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[CliC]

Well, I was leaving work today, and while removing the bike cover I noticed a grease spot on the lowest part of the front rim. As I pulled the cover off, I saw a lot of dirt/oil residue on the right fork slider, and the whole bottom bracket was covered in it. I wiped it all off and rode the bike home.

Once home I loosened the air bleed Allens on the top of the forks, for whatever help that might have been. The manual only talks about those when transporting the bike, and they were loosened when I carted it home from Austin in my truck; I tightened them again once I got the bike off the truck.

Anyway, looks like I'll be calling the dealer tomorrow. I hope I don't have to take it up there, but if I do, I guess I'll get them to do the 600 mile maintenance early and flash the firmware to fix "the glitch" while I'm at it.

I'm assuming no one else has had this issue, since I didn;t see anything on here about it. I also hope this is merely an anomaly, because I do like the bike.

[rotoiti]

Sorry to hear about the leak. My DS is 3 weeks old and has 980 miles on it -- no leaks. It does growl though

[Richard230]

No problems here, either.  My bike has 950 miles and I have hit a lot of bumps.

[protomech]

No fork problems @ 1700 miles / 6 weeks.

[CliC]

Called my dealer and they are getting a set of fork seals on order. I looked at it this morning, and no oil, but it may take some fork motion to make it happen.

[sgmdudley]

At 340 miles I just wiped oil off the left fork and the front brake caliper.
I had noticed a spot on the floor, now about 8 inches, just a thin layer of
oil. I park the bike almost in the same spot each time, but not exactly.
.
Initially I thought it was a leaking brake piston in the caliper, looked like
a lot of oil from the caliper.but then I noticed oil on the left fork also. No
hard riding, all city streets or nice country roads.
.
The dealer is closed today so will call them tomorrow. They are 56 miles
South of me.

[CliC]

Still waiting on the seals, evidently; dealer said they would call when they came in. As I've noted elsewhere, the bike got to Austin faster than the seals are.

I did pump the front end the other night and, sure enough, fresh oil on the right slider -- none on the left.

[Richard230]

Fortunately, I have not had this problem. I was thinking about it today and it reminded me that when I was experiencing the "thunking" noise from my front forks, a Zero employee I happened to speak with said that it was probably due to a tight seal (or "striction") of the fork bushings and the noise would likely go away after the seals broke-in. So I decided to spray the sliders on my fork with a dry Teflon lube spray, just to make them work better. That seemed to have reduced the noise a lot.  I wonder if the tight and dry seals when the forks are new might be sticking enough to damage the seal on some forks and that is what is causing the fork oil leak?

[CliC]

Interesting comment. It sure can't hurt for me to spray my sliders down with teflon or silicone lube when I get the bike back.

As I commented in another thread, the seals are in and I'm taking the bike in to the dealer this weekend.

[CliC]

Just got home from Austin dropping the bike off. I gotta give AF1 Racing, the Zero dealer there, some props here. I got there after they closed (my fault, didn't read the web site closely enough), and while frustratedly loading the bike back on my pickup for a 3.5-hour drive home, we see a gentleman wearing an AF1 shirt walking by. He was coming back from dinner, and he opened the place back up and took my bike and information.

I don't know his name, but I can't thank him enough. Were it not for his extra effort and impeccable timing, it would have been an entire day and 2 tanks of gas wasted.

He mentioned they had 6 or 8 people come test ride Zeros for the demo day. He also told me mine was the first Zero they've had to fix (guess I'm just lucky; I hope it's the last). Before I found out they were closed, another guy on a BMW R1200GS talked to me in the parking lot about the DS with pretty keen interest (I didn't mention the fork seal .

[ohgood]

Put some fork gaters on it. An exposed stanction tube will get splattered with bugs. When they dry, they're abrassive/corrosive and make seals leak. They can and do lodge under seals and make it appear the seals have failed. You can dislodge debris with 35mm roll film if you're careful.

[Richard230]

Put some fork gaters on it. An exposed stanction tube will get splattered with bugs. When they dry, they're abrassive/corrosive and make seals leak. They can and do lodge under seals and make it appear the seals have failed. You can dislodge debris with 35mm roll film if you're careful.

The Zero's have male-slider (upside down) forks. Their fork sliders are protected from debris by a plastic covering which is an integral part of the front fender.  I don't think a fork gaiter, which works well on traditional-design forks, could be installed on the Zero's slider.

[sgmdudley]

My S9 is at the dealer's now for new fork seals (left side). The seals were brought out
from California by a Zero rep that came to Denver for the Zero Demo day May 19th.
Poured down rain so no-one could test ride.
.
So this is just speculation. I did not get the Owner's Manual until the 19th. Reading thru
it says that after transporting the Zero, we are to loosen the two set screws at the top of
the forks to bleed off the air, and thereafter, bleed on occasion. This was not done after
a 56 mile ride in the back of a pickup with only two tiedowns on the front, which puts a
lot of pressure on the forks. (delivered May 1st, and the leak must have started from the
beginning of my riding to break in the batteries). Could this have caused the seal to leak?
.
Waiting to hear from the dealer as to when my S9 will be ready for pickup. It is now
Wednesday, May 23rd. Bike was delivered Thurs May 17th, seals arrived May 19th.
.
I am thinking about driving it back home instead of transporting by pickup, in order to
avoid putting pressure on the forks causing the seal issue. It would be 60-70 miles.

[Richard230]

The fork seals seem to be very tight when they are new. It is quite possible that compressing the forks rapidly a lot might have blown a seal.  I have loosened my screws several times since I have owned my bike, but have never noticed any air being released. But then I have never fully compressed my forks and kept them compressed for any length of time.  I think if I was to transport the bike with the forks compressed, I would first loosen the screws and keep them loose until the bike was off the truck.

If you keep the speed under 50 mph and don't need to ride against any headwinds or up too many hills, I think the bike should do a 70-mile trip with no problems.

[CliC]

I believe my manual says to loosen the screws to transport the bike, and tighten them for normal riding (I guess they assume that the forks will be partially compressed during transport, which is accurate in my case).

When I loosened them to take the bike back to Austin, they did release a little air (and a few oil bubbles), but not much.

Good news is, they have fixed the bike. They're closed Saturday for Memorial Day, so I'll probably go up Friday. Weekend riding - w00t!

I still need to take half a day and play with the other suspension settings. It certainly isn't bad, but where there are knobs, I am compelled to tweak