I’m looking to service my budget XCT SR Suntour mtb fork and none of the YouTube videos show it requiring oil. I can only find a generic Suntour manual and that doesn’t mention oil.
Am I ok to not use fork oil when servicing?
If not what oil should I Use?
by paddyb12341
7 Comments
Not these ones. Probably want a heavy grease for these, give you some damping.
I don’t work much with suspensions and do not own bikes with suspensions but I do believe that’s probably a coil suspension or air, not oil.
Good luck with the repair
Google it. Takes you to Suntour’s model page that has specs and service manuals. It’s sprung btw, not oil.
Unless you are having some sort of problem with it, I would not recommend servicing this fork.
It can be re-lubed with suspension specific grease (slickoleum, Sram Butter, Slick Honey, etc.) on the spring, but usually doesn’t require it. A Suntour XCT is a coil fork, meaning it uses a metal spring inside for damping, and really nothing else. These forks are not made to be serviced, but you will get a tiny bit better performance if it is lubed up and maybe put some stanchion oil on the stanchions.
Suntour has all their service videos on their website. I’m pretty sure you have a coil fork, you can pull the lowers degrease and re-grease everything and possibly change the sliders.
Have a look and see what they recommend. You can also send them an email, they have excellent customer service and have answered all my questions promptly in the past about my Suntour forks.
Servicing it probably won’t do a tonne. But if you’re eager to learn then I can give you a quick rundown since you mentioned in another comment that suntout doesn’t have a service guide.
If you open up the caps at the very top, all you’ll see is a coil spring. You can pull it out and admire it if you’d like.
If you remove the fasteners at the bottom of each leg, you’ll be able to pull the lowers off (might require some tapping from a soft mallet). You might actually have a little bit of fluid in therr for lubricating your dust seals (you also might not, I’ve never taken this fork apart). If there’s fluid in there it’ll be like 10ml. Not much. At the top of the legs you just removed, you’ll see a big rubber seal which certainly wouldn’t hurt to wipe clean and decontaminate. And under that, you *might* have a couple foam rings. Those are for soaking up the aforementioned fluid to keep the big seals lubricated.
Since this is an inexpensive fork and we don’t know what kind of fluid may have come out, I’m going to allow you to use about 10ml of motor oil per leg. But you have to promise me you’d never do that on an expensive fork. And only if fluid came out in the first place.
If you’re asking these questions just because you want to take it apart and learn, then I fully support this because your fork is less complex than an expensive one with air and damper. So you get to learn about the assembly without the risk of damaging something sensitive. If you have any other questions feel free to PM me