How to Maintain Your Mountain Bike Suspension

Your suspension works hard for you, ride after ride, smoothing out the trail, improving traction, and increasing overall ride quality. Your suspension is one of the most important and expensive components of your mountain bike, but regular service is often overlooked. Without regular service, dirt and other contaminants can degrade your suspension’s performance and eventually damage parts. A few simple steps and regular visits to your bike shop can improve performance and longevity of your suspension.

Getting the Most from Your Suspension

After Every Ride: Gently Clean Outside of Suspension 
After every ride, you should wipe down your suspension with a soft dirt-free cloth. Dirt works like sandpaper once it gets inside your suspension, so your goal is to help prevent dirt from making its way inside. It is also a good idea to protect your front suspension with a fender.  
You can also check your sag and make any adjustments needed based on riding style and preference. If you are finding that you need to frequently make adjustments to maintain ride quality, that is a sign that you are overdue for service.  

Every Six Months: Lowers and Air Can Service

If you ride your mountain bike at least a few days a week, having a Lowers Service and an Air Can Service approximately every six months can help extend the life of your components by removing dirt and other contaminants. Fox recommends these services after 30 to 50 hours of riding, and RockShox recommends them at 50 hours. You can easily track your hours through apps like Strava or Ride with GPS.

During a Lowers Service, Cardinal Bicycle removes the lower legs, cleans and inspects them, and reassembles the fork with fresh wiper seals, foam rings, and fresh fluid. The Air Can Service is similar—we remove the air can, clean and inspect it, and reassemble the shock with fresh seals and fluid.

Any dirt that made its way inside your suspension is cleaned out with these services by replacing the fluid, and fresh seals will help prevent new dirt from making its way inside.

Every Year: Fork and Shock Overhaul (Damper and Air Spring Service)

All suspension manufacturers recommend a Fork Overhaul and Shock Overhaul approximately every year. Exact recommendations are based on hours of ride time and model. For your fork, this includes a full lowers service as described above, rebuilding the damper, and servicing the air spring. For your shock, this includes air can service, rebuilding the damper, and negative spring charging.

The damper is the most important part of your suspension, so having it serviced annually is critical for the optimal performance of your suspension. The damper controls all the functions of your suspension including rebound speed and compression settings. Over time, fluid inside your suspension breaks down, internal seals break down, and your damper does not perform as it should. Dirt inside your suspension can also cause other parts to wear prematurely.  

How to Know if Your Mountain Bike Suspension Needs to be Serviced

It is best to have your suspension serviced before you notice problems. By the time you notice changes in how your suspension is functioning, damage to internal parts could already be happening. Ideally, you will stick to the schedule prescribed by your suspension manufacturer and never notice any degradation in performance.

However, there are items to look out for that indicate service is needed. 

• Changes in air pressure and the need for frequent readjustments
• Changes in rebound or compression and frequent readjustments to maintain ride quality
• Leaking fluid

Changes in the feel of your suspension happen slowly over time. Slowly enough that you might not even notice it. So again, it is best to follow the recommended timeframes listed above.

Suspension Service Options

Most bike shops can perform Lowers and Air Can Service. Overhauls require special tools and training, and many shops will send items to a third party for these services. 

Cardinal Bicycle is one of the few bike shops in the region that has the tools and capabilities to perform fork and shock overhauls in-house. For example, we have an Andreani SP4 vacuum pump that allows us to bleed and fill sealed dampers with zero air. Even brand-new factory assembled shocks are not all vacuum bled. This means we can service your equipment to better than new condition. We also have the capability to perform a nitrogen fill. Nitrogen creates a more constant pressure and reduces leakage. A nitrogen fill is required for some shocks and an upgrade for others.

If you live nearby, you can schedule a drop off time with us, or just stop in to either location. You can also ship your suspension to us.