SKF Dual Component Seal Fail!
or
Why Marzocchi’ Sealing is about High Quality & Sustainability!!🤙
This is what SKF is calling ‘Dual Component’ seal. And it is a single seal system means one seal ring seals the inner oil/air from the outside AND from the dust + water from the outer environment.
As you know I have analysed all Marzocchi seals, from the very early beginning with 24mm seals starting with StarFork all the way up 26, 28, 30, 32, 35, 38 and 40mm Seal kits. I did this by buying dozens of seal kits from all brands, I compared materials, flexibility, cutted seals to understand the inside metal sceletons & sealing lips and I put them on stanhions to view and test sealing and friction.
So the question is : What is the Probem with this Dual Component single Seal made by SKF?
1st : Single Seal System??
_ALL_ seal kits developed by Marzocchi have separated outer dust wipers & inner oil seals. Fact.
=> And do you know why????
Because Marzocchi knows as it best from moto forks what is best in sealing.
If you check in detail you will see this seals have different geometries for different tasks they have been made for. E.g. the inner Oil Seal has to hold back Oil and needs to hold Air Pressure up to ~15bar during vertical stanchions moving. So obviously it is for sure a very difficult and risky decission to drop a 2nd seal and make both main important tasks in sealing into one seal ring only!!??
Nowadays stupid money making Fork Company’s without deep understanding of technics + simple physics try to maximize their fkg $$$$$ earns in making parts cheaper.
E.g. they reduced the seal kits into only _one_ seal!?
This will lower the production costs of lowers and the seal costs. Muha.
But most of this forks have a huge problems in quality of sealing. Fact.
You can read & view a lot of this cases @ Instagramm where superdupper Bike Mechanics in real life showing the bad forks results by showing the use of such seals.
2nd : Dual Lip System Missing in SKF Seal??
I don’t understand why-the-fuck SKF also dropped the ‘Double Lip System’ for the outer wiper!? This brand SKF new seal with it’s huge marketing efforts & blinkyblinky coloured thing is a big fail at all.
Check this photo and I can tell you from talking about in this and other postings and I know this from talks with many bike mechanics & suspension centers.
The problem is : Yes, the single lip system reduces a little friction, BUT it does not seal a ‘normal’ Suspension Fork in normal conditions like simple rain!!
I know about when I analysed the 35mm Seal SKF had created for Tenneco for Shiver DC / 66 / 888 and others. Yes : friction was o.k., but seal was such weak with the outer single lip that the sealing all over was bad as mud get’s under the out dust seal and following damages the oil seal. Wtf and what a huge nonsens!!!
What’s up now?
For the user this means they have to lower the service intervall times and if you read the manuals for modern forks you will find out that some fork brand are telling you to exchange seals (or minium clean sealing areas) in <= 50h only!!!! 50h??? WTK??!??
=> I had weeks where I rode 50h, so I have to do a service every week??? Hell, NO!!
I can ride my bikes a hole season and more with only _one_ seal kit for sure and I’m doing this since I own by 1st XC600 from 1994!
To sum this up : You understand in case of quality of sealing and of course sustainability why we all can be very, very happy to ride such rock-solid older Marzocchi Forks and I’m realy proud & happy to support all this 500-1000 different Marzocchi Forks which new seals in all sizes (1989-2018)!
(btw: Marzocchi is the only brand which get’s support for ‘older’ forks with a complete series of new seal sizes and you know the creator and seller is surely not FOX!)🤣🤙
P.S.: It’s a 2024 Boxxer Ultimate.🤙
References :
- Related Instagram Post : https://www.instagram.com/p/C-7TCkQsMQR/ from suspensiontech.ch
- Seal Kits : https://dr-zocchi.projectweb.de/produkt-kategorie/seal-kits/
- Manuals : Check my Marzocchi Manuals Repository : https://public-repository.org/
