What happened to my damper cartridge?

[Dirk-Jan]

Hello, I am Dirk-Jan from the Netherlands and I own a Cannondale F700 since about 3 years, my second Cannondale MTB after I had a F500 for many years. I love the look of the vintage 26" Cannondale MTB's.

Recently, on a holiday, I decided to try out the suspension lock. (I never felt the need to do it before.) Almost immediately oil started leaking from the fork. Also it appeared all the air had suddenly left the air chamber, I had almost no suspension left. Before that I had not noticed anything weird on the suspension.

I went to a nearby repair shop and they pumped up the air chamber for me. That worked fine, the air chamber was not leaking apparently.

This weekend I took out the damper cartridge (I invested a lot of money in tools to be able to do so ).My assumption was that an o-ring would need replacement but I could not find any faulty ones. Then I just refilled the damper cartridge with oil and now everything is fine. I cycled 10kms with it and no leaking. The suspension lock is not working anymore, but I don't care for that.

I am happy that I solved it, but I still wonder what could have happened?!

 

[black lightning 1987]

Glad to hear that you were able to fix it. Hopefully one of our Headshok experts will have an explanation.

 

[Nico]

What year is the bike, do you know?

 

[Dirk-Jan]

Around 2001. It is identical to this one: https://community.vintagecannondale.com/showcase/2001-cannondale-f700.2147/

 

[black lightning 1987]

Around 2001. It is identical to this one: https://community.vintagecannondale.com/showcase/2001-cannondale-f700.2147/

Did you take any pictures of the cartridge? I have one out of similar vintage bike right now, but it's a 700C bike and only has about 25 mm travel. Basic design might be similar

 

[Dirk-Jan]

I think the travel is larger than 25mm.

 

[Nico]

The 700C bike has a travel of 25mm because of the design of the headshok, the cartridge has a bigger travel but the fork just not allow more than 25 mm.