Has anyone ever had this happen to their front fork?

[freestyle250]

While in the process of changing the fork seal on my bike, the aluminum "straw" in the damper rod slid out and bent in half. While trying to straighten it, I snapped it clean in two. I am not sure what it is for, but I want to head out riding today and am not sure what will happen if I ride without that part. Can anyone give me some insight on this? I have a new damper rod on order, but it's going to take a week to get here.

[graazzy]

You should always remove this rod when you take the forks apart . It is the dampening rod . I suspect you won't hurt the bike if you leave it out . But you may injure your self because the fork will act like a pogo stick.

[PBDBLUE]

I think he's refering to the smaller tube (about 1/8" diameter). It's actually the control rod for the rebound dampening. Without it you will have 0 rebound dampening which will make for a pretty wild ride.

[davidl9999]

+1 on the rebound dampening control rod. The center screw in the fork cap pushes against it. If you don't have it installed, you don't have any rebound dampening. It might even let the hydraulics go beyond the max left "clicks". I wouldn't ride my bike until I fixed that.

[Diesel_Junkie]

I have no idea if it would damage anything with it missing, but yes it is the adjuster for your rebound and you would be at least at click 0 without it, if not less.

If you are jonsing to ride, and want to roll the dice, I would just put it together without, and double up the clicks in the other fork leg, so you get your over all rebound damping preference back.. .it would not be good, but that is how almost all mountain bike forks work.... spring on one side and damping circuits on the other. Moto forks are not designed for that kind of unbalance, but a little bit should not hurt.

The other thing you could do is go to the hardware store, and buy some steel or aluminum rod, and cut it to length to make your own replacement. I would be very precise about the length though.... take the last 0.1" off with a file so it matches the rod in the other leg to within 0.005".

[DrzDasher]

Park it.