Fox Fit4 damper issue - need an advise!

[vilegnus]

Hi, all,

I understand, that this topic looks weird here, but, may be somebody has an idea, what to do.

I bought an AM fork Fox 34 Factory Fit4 27.5 with 150mm of travel. It was an online deal on pinkbike and seller declared, that the damper was replaced by "Fox factory service" after a fail of original CTD damper.

When i went to real mountain trails in Cyprus, I noticed a strange thing: fork worked only for 130mm of travel from 150mm.

Out LBS said, that there is 29 damper instead of 27.5 and it has longer rebound shaft, which causes all problems.

It's not a problem to shorten the shaft, but rebound needle needs very precise machining and there is a real possibility to kill the rebound circuit forever with a wrong lathe work.

I see three options here:
1) to buy a new damper online, and it will cost me near 270EUR, including postage and customs fees and try to sell my 29 inch fit4 damper
2) to search for a used damper from a broken fork and then sell mine. Sometimes i see different dampers but it can take years to find appropriate.
3) may be it's possible to buy a shorter rebound circuit as a spare part?


I will really appreciate all the advices, because the situation looks sad and silly at the same time ((

[TheRookie]

Have you taken the air cap and compression damper out, pushed to full bump and measured the clearance from crown to damper top and then the compression damper assy?

From this page http://www.ridefox.com/help.php?m=bike&id=752#part7939 there seems to be no difference between 27.5 and 29 dampers, they have only the one Fit4 Fox34 PN.

[vilegnus]

Thanks for a reply!

I can't either see any different 27.5 and 29 dampers, and for example, this kit https://www.bike-components.de/en/Fox-R ... he-p49862/ is for "26" /27,5" /29" Factory"

But, when we remove a topcap and try to compress a fork, it is still about 30mm of the legs out of the fork lowers.

[TheRookie]

Most forks include the bump stop in the nominal travel so without some force you'll always be 10-15mm short, also all forks leave some stanchion showing at full bump or you'd get a nasty noise at full bump when the lowers hit the crown! On RS that is typically 10-15mm, not sure about Fox.

Have you measured the actual travel?