How often do you service your fork?

I rarely use Strava or any kind of ride tracker, but if it helped me track service intervals I'd probably become interested.

I use trailforks built-in tracker, and it's pretty much spot-on on the service intervals at least for the lowers.  I mean I can definitely feel the fork doesnt work as good as new when it gets closer to the intervals defined in TF (and it alerts me as well).

Third kid- coil both ends so don’t even need to hold air

I don't track my rides. Strava is dumb. I ride at most 3 times a week for about an hour or so, but I also use my bike to walk the dogs sometimes. I do lowers once every 3-4 months. After 2 lower services, I drop the fork off for a full rebuild. 

Do lower services more often. Fresh fluid, foam rings, and dust wipers will go a long way. It's easy and you can get it done in garage in about an hour. 

If you go Rock Shox (vs. Fox) your tooling is a once in a lifetime investment basically. And you really need like 5 pieces of special tools at most to service a fork and a shock. 

I do lowers and aircan relubrication every 50 hours and a full rebuild every 200 hours (sometimes I relubricate the air spring on the fork at 100 hours). I track rides with Strava (everything is private now for the purpose of me tracking things) and then track it with probikegarage.

I do shuttles and bikeparks so rarely that riding time is riding time for me (uphills included, the suspension does still cycle there), but I cut all assisted uphills when I do shuttles or bikeparks to have pure net riding. 

As for frequency, 50 hours used to be 4 times a year, so 3 lowers and one full service. The Lyrik that was subjected to that shows no signs of wear and is still running on my GFs bike without problems. Now, with less riding, I did the full rebuild after about a year and a half.

As for probikegarage, it's not the best, but it's good. I might check the tracker too, but the ability to add and remove components in PBG is very cool as I cycle 3 different chains every 500 km.

Personally I got a lot of tools to do most things of bicycle maintenance, but there are also going to be special tools for this and special tools for that. Last year I realized that I hardly have any tools to do bearing maintenance, so my priority is to go all in and cover that area before suspension related tools. Just recently I've had to pay a mechanic to just change bearings for me(every single bearing on my bike is now sorted), and it made me feel pretty useless and helpless to be honest. It's not that I'm unable to do the job, it's just that I lack the tools and it just frustrated the crap out of me.

As I will head in the direction of Intend/EXT suspension wise I have no desire to invest money into tools for Fox products when I have no idea if I will even be using them once. I'm just slowly bit by bit upgrading this and upgrading that, and tools also cost money, so I am pro maintenance and pro doing things yourself, but I have a budget like everybody else...

Thus my comment. With Fox it's basically 300+ € of tooling for almost every generation of each product (exagerating), the procedures, as far as I've seen it, are complicated (burning off red loctite, seal installation bullets, etc.).

With Rock Shox, to fully service a fork, you need 2,5 mm, 5 mm allen keys, a hammer, circlip pliers, a big screw driver or a wrench (to pop out the wiper seals), a pick is useful and a vice with aluminium jaws. For a Super Deluxe, a strap wrench does come in handy to take off the aircan, you need the special (flat) wrench to take off the piggyback on previous gen shocks (it stays on on the current one), shaft clamps, which for RS have been the exact same part since... 20+ years ago? And you need the adapter to inflate the piggyback. A Vivid is more complicated, but as far as RS suspension goes, the tooling is simpler and much cheaper than bearing replacement tooling (confirmed, I am equipped with both).

Don't know what it's like with EXT, but I think Intend is even simpler. But you would need to align with them, I think they prefer to have the suspension sent in to be serviced.

As for bearing replacement, honestly, the best bet is to have a 3D printer and a threaded rod and some nuts if you want to be cheap. Even with a fancy bearing press set you'll still find yourself missing some specific parts, will have to jerry rig together things to make it work (pressing in bearings into a DT hub shell with the axle sticking out on both ends for example), sometimes the only way to get a bearing out is to knock it out with a screwdriver (chainstay pivot on my Bird), etc. Even with an AliExpress bearing puller set and a Unior bearing press I'll still be 3D printing deep adaptors to press in the bearings into a DT Swiss hub shell. And the upgrade I'd most like to handle bearings at this point? A small lathe. To be able to make any and every possible bearing press adaptor.

Personally I'd put suspension servicing above bearing servicing on the home mechanic priority list.

This was my first priority now to be honest. Just got them and I know now I should've gotten them a lot sooner. Hopefully they will aid me in suspension related matters as well.

When it comes to tools as a whole, I stay clear of cheap chinese stuff because I want to know that I want to use it. I'd rather have less things in life that I want to use, than filling up cabinet after cabinet of crap that are going to just give me another headache. It's too easy to find cheap chinese stuff and I am very aware how and where to get it if I wanted. Personally I just refuse it, because it's too easy.

Less is actually more.

PS: You seem to misread what I've tried to say the whole time, so you somehow think I mean that you shouldn't prioritize suspension maintenance, and that I look at bearing maintenance as more important. The only thing I've said is that the Fox shock and Fox fork that is currently on my bike is going to be swapped out and never to be used by myself again, and I will not be using this brand again for any forseeable future. As I have a local mechanic that can still do suspension work when needed, I'm not going to panic just because I skipped a lower leg service on items that are going to be swapped out. I'll do full service on both items before I ship them out the door and someone else will continue to use them. 

I only want to get to better suspension sooner, and as all maintenance is important as the complete bike is only my own responsibility, I cannot just ignore other areas when they are actually due for service. Full drivetrain needed to be swapped out which is now all top notch, and bearings also really needed to be swapped. I've serviced and upgraded just about anything on my bike now besides the fox/shock, so for this coming season I know my bike overall is in way better shape overall than most people's rides, so I have a good confidence I'll manage more than just ok.

I have to stress the importance that I only have 4 good months of riding where I live, so it's a big difference to someone living in a warmer climate who will quickly rack up a lot more abuse and wear on their bikes than I ever will. Both fork and shock had a full service last spring, so it's only used 4 months...

Try to understand what I'm trying to express this time, because I truly support maintaining all areas of a bike, you just got to understand when and where to invest your money at(I'll still use the same kind of bearings for this bike, but the fork and shock is going out the door which is why they have a lower priority) 

big service once a year by a professionell suspension shop.

I miss the days where I just rebuilt bikes for fun. 

Every 7 to 12 weeks. I have an Avalanche damper so it’s basically changing oil and lubing the seals. Super easy.

I have five bikes with suspension forks so i'd say it depends. I have some sense of the hours spent since last service, but for the lesser used bikes I do an overhaul every other winter. The parkbike has gotten three lower leg services this season and right now I'm doing a full service. 

I use strava (free version) to log my rides from a personal goals POV, not "look at me, look how far I rode". And if it's a pirate trail. I don't log it. 

As for mtb components (not just fork and shock), I use the "pro bike garage" app which links to strava to log hours and distance. Everything from regreasing frame/hub bearings to chain stretch can be monitored on it.

I used to have Ohlins front and back on my TM moto. The thing I learnt very quickly was how the suspension would go from awesome to poo in 5 hours riding. Lesson is full service twice as often as you normally would. 

If you’re a bit tech-savvy, you can use the Strava API and connect it to Notion to track your riding hours and miles for each component. This makes it much easier to monitor service times. 

This is a great discussion! A few things I'll add:

1. I'm pretty decent about servicing the lowers and replacing seals on my forks, and that's kept me out of any real trouble or premature bushing or stanchion wear for two decades of riding. It's not rocket science. A seal/wiper installation tool is a relatively cheap one-time purchase, but you can do it for free, too- I recently helped a friend set new seals by cutting out the inner ring from his old seals to make a crude setter tool for the new seals. So you can do the whole job for only the cost of the service kit and oil, if you're a caveman in a hurry. But since I quit racing a decade ago (and stopped getting suspension service for free in the Fox tent), don't think I've ever serviced and rebuilt a fork damper and I've only serviced maybe one shock damper. Yikes. Hasn't bit me yet.

2. I think I'm pretty perceptive on the bike (I hope so, if I'm testing products for Vital), but I don't know that I've ever noticed a difference before or after a service to my lowers or after a damper rebuild. The performance difference seems really marginal to me, it's more a function of longevity and preventative maintainence. But, all the time, I hear people saying "it feels so much better!" after doing a lowers service. Am I taking crazy pills?

3. Heat. Cycles of all sorts wear down suspension components, so all hours of movement count, whether they're flat, uphill, or down, but not all hours are created equal. Pounding out DH laps on violent terrain creates much higher shaft speeds and a lot more heat inside your fork and shock than riding on gentle terrain does. As a result, DH bikes (and single crown bikes that go downhill a lot) seem to eat suspension components alive compared to their daily driver trail bike friends. Adjust your service intervals accordingly.

4. Contaminants. Rain is bad, mud is bad, grit is bad. Clean your seals and dust wipers between services. Heck, clean them between laps if you can. Riding in pristine conditions will always be easier on every part of your bike than riding through hell.

5. Don't underestimate the impact of UV rays, heat, and elevation on your rubber seals. Almost every time I've seen a fork puking oil was at a bike park on a sunny day in the summer, most of them above 5000 feet.

6. Lastly, no rider is harder on equipment than neglect, not even Richie Rude. If you haven't seen @AngryBikemechanic on Instagram, his page is an endless doom scroll of neglect and entropy. It's incredible. 10/10 recommend.

Oh, the fork is gushing oil

that means that I still have oil left, G2G

I used to be pretty diligent about servicing based on the hours (divided my typical ride duration by its miles to get an hours:mile factor), and using the miles on equipment in Strava.  Then I ended up with more bikes, and was faffing with different stroke lengths, etc. and just gave up.  I try to do a lowers service on each of my 3 bikes in late spring (after the rain and mud are done) and early fall (after the worst of the summer dust).  I will sometimes have the local suspension guy do a full damper service around Christmas time (I can do it myself but it takes a bit of time).  I went through a streak of swapping shocks pretty quickly so haven't done those in a while, although one of them is probably due.  Again, I might do it myself or maybe I'll pay someone - time is the deciding factor there.

I know freshly serviced fork feels really plush, but it also feels different, which takes me a ride or two to adjust to.  And as awful is as it to hear, I'd rather have consistency than fresh change.

The ol' Land Rover owner method !

Regarding seal installation tools, a 3D printer is great for those. Just a few cents worth of plastic and you have the tool ready in an hour

trailforks helps. it's realy surprising, how quick you'll get to those 50/200 hrs within busy couple of weeks of riding.