Unfortunately, both dampers were damaged to the point that they would no longer hold oil, even with fresh seals. Lucky for us (and the customer!), Cannondale offers a damper exchange program (with certain restrictions) that makes replacing the entire damper a financially viable option. Here's the guts of the old DLR80 damper:
As is typical with this type of failure, damper oil had run down through the bearings and completely flushed out all the grease. In these cases we like to do a full service on the telescope to get everything clean before applying fresh grease. Here's the telescope all taken apart:
When the protective boot covering the telescope gets saturated with damper oil it tends to harden up and crack, so we replace that, as well:
Here you can see the needle bearing retainers covered in grease and ready for reassembly:
Here's Troy coaxing the race retaining clip back into place:
...and in goes the brand-new damper....
....and the knobs go back on and we're done!
Both forks now have an up-to-date DLR damper (with new one-year warranty) and smooth bearings. Like new. Nice!
