crazzywolfie

lately my front shock have been bottoming out on my one bike. i first notice it 2 weeks ago when i was racing down a hill doing a few jumps. at first i thought my tires were low so i topped them up and it help but they still are bottoming out and it seems to be happening more often. i was wondering if it is safe to keep driving the bike with bad shocks or would it be a good idea to replace them asap. right now this is the only bike i have together and mobile, all my other bike are in need of repair.

BCRider

It's certainly not good to do downhill big rides.

If your shocks are of a decent quality they can be rebuilt. And from the sounds of it they need it. You likely wore our, blew or tore a seal and that let out all the oil that the shock relies on for damping. Or you manage to pop the damping valve off inside the fork leg. Either way they are badly in need of a regular rebuild. But that's all. The forks will be fine but they are just suffeing from neglect and need some regular servicing.

All your other bikes are in need of repair? And now your last one is pooched too? Sounds like someone needs to look into what is a prudent time between preventative rebuilds on their bikes. You actually do need to do this stuff and if you don't wait until the stuff breaks or seizes up the bikes will not only be more reliable but they will feel better when you're riding.

Bikewer

You don't tell us what short of "shocks" you have. (just as a niggle...Perhaps from my early years riding motorcycles, front suspension units are "forks". Rear suspension units are "shocks". But that's just me.....)
Anyway....If your front end is a cheaper "elastomer" unit, with no oil or damper units, you can likely just get new elastomers. Those are little rubbery cylinders that perform all the spring/damping functions...Sort of.
If your front end is of better quality, it's probably an oil-filled unit with a valving system. These can be expensive to repair; the unit for my old RockShox Judy was over 100.00.

Used to be you could replace many of these with an air-shock unit, for about the same money. An alternative....

crazzywolfie

i have no idea what type of front shocks are on it. i think they might be cheap oil filled ones. all the stickers were gone when i got it but if i was to guess i would have to guess it was a super cycle from Canadian Tire. i went out and looked at it better and i think the seals on the one side are shot. i have looked through my spare parts and found a set of shocks that look almost identical but are a different color. i wish my spare set of triple trees would fit. i have never had any problem with triple tree front shock.

BCRider

If it turns out that the bike IS a Supercycle from CT there's no way I would trust my body to be doing any sort of spirited downhill riding. Those things are made for kids to ride to school, through a few park trails and look cool while not actually doing any serious off road riding.

Anyhow the first step to determining if this thing is worth fixing is to take the forks apart and see what appears to be the issue. I'd also have a serious look over the forks to see if you can find any model numbers or other stuff stamped or cast into the fork legs to find out what they are.

crazzywolfie

i think i might eventually try to rebuild them because i do like the way they look on the bike but for now i think i'm going to have to replace them. the fact that the seal is shot should not be too much of a surprise to me considering i have had the bike for over 2 years and i have done some pretty dumb jumps on it.

BCRider

YOU'RE FAMOUS ! ! ! !


....my front teeth hurt just from watching that...

crazzywolfie

my head never hit the ground but my left knee and wrist hit the ground pretty hard. i was having difficulties biking for 6 weeks.

Torchy McFlux

A few points:
Supercycles are cheap POS bikes that don't do anything beyond neighbourhood cruising very well. If you like off-roading or urban jumping, look into buying a better bike.
The fork is not oil/air sprung, or even oil dampened if it's an SC. More likely they have steel springs or elastomers, and that's it. The value of the fork is likely very low, and because of this replacement parts are unavailable.
Unfortunately, the best way to deal with a malfunctioning cheap suspension fork is to pull them off the bike, throw them in the garbage, and completely replace them with something else. Even if it's just another cheap fork. Yes, it's wasteful. And that's one of the big reasons why I really hate these cheap suspended department store bikes.

crazzywolfie

i tried replacing them with another set and they are just as bad in some ways. i think i might end up replacing them with a set of solid forks.