Re: front wheel wobble on 34

Posted by Owen_Dyneto On 2010/6/14 9:41:48

Yes, I was lucky with that wheel failure, and I first noticed something was wrong by a wicked wheel shimmy. It happened on the highway perhaps 30 years ago but fortunately I changed to a spare and got home w/o further trouble. I was even luckier to find some spare wheels in good shape - I expect that those wheels are no longer easy to find which leaves the option of respoking, not cheap!!

Some shock rebuilders that folks have reported good satisfaction are:

Apple Hydraulics on the east coast,
Five Points on the west coast.

Don't know what viscosity you used for shock oil, but you can mitigate (in the short term) the leak a bit by using a higher viscosity. Here in the US Mobil offers hydraulic oil in SAE 10 and 20 weights, Mobil DTE-24 (SAE 10) or DTE-25 (SAE 20) hydraulic oil.

I had a couple of unused $25 discount coupons from Apple, if I can locate them, you're welcome to them but I fear I may have discarded them after finding no takers for them among the locals here.

PS - Guess you know this, but it's not necessary to pull the shock to refill and expell the air. The filler port is a hex head machine screw with a screwdriver slot near the upper edge just forward of the arm pivot. Fill to the bottom of the threads, disconnect the link and work the arm up and down to expell the air, and refill again if needed. Best to insert the filler plug while pumping the arm.