Flat rate, per component, no surprises

Suspension wears out quietly. Oil shears down, bushings go oval, seals start weeping, and none of it happens on a day you would notice. It just gets a little worse every ride until the bike feels like somebody else’s.

This is the service that resets it. Your fork or shock comes apart completely. Every part gets washed and laid out. Bushings, seals, shims and shafts get inspected instead of glanced at. Anything worn gets called out before it gets replaced, not after. Then it goes back together with fresh oil at the right level and, on shocks, a nitrogen charge with no moisture in it.

What the flat rate actually covers

Most shops quote a service, then bill separately for the repair they find once it is open. That is not how this works. If your fork needs a bushing pressed, a seal head rebuilt, or a works modification while it is on the bench, that labor is already in the $175. Hard parts are the only thing billed on top, and you hear about those before they get ordered. The common ones are listed with prices.

Seals are SKF wherever SKF makes one for your fork, with OEM or NOK seals where they don’t. XTrainer shocks get the AMP shock seal kit: our own polyurethane dust seal, oil seal and shaft bushing, plus the reservoir cap, floating piston and seal head o-rings. It costs less than OEM and handles abuse a lot better.

Before you ship it

Pull the push button fork bleeders if you run them and put the factory screws back in. They leak in transit and they make a mess of the box. Everything else about shipping is covered on the start a job page.

Being able to get a foot down changes how you ride. Not a little. Riders who are tiptoeing pick worse lines, brake earlier, and stiffen up in exactly the situations where staying loose matters. Confidence is a real suspension setting, it just does not have a clicker.

The problem is that most lowering is done badly. Strap kits, dog bone links bought off a shelf, spacers that stop the fork from using its own damping. They get the seat height down and hand you a bike that pushes in corners, wallows on the exit, and bottoms out on things it used to soak up.

What gets done differently here

Lowering here happens inside the components, and the fork and shock get done together so the bike keeps its attitude. Take travel out of one end and you have changed the geometry, whether you meant to or not. The rear squats and the front will not turn, or the front drops and the bike knifes into every corner.

Just as important: the fork keeps working like a fork. Shortening the stroke does not have to mean deleting a function of it, and it should not.

It goes on top of a service or revalve

Lowering is an add-on. The fork or shock has to come completely apart to do it, so it always rides along with a service or a revalve, and the lowering price is added to that.

The price assumes the bike can be lowered without custom springs. Some models need them, and that cost is extra. When the stock springs will do the job, they stay, because a standard spring is a lot easier to replace down the road than a custom one.

Getting the height right

Send your inseam and your riding weight with the rider info form. Most conversations about lowering start with a number the rider thinks they need and end somewhere different once we have talked about where the bike actually sits under them.