Fork Oil

[Guest ctMTBer]

Does anyone know how important it is to get 5wt and NOT 7.5wt?

 

I heard that Cape Cycles gets their oil from Suzuki South......

[Helpmytrap]

Sorry for the hijack but how often should a fork be serviced? I have a SID RL 100 with 176 hours riding (granted that majority is district roads that aren't demanding.)

[Hairy]

This is what I need according to the Sram website / Document

Damper

123ml 5wt in upper

5ml 15wt in lower leg

 

Spring side (non Drive)

Grease in upper (not sure what type)

5 ml 15wt in lower

 

Which fork is that for please?

[Hairy]

It boils down to not always having to be the exact weight, but more so with the structure of the oil ... this is where GoLefty become his weight in gold ... and judging by the little riding he has been doing lately it would be alot of gold ... PING GL ...

[Guest ctMTBer]

Which fork is that for please?

Reba....do you want me to post the chart from the document ? Or the link where you can get it ? It is 10.x MB so I dont think that I can upload it here.

[Super_mil]

The 15wt in the lower leg is just there to keep things lubed up. Thus they put the really heavy oil in there. It has no affect on the forks damping. Using a slighty thinner oil will no affect. I'm pretty sure the RS manual says you can use 5wt - 15wt oil for the lowers but I stand to be corrected.

 

The 5wt in the upper is what is controlling the forks rebound. By using a slightly heavier oil (7.5wt) you can just reduce your damping to get the same rebound rate.

 

That's why I say the 7.5wt is a good inbetweener oil

[Guest ctMTBer]

Here is the 2010 models chart

[Hairy]

Reba....do you want me to post the chart from the document ? Or the link where you can get it ? It is 10.x MB so I dont think that I can upload it here.

PM sent

[Bike Mob]

I think 500ml is the smallest you'll find. the two bottles you need will set you back R160 and you'll have enough for 4 services if you're accurate

[Bike Mob]

we stock a range of different oils, and they are all high end racing spec. Good enough for Ohlins, Showa and Marzocchi.

 

PJ1 have 500ml quantities and are very good oils.

 

and Yes we supply a few bicycle shops and suppliers for their workshops

[GoLefty!!]

be careful of quoting wt (weight) numbers for Oils as they are actually SAE J300 Table numbers realting to WInter spec oils.

The Yanks had a system some time ago that measure weight of a std volume (actually desinsity which had nothing to do with viscosity.

 

There are oils that are listed 5wt but are similar in performance to 7.5wt and even 10wt (Ok i'm switching back to "W")

 

Do you know what the fork was supplied with and how do you want to change the damping performance?

[Super_mil]

be careful of quoting wt (weight) numbers for Oils as they are actually SAE J300 Table numbers realting to WInter spec oils.

The Yanks had a system some time ago that measure weight of a std volume (actually desinsity which had nothing to do with viscosity.

 

There are oils that are listed 5wt but are similar in performance to 7.5wt and even 10wt (Ok i'm switching back to "W")

 

Do you know what the fork was supplied with and how do you want to change the damping performance?

 

100% correct. I was going to mention that. It's another reason why using a different wt oil doesn't really matter.

Most of the big manufacturers rebrand other oils as their own anyway. If you search you can find which over the counter oils are very similar or exactly the same to the OEM oils.

Like:

http://www.peterverd...esuspension.htm

http://forums.mtbr.c...ute-675922.html

http://forums.mtbr.c...tes-202432.html

 

Good Table:

http://www.mediaturbo.com/clients/marzocchi/forkoilviscosity.html

 

There is plenty info out there.

Edited November 9, 2012 by Super_mil

[Guest ctMTBer]

Ok found some 5w from a bike shop says fork suspension oil on the bottle. Now just need some 5 w.

 

So I had a look in the garage and found some.

 

15w/40 for diesel. Would that be it?

[Super_mil]

I don't think the diesel oil would be ideal, but I haven't read up about it so I don't know 100%.

I have heard of guys using Automatic Transmission Fluid (ATF) or Mortorcycle trasnmission oil (like Bel-Ray gear saver), but it's going to be the same price as the fork oil, so rather just use that.

[Mojoman]

Ok found some 5w from a bike shop says fork suspension oil on the bottle. Now just need some 5 w.

 

So I had a look in the garage and found some.

 

15w/40 for diesel. Would that be it?

Does diesel oil have more additives than standard oil for petrol engines? Am thinking about the seals etc getting damaged?

[GoLefty!!]

15W 40 oil for the oil bath lubrication would be ok. it will provide moe consistent performance than a non VI mproved oil.

 

Like I siad earlier, 5W from a bicycle shop means nothing unless you know the ISO viscosity of what you had in the fork, and the ISO viscosity of whats going in.