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Fox 34 top out in middle of stroke. Top of stroke rebound normal.

Feb 13, 2002
1,087
17
Seattle, WA
Curious if anyone else has seen this.

I was riding jumps. Suddenly I felt my fork topping out after hitting a lip. After stopping I tried compressing the fork and rebound was normal unless I compressed it quite hard down to the bottom of the stroke. The fork then rebounded fast through the bottom half of the stroke, clunked, and rebounded normally through the top half of the stroke.

I think that's what was happening anyway. Now that I've got home from the ride, I'm trying to get the fork to reproduce this strange behavior and it's acting completely normally now.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I'm thinking I should just take the fork apart and see if anything is kersploded in there. The fork is a 2014 fox 34 FIT CTD, which i was really loving until this shenanigan.
 

MikeD

Leader and Demogogue of the Ridemonkey Satinists
Oct 26, 2001
11,669
1,713
chez moi
I have not. But it's 2017 and Chomps is here, which is cool.
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,235
20,018
Sleazattle
Sounds like air in the damper. don't really know what goes on inside the FIT damper so can't 'splain how that would happen.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
18,853
9,557
AK
I've had a broken rebound glide-ring on stratos forks that felt like what you are describing.
 

MikeD

Leader and Demogogue of the Ridemonkey Satinists
Oct 26, 2001
11,669
1,713
chez moi
I've had a broken rebound glide-ring on stratos forks that felt like what you are describing.
OH YEAH!



I fondly recall spilling ATF all over a living room carpet.
 
Feb 13, 2002
1,087
17
Seattle, WA
I ended up sending it in to fox because it was still under warranty. I suspect what they did was bleed the damping cartridge.

Also they charged me for the service because they knew I'd opened the fork to check the oil levels when it was new because I didn't use the factory oils. :mad:
 

FlipSide

Turbo Monkey
Sep 24, 2001
1,376
804
It's not impossible they had more to do than just a bleed if you rode it a lot. My 2013 with PUSH upgrade was still feeling fine last year, but it turned out it was in great need of love. I sent it to Suspension Werx for a yearly maintenance and the air spring assembly was in self-destruction mode, the bladder was still functional but starting to crack and needed to be replaced. I think there was also something else, like some dried up o-ring somewhere that was just waiting to fail.

It's a very good fork, but I find it is rather high maintenance and not cheap to repair.