Need some serious suspension help here after fluid swap service

[650RACER]

So I had 2 leaky fork seals and approx 40 hours on my forks and figured I may as well fully service the forks while doing seals and wipers.

So last week I did. I used Redline 5wt in the inner and outer FYI.

I followed the manual on the inners and used 200cc's of fluid to fill them and felt like I had them bled fairly well.Maybe 15 strokes on the damper rod...I put the valve assembly in and screwed the cap back on and did maybe 10 strokes on the rod again. I never got a pop or blow off of air or oil out of the bleed holes.

Put it all back together and filed the outer. i used 370cc's per the guy who had valved and set up the bike originally. Which now this seems like too much and I should be using about 340cc's...I only ride race offroad.

So......

I got it all back together and it felt stiff on the ground to me like it was sprung wayyyy to stiff. Stock .44's in there now I weigh 185. The forks on the ground felt much stiffer than I recall. I was barley able to stand next to the bike and push the forks down 2 inches. i decided that it would be good enough and thought it may be the new seals sticking partially, and raced our XC opener this weekend w/out having a day to test them. Well if you can call it racing. The front end felt like a cement truck and by turn 3 I knew i was screwed. Very hard to ride a bike like this and it beat the s$it out of my body in no time flat. I eventually crashed out destroying my expansion chamber and DNF'ing. thats a whole separate story though.

So I am trying to figure out what may have caused this? I got home last night and opened the bleeders on the fork caps and a TON of air came out. i backed compression all the way out and it feels a lot different pushing on it on the ground now.....

I am wondering if my inner oil level was not right? If my oil level was low wouldn't it have been mushy feeling? if too high wouldnt I have had a blow off of oil and air? I am wondering if that Redline 5wt is actually thicker than the KYB MX5 I should have used but didn't? the outer oil level would make the bike tougher to bottom and more harsh correct?

Anyone have any ideas? this was my first go around doing the forks. I have to get it right as i have a race in 2 weeks and need to test it first before i destroy my body more in the process.

Thanks guys looking forward to any and all suggestions here.

[kantoniak]

I would post this on the suspension forum for specific replies. There is good directions as well. If you have the manual it is very good and if not it may be available online.

It does sound to me like you never got things bled out of air though.

[brentn]

If you had air in the system, it would not feel so stiff cause I would think that air compresses fairly easy in a fork, giving it a squishy feeling in-between strokes (air bubbles).

I personally think you used to much fluid, but I'm not a fork guy.

For an 05, the inner is 195ml of oil (stock), and the outer is 200-300ml of oil. So yea I'd say that you have too much oil in there

[chadzu]

I couldn't see what year you have. Is it a SSS fork? If so 5w is too thick for the inner chamber. Try a 3w oil. As far as oil volume on the inner chamber, I used the smart performance bleed technique. It really isn't volume based, it seems like you just add a whole bunch of oil and then bleed off as much as will come out when the rod is pushed in.

I have 5w in the outer chamber, 340ml, so you should be ok there.

If you have an earlier fork, none of this may apply.

[650RACER]

I have a 2008. I will pull it apart. Where did you get the smartnperformance bleed method????? Thanks!

[APBT]

Where did you get the smartnperformance bleed method?????

http://smartperformanceinc.com/

FWIW, I have had the best damping results using the Yamaha S1 oil in the inner chamber.

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