Hi All,

I am replacing my fork seals and, after disassembling the front suspension, found something unusual with the front right damper. These are probably two fairly obvious questions, but, after loooking at the pics:

1) safe to say that's a hairline fracture?
2) safe to say that would be a problem and needs to be replaced?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmurph/tags/forkdamper/

The bike has about 35k on it and has been in one low speed accident at an intersection... could this be caused by normal wear/tear/stress... or more likely a crash or other abrupt impact? Thanks for looking!

 

just disassembled the left fork and found that the left damper rod has an almost identical hairline fracture... same location, same length, etc... wtf?

 

Has the bike been in a front end collision? Stunted? Were both legs leaking?
Check over the rest very carefully to make sure you dont have anything bent, cracked or pitted.
Can you feel or see if the crack goes all the way through or is it some kind of scratch on the surface?

 

I would also check to make sure the fork tubes aren't bent.

 

Hey thrasher... the bike was in a 15mph intersection collision (guy turning left in front of me, go figure) and i also learned to wheelie on this bike... so, "yes" to both of your first two questions. Only one fork seal was leaking, but I attribute that more to 35k worth of abuse than anything else. I cant tell if the crack goes all the way through, but it definitely seems more like a crack than a scratch, as i can feel it with my fingernail pretty well.