Hope everyone's enjoying their summers and getting a lot of riding in.
A few weeks ago I replaced the seals and fork oil in my front fork with 15w. I did all the work outside on the sidewalk in the dark with a worklight and a headlamp, so suffice to say, less than ideal working conditions.
Nevertheless, everything seemed to have come back together properly and I finally got a chance to take it for a spin last night. At first I thought that the forks were much stiffer and that is a good thing. However, I noticed that I really feel every single bump and over moderate sized bumps (it's Brooklyn, so there are a lot) it can be pretty jarring. I can't tell if it's because it's stiffer now, or if it's because I've possibly put it back together wrong and limited the travel, causing it bottom out early.
Basically - I wanted to solicit some feedback to see how your bike feels with 15w oil. Does this sound normal? I wish someone else was active on this board from the NYC area so I could meet up and compare bikes.
For reference I weigh about 220 lbs with my gear and my bike has about 50k miles. I'm almost certain the fork oil had never been changed, the right seal was completely rotten and leaking oil. So the suspension was extremely soft before where I would pretty much glide over most bumps.
Here are some pics of what it looks like now, anything jump out at you as weird looking (aside from the general ratty-ness of the bike)?
