Carbon repair

[Scrat]

Option B

If your engineering abilities are at the level where you would tackle delugging and repairing/replacing the carbon leg......

Consider gutting the internals of the damaged leg and converting it to a sealed Judy style cartridge system.
Even modify so you can run a coil instead of air. Less internal pressure to push oil through the leg (sounds like its a very small leak?)
or Get them royally revalved to run in really thick oil (20 -30wt) again will be much less likely to bleed through

Anything is possible

 

[Dr.Robotnik]

Cheers for the replies all.

@marin man - thanks for the tips, I am familiar with working with acetone and can access industrial pure stuff not nail varnish remover. Hopefully it should be up to the job.

@ senri, yes failure is a big worry as I'd like to use the bike as it was designed. Not sure I understand perfectly what you wrote though, are you saying some epoxys cause carbon to crack? I am thinking of bringing the forks back to me and doing it at my new job where I've just found there is a carbon department. Though having only met them the other day I think I might be pushing my luck asking for favours...but you don't ask you don't get right? I might run the job past them sometime.

@scrat I'm an engineer but I've not worked with carbon before. I also have very limited time to focus so like to gauge others ideas too. The forks are with justbackdated now, but I might bring them back here for repair, I'm not sure as it will be a very time consuming job and I don't know if I have the time...

As for other jobs, I am considering getting a spring put in or something else but would rather have them working as normal and as they have very small stantions I don't think a Judy cartridge will fit in. I don't have cart or spring to try either.

All posibilities, I think the main thing is the carbon leg first though as I can't ride them with a crack...

Thanks for all the advice guys.

 

[john]

To be honest if the carbon is cracked I'd discard it straight away. Just not worth the risk.

If you have the skills to manufacture another leg in carbon then good stuff. One alternative might be to fabricate a leg in alloy / steel and use a thin carbon wrap, maybe even some maxspeed carbon weave wrap from halfords.