How to pump up front air shock?

[madisongrrl]

Okay, another newbie question. My front shock is bobbing like a pogo stick. It's all well and good on rooty trails, but when I go to ride a gravel road, I can't climb well at all because of all the pogoing. The problem is that I have no idea how to add air, which I'd like to do for a fireroad ride planned for this week.

In addition to adding air, did you adjust your compression/rebound settings also?

From the manual I found on the Rockshox site, I see that my fork has a positive air and negative air valve ("dual air"). I understand that the positive air valve is at the top of the left fork leg. I am not quite sure if the negative air valve is at the top of the right fork leg (which appears just like the left fork leg) or at the bottom of the left fork leg, where there is yet another valve. So that's my first question.

One valve is on top and the other should be on the bottom. (I have a Reba R.S. front fork). I think the manual recommends that you set them to the same pressure, then go from there.

My next question is how to pump them up. The directions say to pump them with a high-pressure pump with schrader valve. I guess something is missing, because the valves on my fork do not stick out, they are recessed with threads inside them, so I guess my pump itself needs a schrader valve to screw into them? I've looked at a lot of pictures of shock pumps online, and they all look just like mine - they end in a female connector that screws into a schrader valve. Or is my fork missing an adapter of some type? I bought the bike used, so who knows if it came with everything. The LBS pumped the shock for me initially when they were doing other repair work on the bike, but I have no idea how and don't want to take it there for something that should be an easy DIY task!

On my R.S. front shock, I have to remove covers to get to the valves. My shock pump just screws on to the valve. The fitting on the end of the shock pump looks like a metallic cyclinder and it is internally threaded. I'm not quite sure from your pictures what is going on. In the first picture, did you remove a cap? Or is it just exposed? It certainly doesn't look like a shock pump with a schrader fitting is going to work. If no one on this message board can help you with this, you should call Rock Shox and ask. I'm sure they could answer this easily.

http://www.sram.com/en/rockshox/index.php