Seized old Manitou fork

dohark

Retro Newbie
Needing some help. Old Manitou fork on old Marin has seized solid. Any ideas to free it and does anyone know what model it is? Thanking you

fork.jpg
 
Seized Mantiou Fork

Thanks M

You might be right there. I'm not sure of age but it's a Marin Nail Trail.

Had a look at Bikepedia and seems to be around 1998 or 1999 judging from specs shown. It's a deep blue metallic colour that doesn't seem to match any on the list of model years.

Any idea how to free it up and is it difficult to strip it down?

Thanks again

D
 
No-no! It's a 1997. It's a 1997. The '98 and '99 both had RST's, This is a stock fork. Damn it, I should find those old catalogs!

Anyhow, I don't know what you mean exactly what you mean with "free it up", but this is what I'd do:

- spray some WD-40 on it, especially the bolts, so they can loosen up easier
- let the stuff creep in for like 15 minutes or more
- take it apart by means of a hex key and what else you need
- clean it
- grease it up with some quality grease
- put it back together

I am no expert mechanic and I don't work much on my forks (I have friends to help me out), but this is a simple fork and you shouldn't have many problems with that. Just make sure to have the dials without any preload before you start taking it apart. I would also look up an owners manual on the internet. If you can't find any, bear in mind that the chassis was the same for the more expensive forks (SX, FS, SX Ti, FS Ti) from that year and the following two.

Cheers,
Mx
 
manitou seized fork

Thanks for all your help M and to you too Anthony.

Found a set on ebay that look exactly the same except the stickers must have fallen off mine.


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/manitou-answe ... 256bbd0168


By the way M when I said 'free them up' what I meant was there's no travel or movement in the forks at moment up or down.

Thanks

D [/url]
 
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I see. If you do the basic maintenance work listed above they should move decently. Otherwise, I don't know if there is any point in getting other forks just like that from eBay, except if you want to rebuild a bike to its OEM spec and those forks are listed in the componentry sheet. Being such a simple fork, if it hasn't any major damage to it, then there will be no big difference between your fork and that on eBay. If I were to change the fork, I would upgrade it to something better and period correct. Otherwise I would try to clean, grease it and leave it as it is.

Cheers,
Mx
 
Your right again M, not much point replacing on old fork with another old fork.

I'm going to have a go at getting it working again if not will look for Ebay bargain. Only thing is the bike has the old Diatech collared threadless headset and never sure if I buy one it can be used on my bike.

Thanks

D
 
Except DiaTech headsets being kinda stupid, you won't have any problems fitting them on different forks and frames. Except that maybe once you take it off a frame, there is not much reason in putting it back into another frame.

Theoretically, the DiaTech wasn't such a bad idea: it was supposed to remove all the hassle that came with the star-fangled nut. It scored in that department, except that it missed big time in the other department, for which threadless headsets were designed in the firstplace: keeping the front end together. In other words, it became loose as easy as a threaded one.

These being said, it almost makes me laugh that I have two NOS DiaTech headsets in the basement and I don't quite know what to do with them. I wouldn't even give them to the enemy!

Cheers and let me know how your fork is doing. No I go back to cleaning M730 XT brakes and LX cantis. :)

Mx
 
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