fork leg puzzle NC forks

[Bevel bob]

Dropped my front wheel out to play with mudguard and found the brake side slider drops 20/25 mm lower than the speedo side. before I pull it all appart to find out what gives is there a simple explanation ?I have recently stripped and rebuilt the legs.

[Bevel bob]

Pulling the slider down it came straight off the staunchion . The damper valve is not in the staunchion . Its pretty obvious the circlip has let go and all the bits are in the slider. Maybe I did not get the circlip properly seated. Even so thats a bit alarming , forks wheel and guard are all secured by two tiny circlips, so avoid aviating the bike over jumps!!, or dropping the wheel into big potholes. I wonder if the Narrow case scramblers in the USA had problems with this feature?. Need to find some better clips.I'm thinking of using std seager internal circlips .New pattern std type wire clips are availiable but on close inspection appear to be different to the orriginals.

[Bevel bob]

After recovering the parts I find that the intact leg which has been carrying the topping out load from both legs has an orriginal clip. The leg with the failure was a new clip which appears to have an untensioned diameter smaller than the old clip and a fitted gap much bigger than the orriginal. Make your own conclusions. Later, all back together with an old clip thats far more trickey to install but once in has no room to move/come out.