My wheels now sits off centre. Meaning one side has very little mud clearence and feels a bit dodgy to ride.

Phoned TFTuned this morning who advised me that the lowers were ****. They have been slightly twisted in some way. I now know of a few people that have teh same problems.

He said it was to do with having ti skewers, why would this be a problem? And surely the fork should be able to cope with this.

These forks have never been jumped, crashed etc so just before people start saying this!

He said it was to do with having ti skewers

Having a flexy skewer bends your fork? Presumably he's suggesting that the skewer is structural and the fork relies on it to not bend. Sounds like twaddle to me!

You really want to be talking to Fishers (I'm afraid) as that sounds like a warranty issue.

I believe its a common problem.Apparently Sram sent out a few dodgy castings.Time to go back to Fishers i believe! Sent mine back and have been replaced.Still slightly to one side!
Thanx Max

Looks like im scuppered for warranty though! I bought them in the states before you could get them here. Suppose thats the risk of buying from the states, bit of a pain!

I would have thought a lightweight fork would have been able to withstand some lightweight skewers!!

My skewers are stell anyway so thats not the problem!

Yep, same here. Had one set that were a long way off, which got replaced under warranty. New set are better, but still don't have even gaps.

As a cheap fix, try putting a thick washer between the fork and the hub on the side that's close. This means when you clamp the QR up you gain a few mm whic might help.

It's a really common problem on the SID's, and even a new set of Rev's are slightly off. No idea what they're doing during manufacture to have them so far off.

Sorry if this sounds stupid, but are you sure it's not the wheel?

As said this is an issue with the fork lowers on the Sid due to faulty castings.

If you bought the fork from a shop in the USA there is no reason why you can't send it back. RS forks carry a 2 year warranty.

I know RS have sent new lowers direct to customers in America – maybe drop them a line explain the situation and see what they say.

At the end of the day you have a warranty regardless of where you live.

Looks like RS are having bad QC problems, this and the leaking motion control problem, things are looking a tad poor.

Now I am worried I have SID teams 09. with X-Lite Tech 9 Titanium skewers. No problems so far, but should I switch back to Al skewers?

spoken to fisher and the forks will be getting returned for warrenty evaluation. oddly I – MS – and another 2 of our mates forks are all exhibiting this wheel off set issue – some to one side and some to the others and some significantly worse than others … MS`s are nearly touching and another mates is just as bad – mines are about 4mm off (but im running a narrower tire so could be just as bad ! )

even worse is mines have only done a hand ful of rides due to injury !

all wheels are dished central with a park pro dishing tool and are as straight as humainly possible

Now I am worried I have SID teams 09. with X-Lite Tech 9 Titanium skewers. No problems so far, but should I switch back to Al skewers?

Only if you want to lose your front teeth. Try steel instead for a safer, stronger alternative!

trail_rat, are those the 2009 SID's of the Merida?

If so, should I be worried? (Not ridden it yet)

worried about what ? if you aint ridden it yet there will be no issue

Just worried that they may have the same fault as you!

its not a fault till youve ridden them ….

its not like they are going to explode randomly

4 of us have been riding them for a season …

Sweet, won't get an outing till the new year. Just bought it cuz I could get it cheap ready for next season.

I assume they are either like this when you buy them or they are OK and this is not a fault that develops over time i.e the casting is out of alignment – full stop – rather than the lowers getting slowly "twisted".

I have a pair of 09 forks that have yet to be used and was thinking about buying another set from Merlin in their sale.

Mine have now started to lean to the left as you look down on them.

It's even worse under compression but with lock on on they are fine.

Trail_rat as I bought direct from Merida 11 months ago, will they be able to help me out?

Friend of mine had exactly the same issue on a pair of SID teams. Dealer tried to 'fix' by removing some metal from the skewer seat which I thought sounded horrific. Fortunately it didn't fix the problem so my mate got a new set under warranty.

Mine have now started to lean to the left as you look down on them.

It's even worse under compression but with lock on on they are fine.

If the lowers were twisted then they would stay twisted locked out or otherwise, you appear to have a different problem, at a guess your wheel needs tensioning.

I got mine replaced no problem. Also know others thave had them replced twice! If it worse under compression then either your fork is bending (highly unlikely) or your wheels. But it may be the fork is **** to.

Try a different wheel in it and see if its the same

Mine appear to be a couple of mm out but I think the wheel needs re-dishing as I had a similar problem with my rear wheel and the slot dropouts on my Scandal, centralising it was a bitch until I had it re-built.

Tried 3 wheels including a brand new nukeproof wheel, brand new DT Swiss X1900 that came with the bike and a 2008 Mavic Crossride.

All do the same thing.

Seems to be about 5mm so noticable.

hello dan sorry i meant to email you back

you got a good LBS ?

i sent mine back to fisher direct via a shop i worked at at the time (not the shop i worked at when i got the bike)- i also got MS` forks sorted out the week before mine 😀

mines were twisted also and the damping was **** – that was after 4 months – new ones have been fine ! got WC damping and team lowers

Hiya,

Yeah I have 2 local shops one being Leisure Lakes.

An independant shop had a look for me last night and he said they looked like they were twisted and had seen a pair do the same thing last year.

I have contacted the supplier of the bike direct to see what they suggest.

It's a shame as it's only done 196 miles of XC!

Just for those who were involved and interested.

Forks went back to Merida who in turn sent them to Rock Shox to have then assessed. They cam back to me saying that there was indeed a quality problem with the lowers and have supplied me with a fully serviced fork with new team lowers and internals.

A big thank you to Jason at Merida for superb customer service.

One to note for all Rock Shox owners, according to the warranty report if the fork lowers were under 3mm out they would have not done anything as that was within tolerance. So my 5.5mm was extreme apparently. But keep an eye out for leaning lowers on 2009/10 models.

Have the same problem with a 2010 set of Sid Teams 🙁 Will be sending them back to On One this week which is a shame as they’ve been on my bike for less than a month!

Mine have just come back from Fishers 21 months old and the wheel was sitting to the left, fixed under warranty no problem.

I now have a fully serviced fork with brand new XX lowers.

Sorry to drag this up again, But this has just opened up again for me now ive got a new set of wheels that I cant re-dish to the extent that is required.

I had originally thought it was my wheels that weren’t dished correctly. Pulled them all over to be in the middle of the fork and then discovered the inability to balance on the bike(s)

found this thread & ….

…Well I’m pretty well fed-up with not being able to take my hands off the bars without my bike violently veering off to the left unless i lean over to the right.

I’ve just been on the phone to fisher, after they fobbed of my LBS, when the woman who answered the phone realised I was talking about the same issue as she had just discussed with the LBS, The tone of the conversation went pretty much downhill. and ended with her telling me that basically the conversation was over and id have to deal through my LBS.(hang-on, didn’t I all-ready try that first?)

to paraphrase.. “I have been advised that there have been no such problems / recalls”
she repeated it several times during the conversation and wouldn’t put me through to anyone else, even though she (pretended?) to try.

I have a set of SID team c2009 that are really bad, require about 3mm removing from the drop-out.
&
a set of SID XX c2010 that are slightly better but still not right.

Both throw the bike(s) off balance

regardless of the warranty period etc, It is pretty amazing that they don’t seem to be acknowledging the problem any more?

Any one have any more recent experience of this. Don’t think I’ll be buying rockshox any more if this is what you get for your money.

balancing is so fundamental to cycling and frame design, It just cant be acceptable?

For a company that’s been in the game for as long as Rock Shox, to be quite frank, This must be a massive embarrassment.

I did a thread about this a while back because i’ve got 2 sets of 29er Maxle reba forks with the same problem (2009 & 2011). The recent ones i sent back to Fishers Uk (even though i’d bought them the week before from Belgium) and they replaced the lowers straight away but never acknowledged the problem. The new ones are better but still not correct meaning i can’t run a 2.4″ tyre which should fit. I emailed Fishers at the time and never got an answer. I can’t believe that there hasn’t been more of a backlash against them and the problem just doesn’t seem to be going away.

Makes me very dubious about buying anything else from RS (shame as the forks work great but how hard is it to sort out the QC of the manufacturing??).

How did you go about getting them back to fisher? I currently feel they have practically nailed the door shut on me. Even to the extent I cant get an official fix for the problem regardless of who will pay for it. probably in order to do that they’d have to admin there was a problem to start with.

how hard is it to sort out the QC of the manufacturing??

about as hard as putting a wheel into the forks prior to selling them I would assume.

Or for a proper engineering solution, a simple ‘go no go’ gauge would suffice

I just got them sent back by my LBS and they were ‘fixed’ within 2 days and returned to me. Still can’t fit a 2.4″ tyre though.

Like i said though, the email i sent to them direct was completely ignored.

I’m told the 2012 forks don’t suffer from the problem anymore but i’d be wary of buying more forks without physically seeing them first (or at least getting a guarantee from a seller that they were correctly manufactured.

Mine appeared to have this problem after a border collie ran across in front on my bike and folded the front wheel.

I had the wheel rebuilt but it sits to one side of the fork.

I put some of my other QR wheels in the fork and they sit in the center.

The wheel is using a 9mm DT thru-bolt axle, but when I use a superstar 9mm thru-axle it seems to sit in the centre.

I had the DT axle on when the wheel folded after the dog hit, and I had just changed to it from the SS axle.

I am thinking that the wheel might have been offset before the crash and that is why it folded up so easily.

No more rockshox for me – changed to a Durin.

May I suggest, you take the fork to your local bike shop. Get them to get a returns number, return them to experts at SRAM tech centre.
We are happy to consider any request for inspection, as a gesture of goodwill, we can then make a call on if it’s a warranty issue or not.

Regards, on behalf of SRAM tech.

srammtb, thank you for your response.

My fork(s) are still at lbs so I will ask him tomorrow to have another try.

Hi epicmcd,

If you get stuck in any way let me know and ill see what i can do.

I take it you work there? (http://www.sramtechcenter.co.uk/) maybe you could drop my LBS an email? think he’s going to re attempt tomorrow.
http://www.cycle1.co.uk/

The lady at the end of that number for both fisher & sramtechcenter (they appear to be the same number) wasn’t the most helpful to either of us & I’d be surprised if she didn’t use to work in local government. ho ho.

lol, funny. So its now 2 days of Fisher not even bothering to return LBS phone calls. Got forks back for the weekend, time to apply more plastic metal to the dropout(s). Damn I wish I’d fingered the culprit for my off centre wheels before now,
500 quid for a fork that doesn’t hold the wheel in the middle of your bike?

WTF

@epic, did you get anywhere with this? My 2009 Anthem X1 has the same problem.

Mine are the same. Bought from Merlin in the last couple of months. They took them back and replaced the lowers for a new set which also turned out to be off centre. I gave up and started using them. Pretty crap really.