Forks wont "Pump"
 

I'm in the process of changing the fork oil and have compressed the slider as far as it will go (as per Haynes). Just filled it with oil as per instructions, but the slider wont come back up. It will move about 2 mm down & up but no further. The spring will go in but the spacer wont & Im not gonna force it just to thread the top bolt! Its the same for both forks. Have I missed something obvious?

Cheers in advance...

It is the spring that makes the fork return to its "full" length. You are going to have to lift the front of the bike up and pull the sliders down the stantions, then screw on the top cap.

Just give it a tug, it's stuck down on the oil lock piece.

In the bottom of the fork there is a cone shaped spacer, when the fork is full of oil and compresses to it's full extent, the cone shape piece causes an hydraulic stop to occur so that there isn't a sudden metal to metal contact shock as the fork stanchion bottoms fully, in your case it's full of oil and requires you to overcome the 'lock'.

Clean the stanchion of oil so that you can get a good grip on it and pull hard, it'll come out.

Yep, as Sid says.

I found exactly the same thing and it took quite some shifting first time.

Moral of the story is "don't compress them too hard with the spring out". :wink:

Job Done! Many Thanks....wrapped some old rag around the brake caliper mountings (I've just painted the lower forks today!) and locked them into place in my workhorse between the upper and lower mounting.

Cleaned the slider as per Sid Squid and gave then a good pull. As Sid said, they were locked in the oil lock piece.

Cheers Sid
:thumbsup:

I did the exact same thing when I did mine, then Jimmy did the exact same thing when we did his... Worrying, isn't it? And the f***** never comes loose until your basically flapping :)