virtually nothing! I gave the fork some good cycling with rebound fuuly off...rechecked...same. I expelled all the air through the valve and the sag is the same...barely 20%. Anything I can do or is it faulty?

 

[muzzman1]

1st make sure you've completely dumped the air out of the spring. Then re-pressurize it:
The only thing I can come up with is your negative chamber is pressurized?

Try this:

 

[outerlimits]

If your negative chamber is holding onto pressure it will suck the fork down into its travel at rest. You will see this as only say 130mm of your fork stantion will be visable rather than 150mm.
If you are loosing air into the lowers it could make it harsher if you add the air lost into the positive chamber. Poke a zip tie into the fork seal and see if it burps air.
Also check with soapy water the valve, around the cap, and where the stantion is press fitted into the csu.

 

[Mikerb]

Ok thanks. I will try that today.

 

[Mikerb]

"Burping" it did the trick thanks a lot. Quite a bit air came out the seal on the air stancion. It is now pressurised to 80 psi with 30% sag....spot on.

 

[outerlimits]

"Burping" it did the trick thanks a lot. Quite a bit air came out the seal on the air stancion. It is now pressurised to 80 psi with 30% sag....spot on.

You will have the negative chamber leaking into the lowers then. You will need to service the fork with all new seals to fix the problem.
Freshly service forks feel mint ?

 

[Mikerb]

Yep I appreciate it should not happen so there is a fault but my lbs is now aware I have a fault and I am happy to run with a temporay fix until it goes in for its first free service.

 

[Mikerb]

As an update, I have ridden the bike several times now and the fork has continued to work well. Today whilst cleaning the bike I pushed a zip tie past the seal just to check no air escaped....nothing, and the fork has retained its pressure and sag as set. It does make me wonder if prolonged periods of non use after initial build whilst the bike sits in a LBS, allow the seals to dry out and it takes some working of the suspension to get everything inside working as it should.

 

[outerlimits]

As an update, I have ridden the bike several times now and the fork has continued to work well. Today whilst cleaning the bike I pushed a zip tie past the seal just to check no air escaped....nothing, and the fork has retained its pressure and sag as set. It does make me wonder if prolonged periods of non use after initial build whilst the bike sits in a LBS, allow the seals to dry out and it takes some working of the suspension to get everything inside working as it should.

So it just come good of it’s own accord ?
If so, it could of just had a bit of crap in there causing it to leak air past the seal. It’s got to hold onto 80psi so that’s a fair bit of pressure.

 

[Mikerb]

Yes......all I have done is burped it, and completely removed all the air and collapsing the fork. Then re-pressurising it and setting the sag. As you say, could have been a bit of crap....or maybe just dried up seals though being stood unused for a while.

 

[DTZ]

There is a known "manufacturing" fault with some of the new Rockshox forks (Revelations / PIke). Apparently they are using too much grease in the air side when they are built and an air transfer port gets blocked which causes two issues.....

1) The fork never fully returns to full extension, even off the bike it remains at 5-15% sag after compressing and releasing
2) If the air is removed the fork sucks down and is hard to extend.

There are a few things that can be tried to release this......

1) Remove the air and manually extend / compress the fork quite aggressively a few times
2) Inflate the fork to its max pressure and compress it forcefully (eg Lift the front end of the bike and slam it down a few times)
3) Take it for a hard ride to try and release the blockage
4) Burping them also work, but it doesn't fix the actual issue of the blocked port

I took mine back to a dealer and they told me that if the above didn't work they were able to fix in-house by taking the fork apart and rebuilding the air spring after cleaning out the excess grease. However mine had a secondary problem as well which means they have been sent back to Rockshox - total turnaround time from Rockshox is apparently 3 days, but add on postage at each side + weekends it's more likely to be around 8-10 days.

 

[Mikerb]

Interesting......I actually did most of the above and as I reported it has worked fine since. Thanks for the info

 

[DTZ]

Interesting......I actually did most of the above and as I reported it has worked fine since. Thanks for the info

I tried all of the potential fixes on mine and the problem remained.

However the secondary problem on mine was that the compression dial on the other leg made absolutely no difference to the compression at all. Apparently another relatively well known fault but because mine had both issues, effectively a fault in each leg they have been sent off to Rockshox for a warranty repair. Luckily I have some spare forks I have been able to use.

 

[DTZ]

I thought I'd update this thread.......

My Revelations were returned from a Rockshox warranty repair with a replaced air shaft. This fixed the problem where teh forks always had 10-15% sag even under their own weight (no bike) and the suck down issues, but nothing had been done to fix the compression adjuster which did nothing.

They were sent back to Rockshox again, and a few days later I got a telephone call from the shop to tell me that Rockshox had sent me a brand new pair of forks.

I went into the shop to have them fitted and had a nice bonus, My revelations had been replaced by a pair of 2020 Pike Selects. Can't beat a free upgrade to a better fork and I'm very happy.