Taking advantage of the Easter Bank holidays, and a day either side, gave me a 6 day window to do a repeat trip to Barcelona to visit my son.
On the way there my bike started to behave strangely on some of the long sweeping corners that I managed to find. Now I'm not the fastest of riders, but I do enjoy pressing on, and this was feeling a little disconcerting. Any surface irregularities would set up a "shimmy" through the bike, which it didn't do before. Also, I started to notice potholes and the like more than I used to. A quick check around the bike revealed nothing too obvious, but what was that stain at the bottom of my rear shock? Looks like oil........
I wound on some more preload, and increased the rebound half a turn, more to convince myself that I'd actually done something than anything else. The rest of the trip went without incident, but it was at the back of my mind all the time and niggling.
So......
.....last night, I broke my torx 50 undoing the rear wheel, jumped on Denise's KLX, whizzed down to Halfords and aquired new 1/2" drive T50, completed undoing rear wheel, took off silencer, undid the bottom shock mount, took off the seat, undid the top shock mount and..........
Voila! One rear shock. I suppose I should have taken a picture before I cleaned all the oily residue off the bottom mount.
This morning I dropped it off at Kais in Atherton, suspension specialists, for a service. Two seperate people have recommended them, so we'll see what they come up with.
Their shop is very nondescript from the outside, but inside there are cabinets full of very shiny gold coloured bits, from Sweden.
Mark
On the way there my bike started to behave strangely on some of the long sweeping corners that I managed to find. Now I'm not the fastest of riders, but I do enjoy pressing on, and this was feeling a little disconcerting. Any surface irregularities would set up a "shimmy" through the bike, which it didn't do before. Also, I started to notice potholes and the like more than I used to. A quick check around the bike revealed nothing too obvious, but what was that stain at the bottom of my rear shock? Looks like oil........
I wound on some more preload, and increased the rebound half a turn, more to convince myself that I'd actually done something than anything else. The rest of the trip went without incident, but it was at the back of my mind all the time and niggling.
So......
.....last night, I broke my torx 50 undoing the rear wheel, jumped on Denise's KLX, whizzed down to Halfords and aquired new 1/2" drive T50, completed undoing rear wheel, took off silencer, undid the bottom shock mount, took off the seat, undid the top shock mount and..........
Voila! One rear shock. I suppose I should have taken a picture before I cleaned all the oily residue off the bottom mount.
This morning I dropped it off at Kais in Atherton, suspension specialists, for a service. Two seperate people have recommended them, so we'll see what they come up with.
Their shop is very nondescript from the outside, but inside there are cabinets full of very shiny gold coloured bits, from Sweden.
Mark
