# Spawn Owners - Brood Fork Service Manual/Instructions?



## RMCDan (Feb 28, 2008)

Any Brood fork owners out there who have done a basic seal service? Spawn sent me a seal kit, but didn't include service details such as a recommended procedure for removing the lowers, oil weight and oil volumes for the lowers, etc. I've emailed them a couple times asking for this info but they have not responded (I know they've been really busy opening up a storefront in Squamish so that isn't too surprising). I'd really like to know some of these details before I pull the thing apart.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

*How To Service Brood and Lil Shredder 20" Forks*

Hi guys, demo (aka Brian at Lil Shredder) did me a huge favor and walked me through servicing these forks. I quickly found out (after seeing a bunch of other iterations of this) that he was the designer of the fork and is a pro and servicing it. He happened to be super cool guy and answered all of my questions. Nevertheless, the video isn't perfect as I didn't start videoing early enough in the process. There are pics which fill the gaps and if you watch the whole video before tearing into it, it'll fill the early gaps by seeing it re-assembled at the end. Side note, you can shave down the bottom out bumper and get more travel out of the fork. There is a hard stop in it that you can notice if you remove all the air and cycle it slowly. Shaving that yellow bumper down can give you back closer to a full 80mm of usable.

You'll need a few items:

1- 9mm deep socket
2- 1 1/16th chamferless socket (you can machine down a normal socket)
3- Two O-ring that Brian has
4- Slick honey
5- Some oil, Fox 20wt works...maybe 5wt would be interesting?
6- Rubber mallet
7- snap-ring pliers
8- Some normal, mid-sized pliers
9- Bike stand clamp or some soft-vise to hold the fork
10- Shop rags, ideally lint-less
11- Nitrile gloves are never a bad idea
12- Small hex, a 2mm I think


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## RMCDan (Feb 28, 2008)

I had no plans to open up the damper, but is there no lube oil in the lowers at all? The oil residue on the dropouts and rebound knob would indicate that there is. Sure would be nice to know how much to put in there.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

RMCDan said:


> I had no plans to open up the damper, but is there no lube oil in the lowers at all? The oil residue on the dropouts and rebound knob would indicate that there is. Sure would be nice to know how much to put in there.


Yeah man. Keep pinging them . I'd like to know this as well. How much oil, what weight oil and if there is any oil in the airside etc. FWIW ours is working fine, I'd just like to keep it that way. I also have a sneaking suspicion that there may be a way for me to move from 80mm of travel to 100 and slacken it out a bit more too something closer to 67d. We could really use it. So man, if you do take it apart, please take a bunch of pictures.


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## RMCDan (Feb 28, 2008)

Heard back. No lube oil in the lowers. Recommended applying some teflon-based grease to the seals and bushings.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

RMCDan said:


> Heard back. No lube oil in the lowers. Recommended applying some teflon-based grease to the seals and bushings.


Cool, have you taken yours apart yet? I'd love to see the video and tools used.

teflon-based grease...that is not slick honey is it?


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## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

Clean and lube the lowers with Slick Honey. The cartridge is non serviceable. If it goes back you replace it. I've taken lots of them apart. Let me know if you have any questions.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

Demo9 said:


> Clean and lube the lowers with Slick Honey. The cartridge is non serviceable. If it goes back you replace it. I've taken lots of them apart. Let me know if you have any questions.


Thanks Demo, what tools are needed to do the job. Anything special?


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## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

A little allen key to get the rebound knob off and a deep socket to pull the bolts. Then the lowers slide right off. You could then take a spanner and pull the nut off the end of the stanchion on the air rod side. First let the air out of the air chamber. Then then put the shock pump on and pump till the air rod and piston come out. I then lube the o-ring with Fox fork oil. I then pull the top cap off the air side and lube the o-ring on the top cap with fork oil. Next reinstall the air rod and air rod nut and tighten. Follow up with a table spoon of Fox oil on top of the piston and reinstall the top cap. I find the forks to start loosing air over time and this seems to remedy the problem. I do have O-ring for the forks if needed.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

Hey demo, quick question...is there any sort of spacer or something that would allow someone to bump up the stock travel from 80mm to 100mm? They make a 100mm fork and I'm hoping its actually the same fork but with a reducer in there or something.


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## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

If their is a spacer on the fork it would be right under the White ring with the roll pin in it at the upper end of the air rod. Its Black and about 20mm long with a split in it.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

Hi Demo, our fork is feeling a little less plush and dry (hard to explain). I'm guessing I should take it apart and run through the procedure you mentioned.

Questions:
-How can you tell if the damper is good or bad? I'm curious as to what to expect. 

-The fork does feel a little linear but I'm not sure if it's possible to increase the ramp up with a volume reducer. 

-Also is there a seals kit or anything like that beyond the o-ring you mentioned... Or is that not needed? 

-What weight of Fox oil do you us? I have 5wt and 20wt, all fox stuff for my 36grip2 as well as slick honey.

-I don't have a chamferless socket head to remove the top cap... Is there one you recommend? I have a special Fox one for my 36 buts that's it.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

Update: I added a service procedure video from this fork based on watching Brian @ Lil Shredders do it. Its in the second post of this thread. Brian! You the man! Thanks again and for everything you've done for kids bikes. It was cool to hear how you pretty much started the whole "legit kids mtb" industry. Cheers.

Oh, after a full service, the fork was SUPER buttery smooth again! My kid noticed it immediately as it was feeling dry before and not nearly as smooth after him hitting it hard for a year.


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## CeUnit (Jul 9, 2014)

This thread really helped me prepare for servicing our 20" Rokkusuta's fork. Thanks svinyard!!!

Like you reported, our fork was getting really 'sluggish' for lack of a better word. Here's what I did to revive it:

1. Obtained a seal kit from Spawn. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure I didn't need this as the original seals looked OK. But I replaced them anyways (destroyed original ones during the extraction) since I had them.

2. Mounted bike on a repair stand and removed the front wheel and the front brake caliper. Left the fork attached to the bike. 

3. Released all the air from the fork.

4. Removed the red rebound cap with a 1.5mm hex key. I later found a 1/16" hex key fit better.

5. Used a normal 9mm socket (not a deep one) to remove both leg bolts.

6. Pulled off the lowers.

7. Used an exacto knife to cut the (originally 20mm) yellow bumper to roughly 5mm. I considered not installing it at all, but bottoming out would be pretty harsh, so I kept a little bit. Note even though I bought a Rokkusuta, the fork only had 80mm of travel (any other Rokkusuta owners measured theirs?). Now it has 95mm.

Note I didn't take out the air rod, nor service the air rod at all.

8. Wiped down the stanchions and the insides of the lowers with blue shop rags and a pair of extra long dual pivot needlenose pliers.

9. Lubed up the seals and the stanchions with generous amounts of WPL Fork Boost lube (I don't have any Slick Honey or Teflon Grease).

10. Reassembled. I found it tricky to get the stanchions into the seal openings. I eventually figured if you angle the lowers towards front of bike so both stanchions are seated into the seals at and angle, then rock the lowers towards the rear of the bike (and back and forth), that worked the best. And remember to look for the detent in the rebound axle before tightening the red knob!

The fork feels super awesome now!


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

Sweet man, thanks for the notes. It was weird making a Youtube video...at least someone has used it. That extra 20mm of travel is super important IMO as it is where the post gets somewhat progressive (its pretty dang linear) and prevents harsh bottom outs. If I did it again, I'd remove the yellow thing entirely. After shaving it down, we've had LESS bottom outs for sure as its compressing the air to slow down the hit rather than hitting the yellow bumper early.


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## laksboy (Sep 4, 2007)

Great info here.


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## cakemonster (Sep 30, 2012)

Thank you for these instructions.

Everything worked.

My son had great performance, but had been slowly losing air especially when fork upside down (hanging bike on wall). My suspicion was the oil that Demo had put above the air spring had been used up(and likely pooled at top under cap when hangin upside down), and maybe he needed new o-rings (he had replaced the cartridge damper and rebuilt for me after my son blew it up last year).

So I took it apart to see if I could temporize while waiting for new o-rings etc from Demo.

A few thoughts:

1. In place of the snap ring pliers/pliers a basic spanner works well to get the airspring out(I used a Park SPA-2 red one). The snap ring pliers I had were not burly enough to use like in the video but spanner was simple.

2. I didn't have a chamferless socket that would fit, so I didn't take the aircap off, I just took the whole airspring out(using the pump to push it out including the floating piston head), and put a little Fox 20 gold in the top while fork inverted as Demo suggested(essentially on top of the air spring/beneath the air cap). Then I put airspring with new slick honey back in as described above. I believe this achieves the same thing, but happy to be corrected.

3. You don't put oil in the lowers like an open bath fork, and as such there are no foam rings below the dust seals like forks that have oil in the lowers (confirmed with Demo). Just slick honey.

4. 1 1/16 is ~ 26.9 mm, so it is likely that that a 27mm chamferless socket will work for air cap(freely available), especially as most parts are metric. I didn't have so took the approach above. 

I have screwed up a few fork rebuilds on kids forks (snapped off damper end of X-fusion night before going to bike park and had to improvise with a piece of theraband for a seal and some locktight on remaining threads before Mike sent me a new one!), but the instructions above plus some help from Demo and this is easily doable. Just go gentle with the aluminum parts (foot bolts!) and mind the ballpark torque (note how Demo moves his hands toward axis of rotation to minimize leverage as tightening).

Regarding how you know if the cartridge damper is bad, the fork is like a pogo stick (all spring, no damping). If you turn the rebound damping all the way closed (clockwise), or close the lockout(all the way clockwise), it has no effect (doesn't influence how hard to compress or how fast it comes back, and you don't hear the sound of oil going through the damper). And in my case, it is when your kid rolls off the trail after first of a few DJ in series, and looks at me like WTF after landing on dirt jump he was comfortable on because instead of the fork behaving normally, it just bounced bounced back at him and he could barely control the landing.

Thank you again to Demo for designing and getting these forks made. Many versions now, but if you want service he is still the one to ask (Brian @ little shredder). Some of the newer folks (JUNIT) look good too, but tapered doesn't work in the ICON frames, so take care of your fork! Especially hard to find replacement for the 15mm through axle option!


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## RMCDan (Feb 28, 2008)

Anyone know if 30 mm seals from RS, Suntour, et al. will work in this fork? Mine's due for service but Spawn still doesn't have seals on their site and haven't responded to emails.


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## svinyard (Aug 14, 2017)

RMCDan said:


> Anyone know if 30 mm seals from RS, Suntour, et al. will work in this fork? Mine's due for service but Spawn still doesn't have seals on their site and haven't responded to emails.


I asked Spawn about how to service their Brood hubs. No response either. Kind of annoying/disappointing.

You might reach out to [email protected] or the guys at Prevelo. They all use the same fork (rebranded) iirc and probably have serviced a few.


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## cakemonster (Sep 30, 2012)

Lil Shredder has the seals and O rings(demo9 on MTBR) for rebuilds. 

I just ordered a couple sets from him(info at lilshredder.com is the email). 

He also was kind enough to make me a 30mm seal driver.

He also had the new damper cartridge when ours blew up.

The other folks (Trailcraft et al) may have as well.


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## RMCDan (Feb 28, 2008)

Good suggestion, just sent an email to Lil Shredder.


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## wallander (Jul 22, 2018)

I'm rebuilding our Spawn Jama Yama 20" fork. Spawn is slow on response, so I don't know yet if they can provide me a rebuild kit.

Brian at Lil Shredder could provide me with o-rings and a replacement bolt (one on the damper side had cracked). But he was out of cartridges.

I really want to get the bike in order soon, does someone here know of any other place to source a damper cartridge from ?


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## wallander (Jul 22, 2018)

I’m still searching for a damper cartridge replacement... The known brands selling this fork seem to be out of spare cartridges.

I’ve tracked down that the Spawn/Lil Shredder/Trailcraft/VPACE/Propain/Prevelo 20” fork seems to be a rebranded ”SASO Mekkem air suspension fork”. But I can’t find any working contact for SASO/Meks/Mekkem (e-mail is just bouncing)

So I’m not closer to finding a source for the cartridge. If someone has more ideas I would be very happy!


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## ahilliard (Apr 2, 2009)

Any news on spare part sourcing? I've got a MEKKEM Carbon fork which is probably coming up on needing a seal replacement.


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## wallander (Jul 22, 2018)

ahilliard said:


> Any news on spare part sourcing? I've got a MEKKEM Carbon fork which is probably coming up on needing a seal replacement.


Yes! I finally found a shop in Germany after talking to VPACE. I could get a new damper cartridge from them. They do carry seals too, check this out: Service Kit für SASO Gabeln – 11Motors

I have been in contact with Constantin Hoffman at 11Motors, and I got really nice service!


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## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

You might check with this company. All-Weather Damper Cartridge I believe the 110mm travel damper is the same as what was used in the Lil Shredder fork as well as all the Mekkem forks. Make sure you get the lower leg bolt as the new damper has a larger thread. I have fork seals if needed and can service the fork as well.


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