Marzocchi z1 bomber coil help/advice?

General Discussion
1

Ok. Lets get this out of the way up top, I’m stupid. That being said, I’ve got a fork problem and since I’m the dummy in the group, I hope someone smarter than me has been here…

I’ve got a marzocchi z1 bomber coil, 2020 model, I believe. It needed seals and a lower service and I was underwater with other stuff and didn’t have the bandwidth to fuck with it. So, like a dumb shit, I took it to the lbs for a lowers service, because I like to support a local business. Picked it up, paid my money, seemed fine other than the gouge in the crown from unscrewing the spring cap. Whatever, park bike, its gonna get scratched.

First trip to the park and its only getting 130mm of travel (170mm fork) and leaving 40mm on the table. Ok, different frame, slightly steeper, shorter, higher bb, maybe it needs a softer spring. Swapped to a medium spring (150-180lbs, I’m 185) and samey-same. Maybe only leaving 30mm now?

So, at this point, I’m convinced the fork got put back together incorrectly at the lbs. I paid them a visit today and was able to convince them that dealing with me through a whole-ass warranty process was gonna be so much more expensive and unpleasant than just refunding what I originally paid for labor, letting me be on my way and never having to look at my face again. I’ve lost that loving feeling regarding that shop and don’t trust them to fix my shit. They agreed.

Now, If I’m gonna let an idiot work on my crap, I’m gonna be him. So i need to figure out just exactly wtf is going on with this fork. I am going to reach out to the vendor i purchased it from and see if they’ve ever seen this, as well as reaching out to fox and seeing if i can get some kind of service diagram or if they have any other suggestions.

Question to you all, have you ever experienced this? If you were me, what would you be looking for? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Pictures if they help.

When i first noticed, park weekend, compression dial fully open, firm spring.

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Medium spring, compression dial open. Right after a run down a back jump line casing the absolute shit out of a few very big tables.

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Anyhoo, if anybody has any ideas, I’m a friggin cornfield.

Thanks.

2

I think this might be your configuration manual. It looks like changing the order of the spacers could get from 170 down to 150. Maybe they threw extra spacers in too?

Bomber_Z1_Coil_tuning_guide_RevA_Z1Coil_ConfigurationGuide_1.pdf (1.6 MB)

2 Likes
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Thanks for that!

I considered the spacers might be in the wrong order, or place but shuffling them around physically changes how much fork leg pokes out of the lower, it doesn’t just take travel away off the top. I hadn’t considered extra spacers, but at this point :man_shrugging:

Damn it. All I wanted was the seals changed.

4

As far as I know, the zocchis have a semi open bath damper cartridge. That means that you can “adjust” the progression ramp up towards the end of the travel with the oil level in the fork legs, just like adding tokens to an air spring. Maybe check how much oil is in there, it might be too much.

3 Likes
5

This makes sense. Everything else seems to work fine, compression and rebound do their thing, it sags a little under the weight of the bike and does the bounce test just fine, it just will not use all the travel. Too much oil could be a real simple mistake. I’ll check that, thank you.