Hi, my name is Nate McCullough on behalf of Expert Village. In these clips we're going
to talk about the proper way to inspect, remove, replace, and maintenance your vehicle's shock
absorber. In this clip I'm going to talk about your replacement shock absorber and some of
the things that will come with it- and the appropriate way to assemble it prior to the
installation on your vehicle. Your new shock absorber is going to look somewhat similar
to this. It may not have an upper stud. It may in fact have a lower stud in which case
they will just be switched around. The shield or the shell is always going to be pointed
downward. What that does is prevents water from getting inside, and road contamination.
Make sure not to install your shock absorber this way. If the eyelets are matching, if
it has both doughnut styles on the top and bottom. What you will do then is create a
cup for water to sit in which will dramatically reduce the life of your shock. It will still
function correctly but the the life expectancy will be cut dramatically. When you open your
package this is what you'll pull out. What will also be in your shock absorber package
is some mounting hardware. The mounting hardware will consist of the following things (it may
vary a little bit from vehicle to vehicle and you're want to refer to the directions
that are supplied with your replacement component): These are isolating rubbers and they go on
the shock absorber to give it a flexible mounting point. As you drive the vehicle jostles back
and forth. If you mounted it without the rubbers it will bend and eventually bend and destroy
the shock mounting surface. How does the assembly go? You take your isolating rubber and install
it on the shock. (As a matter of fact that was the upper- sorry guys.) You take the lower
one and install it on the shock... Washer, and then rubber. The washer is sketched, as
you can see on the upper one, to hold the rubber. Once you have that done you take it
and slide it into the upper hole. This may take a little bit of muscle to get it on your
lower stud. We're sliding it right into the upper hole. As you can see there is a lip
here. That lip is supposed to protrude the hole. Make sure you have it centered like
so. From there you're going to compress the shock absorber. This may take a little bit
of muscle. If you don't have the arm strength to do it you can use your floor jack to crank
it up for you. I'm going to go ahead and use my arm and squeeze it up and slide it on the
lower stud. Right there, that's seated. What we're going to do is install the upper rubber
and again the lip is going to protrude from the bottom of the hole. Slide it right there
on top. Give it a wiggle to ensure it is centered. We then have our steel washer which is going
to cup the rubber in a downward direction to make a sandwich . And we're going to install
our retaining nut and run it down as tight as we can by hand. If the shock absorber hardware
package comes with a lock nut. You're going to want to install the lock nut (or the lock
washer) before your retaining nut. Once we have the upper side taken of we're
going to install the lower retaining nut. This particular shock absorber did not come
with a new one. It may, it may not. If your old fastener has deteriorated to the point
you don't think you can reuse it (or if the shoulder is rusted out and gone) you're going
to want to go back to the part store and see if they have one for you. Go ahead and spin
it on by hand.
There's no particular sequence for tightening these down. Just take it down, pretty much,
as tight as you can.
There's my lower- and we're going to go ahead and spin down my upper. The story with the
upper can be tough. Being that the shock absorber is a cylinder and it may want to spin on you
as you're tightening it down.
If it wants to spin on you you can install your pliers or your vice grips (which I like
to use.) As you can see my shock is wanting to turn. Install your vice grips. That will
be your second wrench.