Originally Posted by awfulwaffle

I'm not familiar with that particular model, I used to have a Zoom 386 on the first iteration of my Frankenbike, and it locked up just like yours did. Frankly it was a piece of crap before it locked up, but at the time I didn't have much cash to play with so I decided to give freeing it up a whack (pun intended). Mine tore down essentially backwards from the relatively nicer fork I've got on the bike now, which has easily accessible allen screws at the bottom of each lower.

With the Zoom, you actually had to pop off the plastic caps at the tops of the stanchions, and get a really really long extension bar so you could get a hex bit down into the stanchions. You could then loosen an allen screw inside each stanchion with a ratchet in order to be able to separate the lowers from the stanchions. It then took a vise, a wood block, 3 lb sledge and a good bit of creative pounding to get the lowers off. I cleaned all the guts up as best I could, greased everything and put it back together.

It was then that I discovered just how crappy the springs in the fork were. Now that they had a bit of lubrication and were able to move, I damn near bottomed out the fork when I got on the bike, not to mention when I went over bumps. In fact, I think what was keeping it from bottoming out before (when it was still kind of working before locking up) was the resistance between the stanchions and lowers that existed before I cleaned and lubed everything. I'm a pretty big dude, but it was still kind of surprising. In the end, I had maybe 20 mm of (very stiff because the springs were nearly fully compressed) suspension travel. I didn't wait for the fork to lock back up, like I'm sure it would have if I had continued riding it. I found a decently priced coil fork, bought it, and never looked back. I think the Zoom fork got recycled with a pile of old car parts last time I cleaned out my garage.

So, I guess the moral of the story is, you're likely better off getting a new fork. Then again, I'm not personally acquainted with the particular model you have, so I could be wrong. From what I see on Zoom's web page though, it looks like all their forks are variations on a theme.