If it was a cheap bike the chances are there aren't any springs, just some sort of elastomer compound. There's not a lot you can do to service or improve these other than to lubricate the fork legs.
If it has a lockout lever it could well have springs and hydraulics but these aren't trivial to service.
Tim
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I have a dipladidated bike to do up for a local kid. It has some sort of suspension in the front fork; it's slightly springy, but I think it's too stiff to do anything so I'm wondering about dismantleing it. Can this be done, and what should I expect to find inside the tubes, and am I wise to try? Bill
There are quite a few youtube vids on overhaul of front fork suspension. Much depends on what type you have.
If it is a cheap bike, then springs will all it will be. If however it is a good make with 'named' forks (Rockshox, Manitou, Fox etc) there will be damping as well, so seals,slider bushes, air pressure ports possibly, or springs and oil.
The dials on the top, one on each post, set the stiffness of the response.
A tool is required to unscrew the thing on the top of each post. It might be a Suntour suspension (that's what the paperwork that came with my last bicycle claims -- the Suntour piece of paper has no info whatsoever, on the fork!). Take to a bicycle shop, so they can select the tool for the top removal (it should have a drive for usage with your socket tool).
"How to fix & repair your MTB Suspension / Forks...full overhaul!" [MTB = Mountain bike, bike has suspension at least two places]
Regarding the "tools issue", just about every part of a bicycle has a canonical thing you should have to do the work. Chain whip. Chain puller. Crank puller. Tensiometer (for verifying spoke tension) -- uneven spoke tension, spokes snap easily. With modern spokes, I'm having problems with the nipples deforming, before the spoke pressure is high enough for the job. On older wheels, I could crank the nipples until the spoke was pulled right through the rim and the rim ruined. The brass nipples today, don't have as much material on them, which is why they deform (make sure your "spoke tool" is fully engaged with the nipple surface, don't just turn a fraction of a millimeter on the top of the nipple).
For work on the crown bearing (the "steerer" bearing), I use clamps, clamped to the beams in my carport, and I suspend the bicycle from those. I use cargo hold-downs so the height can be adjusted so the bicycle stays upright. Crown bearings can be cartridge or can be "raw bearings" so... beware when disassembling. In my case, I replaced raw ball bearings with a cartridge (because I had brinneling and needed to disrupt it by changing where the ball bearings rested). The bicycle tries to steer itself, when the steerer has brinneling.
Your fork could be seized. And that's why it is not behaving.
Paul
Yes anything from springs to the ones like office chairs exist, but half the problem is that the grease goes haard and sticky and needs to come out and be replaced with whatever is specified. Don't you find it hard to understand why only the saddle has springs though. I had a tricycle like this. Brian
I don’t think you’ve hung around the cheap end of the market much Paul. You’re talking about “posh” forks. ;-)
Bill hasn’t come back to us but I suspect the ones he’s looking at will be at the cheaper end of the spectrum.
Tim
My previous bicycle had a spring for the seat.
Scheme failed in only two years. Replaced with a regular seat-post and all was fine.
I figured, if such a scheme could fail after only two years, why oh why would you buy another ?
Some of the mountain-bikes have much nicer suspensions.
Paul
I thought this was referring to the seats, with a standard seat post and the top and bottom halves of the seat connected (at the rear), by a pair of springs - and not a special seat post.
Such as
Has it got mudguards? The lack of mudguards (and even a Sturmey-Archer dynamo three speed gear hub) means a wet stripe right up your back when riding in the rain and no reliable lights that don't need batteries. Thats called progress
Yes, they've offered seats like those in the past. I bet the bicycle my mother won in a contest, had those goofy springs underneath the saddle :-)
The "regular" saddles today, have two rails on the bottom, and the seat post that is fitted to the bicycle, has a "head" and the "head" has two channels that fit around the rails underneath the seat. The purpose of the metal rails, is so you can fit tools to fasten it to a post. Saddles are interchangeable, because of those rails.
The nice thing about those rails, is the position of them is almost a standard, and I hang an accessory from the rails (lots of screws and bolts, it's pretty hard to steal the item from just below and back of the seat, because it is so hard to work a wrench under there).
*******This picture shows the Norco Roma with the rubbery expansion on the seat post (implying some vertical telescoping movement, over bumps). The front forks show a Suntour fork assembly, which is supposed to absorb bumps too. Neither has an exterior spring visible.
The saddle on this bicycle in the picture is an original, and painful as hell. You would normally immediately discard such a saddle, as soon as you got the bicycle home. I took a seat I liked, from a previous bicycle, and got a Bontrager look-alike (same geometry), to replace the awful seat in the picture. I don't really know how you "fit a seat", and the seats at the bicycle store are fastened to cardboard surfaces for display, and this means you can't try them out. To avoid that, I took a saddle I knew to be a perfect fit, and just duplicated it when I needed a replacement.
The seat post the previous bicycle had was "telescoping type". The replacement post, two years later, was a "fixed type", which is just a length of pipe of the correct diameter, with the head portion fixed to the top of it. The seat post goes down the stem tube, and is held in place with a quick release clamp.
You have to be careful with those tubes. Some are half a mm too small, and will never fasten properly in place. If buying a seat post, take a caliper with you, to check the new and old are the same.
Some people, when they visit the mall on a bicycle, they remove both the seat and the seat post, using the quick release, put the seat and post in their backpack, and go shopping. That's because thieves someones steal the seats. A saddle like that, can cost $70-$100 CDN, but they're ruggedly made.
Basically, when you lock a bicycle here, every item with a quick release on it, must be locked together. If you forget to lock your wheel to the frame, then they will steal the wheel "as a lesson to you". Not because they plan to buy drugs with your wheel. The monetary value of a loose wheel like that, is pretty well zero. A whole bicycle, is offered on the street to you, for $25 CDN, as an example. A $3000 bicycle, would fetch more than that.
When we lock bicycles here, it's not with the hope they will be there when you get back. A mini boltcutter will take care of most locks (including mine), and the kryptonite locks, a bit of liquid nitrogen will shatter those. Although the bicycle thieves here, all carry mini bolt cutters (they don't even try to hide the bolt cutter from police!), they're unlikely to waste time looking for liquid nitrogen. It would be too hard to steal the right shape of cryostat for their usage, and once you've been burned by liquid nitrogen, you begin to realize it's not practical in portable situations. Too easy to splash on yourself.
Paul
And a mudguard kit at the store, is expensive too. I was shocked at the pricing. I suppose that's an incentive to not have one.
My current bicycle, is the first one I've had equipped with mudguards when I bought it. I was hoping to reduce chain fouling by having it. For most retail bicycles, the mudguards are an after-market accessory.
You only get the stripe up your back, if you drive too fast in the rain. I ruined one piece of clothing that way, and none since.
What i don't like about that dirt streak, is even if you throw the item in the washer immediately, you cannot get the dirt out of the material entirely. That's why you learn to drive a bit slower. Maybe a different clothing type, would be more resistant. If you're wearing jeans, you might get most of the streak out of those.
*******As for the dynamo, I'm still using mine. Miller 6V 3.24W. I'm running LED arrays with it. There's a bridge rectifier and caps for filtering, to make DC for the LEDs. My uncle has the bicycle that dynamo went with, and my uncle is still alive (around 95 years of age). Somebody got the bicycle, I'm sure, but I doubt they would be driving it. I put a lot of miles on that bicycle, when I was using it. The bicycle was "amazingly heavy". A good fitness bicycle. Three speeds. Some fiddling with the adjustment, to keep it shifting nicely. And relatively speaking, compared to modern bicycles, low maintenance. Modern bicycles are just a pain in the ass (the crown bearing on the new bicycle seems to be loose, but there is no visible adjustment).
You mean, you just haven’t worked out how. ;-)
It’s probably a threadless headset.
The purpose of the rails is to provide fore and aft adjustment of the seat position. People attach any number of things to them but that’s not their purpose.
Tim
It's just used to the old one. The old one had these rings, that used to leak grease. The new one, there are no plastic rings on it, and it's off-putting after you've used to those rings.
[Picture]Part of the deal with bicycle riding, is "riding with a problem long enough, to triangulate". For example, that stupid telescoping seat post ? It was making a noise. I didn't know it was making a noise. I thought the noise was my crank. I thought it was the crank enough, to install another crank bearing. The noise would not go away. I probably tightened up the crank bearing a little too much, in the process of trying to get rid of the noise.
At some point, I figured out it was the telescoping tube that was making the noise. Put a fixed tube in its place, no more noise.
I've always had a hard time, using "noises from down there", to figure out what's busted. When the frame snapped, I could hear clicking on the old one. But I couldn't see what was clicking. After a few more days, a "dirt line" formed where the crack was, and then I knew what was going on.
It's very much a Game of Clue :-) Damn that Colonel Mustard.
Paul
Um, you still have a bearing nut and a lock washer at the top so I’m not sure what else you’re looking for to adjust it.
Again, not quite sure how you’re “feeling” it. Normally all you need to do is to apply the front brake and roll the bike gently back and forwards. If the forks move relative to the steering tube your bearings need tightening up.
Tim
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