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I bought chrome fork lowers from ***** Shiny that came in yesterday. The surface that the copper sealing washer goes on has a lot of hard corrosion or something on it. That area is hard to get to to clean it out.
Any ideas on how to clean this out? For the people who will say "ask the seller", I would, but two other questions to the company have gone unanswered.
Is that crud or rust? It looks like rust. If it were me, I'd return them. I have no real solution to cleaning it up, but a washer will never seal on that surface. Did they send you used parts? Or perhaps those parts were sitting out somewhere for a really long time.
Call the company first and see what they say! As soon as you take it upon yourself to try and fix it they are yours. And you will have no recourse to refund or return.
I called the shop and the gentleman asked me if i could just scrape this stuff out. I sent him a pic so we'll see what he thinks.
I will say, the offer was made immediately to replace these with another set, which means a lot. I would like to avoid another 2 weeks downtime if possible though.
Then, maybe try some emery cloth on the end of a drift punch or even on a dulled flat blade screwdriver.
The problem is that even if you clean it up and it still leaks, you have to get a whole new fork seal kit and do all the work a second time. How does the other leg look?
Last edited by Jersey Drew; Jan 4, 2023 at 04:17 PM.
The other one looks OK. It looks like someone forgot to clean this one up before sending it off to chrome. I never got a reply from ***** Shiny. Funny enough, their website showed that the legs come with chrome caps for the other bolts that I didn't get either, I asked about that and they said the place they were getting them doesn't sell them any more - Take them off the website or find a different suppier then. Come on.
I guess I'll be sending these back since they never called me back. The bad leg has junk under the chrome in spots that will make it peel before long. Not a good $300 experience.
Originally Posted by Jersey Drew
Then, maybe try some emery cloth on the end of a drift punch or even on a dulled flat blade screwdriver.
The problem is that even if you clean it up and it still leaks, you have to get a whole new fork seal kit and do all the work a second time. How does the other leg look?
I suggest you call Joe @ ***** Shiny first thing tomorrow morning, and ask them to send you a replacement set, obviously reviewing the same spot on both replacement legs before shipping, and ask them to send a return shipping label (much cheaper at their shipping rate than if you ship it) and request they get the replacements shipped out tomorrow - you should be able to minimize downtime. Then tomorrow, you pack up and send the existing/faulty set back, assuming you opted to get them to send you a return shipping label to return your original core legs.
***** Shiny has a great reputation, and have been in business, and I do believe they will be there for you.
I'd run a gun bore brush in there on a drill and give it a buzz, if you don't have any, hit your local Walmart. You could even go with a pipe fitting brush from Lowes or Home Depot.
As I don't want to wait 3 or 4 more weeks for this process, I sent my core legs back and I'm using the ones they sent. I was able to clean the corrosion off, hopefully the copper washer will seal. As for the chrome not adhering properly, it's in the same area as the bolt and copper washer go, so as long as it doesn't peel more, it'll be OK. If it does peel, ***** Shiny has a 2 year warranty on them so I'll deal with that then.
Every company has glitches. I would have gladly taken the offer to get replacement parts but I ride year round and don't want more down time. I will say, the chrome on the outside of these things is flawless and I'm going to be proud to have them on the bike.
As I don't want to wait 3 or 4 more weeks for this process, I sent my core legs back and I'm using the ones they sent. I was able to clean the corrosion off, hopefully the copper washer will seal. As for the chrome not adhering properly, it's in the same area as the bolt and copper washer go, so as long as it doesn't peel more, it'll be OK. If it does peel, ***** Shiny has a 2 year warranty on them so I'll deal with that then.
Every company has glitches. I would have gladly taken the offer to get replacement parts but I ride year round and don't want more down time. I will say, the chrome on the outside of these things is flawless and I'm going to be proud to have them on the bike.
For what its worth - I purchased a set of chrome lower legs and the upper cover-cow bells from Joe-Will Shiny - took them to the shop last week that was installing my Ohlins Fork cartridge kit - since they had to disassemble the forks to install the cartridge kit anyway - when i picked up my bike, I asked about the interior of the fork legs (i dropped off All of the chrome and cartridge parts with the bike without inspecting the parts sent from Will Shiny) - they told me that they had to do quite a bit of clean up before assembling the fork legs - said it looked like the legs came directly from the chrome-shop without any post-chrome cleaning maybe thats just how its done? This was my first purchase with ***** Shiny - I too am VERY satisfied with the exterior chrome final product.
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Fork assembly question
