Suspension revolutionized mountain biking back in the 90’s, ushering in a variety of designs and novel takes on how to move wheels out of the way of trail obstacles. In the decades since, suspension manufacturers have converged to relatively similar designs, and their performance is phenomenal. The first ride on a brand new fork and shock is unmatched, with their fresh oil and slippery seals keeping your grin stretched across your face. As the months tick by, that magic slowly begins to wear off, and while you’ve honed in on your damper settings, it’s undeniable that your fresh new suspension doesn’t respond like it used to. Not to worry, you’ve just hit your first service interval, and it’s time to crack your fork and shock open for a spa day.
While we all know our suspension needs to get serviced eventually, knowing when is the right time can be tricky. Suspension manufacturers publish service intervals for each and every one of their products, but the intervals are measured in hours. Hour meters are commonplace on dirt bikes, but the vast majority of our simple mountain bikes don’t track hours for us. Strava or other similar tools can help out, tracking exactly how many hours you’ve spent behind bars since your last service, but not everyone tracks their rides religiously.
To make things more complicated, not all hours of riding are created equal. A three hour ride in the Florida flat land compared to three hours lapping the Whistler bike park have very different effects on your suspension and the rest of your bike, but they’re both three hours! What about a muddy ride compared to a dry ride? Or a heavy rider compared to a light rider? All these variables get overwhelming quickly, but we’ll do our best to simplify and demystify exactly when to get your suspension serviced.
Our only concrete data points to work with are the service intervals laid out by the manufacturers, so we’ll start there. We’ve compiled the majority of service intervals into our Service Intervals Tech Page to centralize all the information instead of making you hunt down service manuals in the deepest corners of the internet. We’ve also got a list of all the service kits you’ll need to complete the service needed to make things easy for you. You’ll also need some fresh oil to complete any suspension service, so go check out our Suspension Oil Volume Tech Page to put together a complete cart!
An important asterisk on all of those service intervals listed is that those are the minimum recommended service intervals. Depending on factors such as terrain, conditions, and riding style, the manufacturers say you’ll likely get better performance from more frequent service. So those hour numbers you’re seeing are assuming that you’re riding in the most favorable conditions for your suspension and cleaning the outside of your suspension after every ride. Making sure that your stanchions and seals stay clean is the number one way to keep your suspension feeling smooth for as long as possible in between services, so no matter how often they go under the knife, do your best to keep those surfaces clean.
But in the real world, how do you actually know when to bring your fork or shock in for service? I’m going to cater this guide towards the majority of our customers, who are generally Enduro riders. That means they spend the majority of their riding slowly climbing up the hill to get to some high intensity descents where the suspension is truly working.
For riders that are consistently riding multiple times every week, we recommend that you perform a lower leg service on your fork and an air can service on your shock every three to six months, and a full service on your fork and shock every six to twelve months. Those are some relatively large windows, but that’s because there’s a broad range of how much wear and tear a rider can put on their suspension. It depends on how often they ride, how aggressively they ride, and what kind of conditions they ride in. So it’s up to you to audit your own riding and be realistic with yourself about when it’s time to drop the lower legs.
If you don't ride every single week but you're still getting out there as much as you can, a good rule of thumb is to get a full service once per year, and a more basic lower leg service or air can service once in between. Once you’ve gotten your suspension serviced a few times and have a better understanding of what suspension in need of service feels like, then you’ll feel much more comfortable deciding when to get the next service. Typically, suspension that’s due for a service has lost a considerable amount of its small bump sensitivity, and each click of the damper won’t make much of a difference in ride feel. A dead giveaway that you’re past due for a service is when your fork or shock starts making whooshing sounds that it didn’t before, or if turning the damper knobs makes zero change to how the fork or shock behaves.
While we recommend that you perform a lower leg service in between full services, Fox and Marzocchi do not recommend that service in their published service intervals. Instead, they say you can skip it and just spring for the full service after 125 hours. Omitting the lower leg service could be attributed to the consistent cleaning they call for following every ride, but we still recommend performing a lower leg service once in between every full service to maintain your small bump compliance and catch any potential issues early.
RockShox does recommend a lower leg service between every full service, but they don’t recommend that you replace either the dust wipers or the foam rings during that service. Using a Dust Wiper Kit to replace those components is common practice during a lower leg service, but if they’re not leaking or showing any signs of damage, then it’s not necessary to replace them, and you can save a few bucks during your service!
Servicing suspension is pricey work at any bike shop, which is the number one reason many riders neglect their suspension and don’t perform regular service. Our number one recommendation to cut down on suspension service cost is getting comfortable working on your own suspension, and at least learning to perform lower leg and air can services on your own. The majority of Fox, RockShox, and Marzocchi air suspension products are very home mechanic friendly, and it’s much more affordable to perform some of the services listed right in your own garage. We sell Lower Leg Service Kits with all the tools required to perform a lower leg service on several of the most popular forks out there, and we’ve also got a very detailed fork service video that explains every step necessary to bring that small bump performance back to life.
As for the damper and air spring services, we recommend getting professional help, as you’ll typically need some specialty tools and pretty darn technical skills to make sure everything goes smoothly. We’ve had several folks bring their disassembled dampers and air springs to us, asking us to right their wrongs, so bring it to us before you get in too deep! Alex, our head suspension tech, lives and breathes suspension service, and will get your boingers feeling good as new in no time!
