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Lefty oil leak
Having only returned back to riding after a 4 month layoff.
Noticed the lefty air was all but gone and my front brakes non effective.
Then saw the boot cover covered in grease.
Pulled the boot down to see runny residual oil everywhere.
Read it could be the oil cartridge not being sealed properly.
Cleaned it all up and put some air back in but I worry if I continue to ride it, I may end up with a blow out.
it had only been serviced a few months before by a city LBS.
Any opinions on this?
Should it be the LBS responsibility for sealing it properly or a natural occurrence after the bike sitting idle for so many months?
Bearing it in mind that although I never looked. Riding it after the service, it seemed to be fine.
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It will be the seal inside the fork that seals the oil damping circuit leaking. My Lefty did the same thing after sitting unused for a long period. Is a pretty common occurrence. The original factory seal is a plain old round seal and often leaks with age. The replacement seal that everyone uses is a quad seal. It is not round in profile but more of an x shape with four sealing surfaces instead of two. If your LBS serviced your fork properly, they would have replaced all of the seals and put the quad seal in. Did your LBS send the fork away or service it themselves. The Lefty is a fairly complex unit to service and nearly all bike shops will send the fork to RLC in Brisbane, or back to Canondale Australia to get serviced. After the quad seal is put into the fork, the chances of the fork leaking again are greatly reduced.
I'm almost certain they did it in-house as they are the few that services the Lefty. It was the CBD guys.
They did charge me a dime for it. The service cost me in the vicinity of $200+ just for the fork.
So for that price, i expected it to go to Brissy. Guessing they didnt.
To be honest, the fork didnt feel all that differently after the service.
Thanks for the info!
No disrespect intended to the service team at CBD, but I prefer to use RLC Sport in Queensland. Aiden really knows his stuff, he's a Lefty specialist.
He did a great job on the 110mm fork on my 2006 hardtail, replacing the damper with a 2012 model and trading in the old one for not a whole lot more than the service fee for fixing the blown lockout.
Doubt any of the LBS crews who do it in-house would have thought of that solution to resolving the issue of blowing the lockout. I use that bike as my commuter and have a bad habit of forgetting to release the lockout after climbs, and hitting potholes with a 100psi slick-tyred Road wheelset doesn't do the lockout a whole lot of good. 2012 damper has a blowoff valve - problem solved.
That too is a bad habit I continually kept on forgetting to release the lockout, whenever I bombed down the hill after the climb.
Not sure if it compounded to the issue of the oil leaking now after sitting idle for so long.
Such a pain with the grease getting into the brake pads and rotors now too.
May just check RLC out...
Thanks for the heads up!
Didnt realise it was such a mission to get the fork off to send it up to Aiden...
Anybody have the KT020 tool handy or an easier way of removing the fork?
I'm in Mosman if you can't find anyone closer with one?