Sunday, May 17, 2015

Homemade Fox 26mm Chamferless Socket

Something feels very wrong about spending $140 to have my fox fork serviced every season. I started reading about servicing and the basic service is not all that complicated. Actually Fox provides some really great videos on their website (32 Float) that describe basic servicing and changing travel.

One of the tricky parts is removing the 26mm top cap/nut thingy, which is very low profile. You can't use a standard socket since they are chamfered and you will most certainly round it out. Some folks on mtbr are using an adjustable wrench, but you can't use that with a torque wrench and and you risk rounding out the nut since it only has two contact points. The solution many have been following is to make a chamferless sockets.

First I needed to find a 26mm socket. Fortunately Lowes had them in stock (Kobalt brand). It seems that most folks are using a grinder, however I didn't have one so I settled for the filing method. I picked up a 3" x 1/2 carriage bolt to secure the socket. Next I needed to find a place to secure the socket for filing. I found some plywood shelving in the basement and drilled a hole through it for the bolt.


I started filing and it went quicker than I expected. The filing probably took a total of 5-10 minutes. I was rotating the socket every minute or so to keep it even.


I haven't used it yet but I did place it on my older 2010 Float RLC and was surprised by the amount of play. So either this bolt is super cheap quality with poor tolerances or it's really not 26mm. Fox explicitly says 26mm on their video so it must be the socket. It will probably work unless it was really tight. I read that one guy on mtbr used a 1" (25.4mm) bolt so I may try that to see if I can get a tighter fit.

Total cost

$5 for socket
$10 for file set (I could have spent $6 but decided to get the larger set for a few bucks more)
$1.50 for carriage bolt

1 comment:

  1. I think that your problem may be that you bought a 12 point socket instead of a 6 point, which provides less contact area for a 6 point nut.

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