I'm Tim Anderson, Shock Specialist here at QA1. Today we're going to take this shock apart and go
through a rebuild process with you. Rebuild would be maybe you have to replace the damaged part on
the shock or maybe your valving is a little off on the track and you want to change it to a different
valving either compression or rebound. We're going to go through that process with you here today.
First thing that I like to do if you got a shock vise great you don't have
to have one you can use a regular vise and swap the the shaft and the body in and out
depending on what part you're working on. But the shock vise is really handy to have. So I got the
body clamped in here. First thing you want to do is make sure that the rod is all the way out it
just helps not make as much of a mess when you're when you get into your shock. There are two holes
up here that's how you take the closure nut piece off of the body. So just take that our wrench here
we'll back that out.
Once you get this far you will see our gland which is down in into the the shock body. There is an
O-ring kind of holding that in place so you just kind of got to lift up and down on it a few times
and it'll pop out. This is the O-ring that kind of keeps that uh tight in there and seals against
the body. Always take that off and just keep it on my my shock Vise there. So what we're going
to do now is pull our compression tube assembly out of the out of the shock body we got our base
valve our compression tube and our gland on our rod assembly it's all together so what we need
to do is separate the gland from the compression tube. And you can do that by just taking a dead
blow hammer to it just tap it in a few different locations might have to spin it a little bit.
And it'll come apart. And usually you do this over a bucket or something that'll help save
some of the mess but once you get that off there keep your end of the compression tube
up it is full of oil try to save as much as you can unless you're changing it all out. Then you
should be able to slide the Piston assembly out of the shock. You still got your oil in your
compression tube. If you're just revolving a shock typically I would just put this back in right away
but we're gonna do a complete rebuild here so we're gonna dump this out.
Clamp the Piston rod assembly into the vise.
You'll have oil in the shock body as well.
You're going to want to remove your gas bag and dump the shock oil out
as well. Things to look for in a gas bag is if you see it's been pinched anywhere sometimes it
can get pinched between the the gland in the compression tube or if you see any oil inside
the bag that means it's time to replace it. Now getting back to our piston rod assembly.
If we're just revolving the shop we can just take the the Piston nut off change our change our shim
assortment and then put the shock back together. You just do that by taking this top not apart
the shim stack that's going to be on the top of the Piston that's your rebound stack.
I like to label a rag with a C and an R on it so you know where which one goes where.
Make sure you keep in mind which way the Piston is oriented there's there is a
rebound and compression side they're not labeled they're just they look different. The rebound has
three holes against the rebound stack. The compression will have six.
So I always leave it up the way it's supposed to be on the on the the rod.
Then your compression stack will be here on the bottom we'll set that over here.
Then if you're going to be changing any seals you know you can slide this stuff off.
The wiper seal that is in the the closure nut that is actually part of the closure now you
can't just change that seal you got to change the whole nut out. So if you're going to replace that
get yourself a closure nut as a replacement or a rebuild kit that'll have all these parts in it.
When we're going to replace the seals in the gland there's just the main seal here that pops out
pretty easy just with hand and then you you put it back in falls right into place then an O-ring to
replace here on the gland as well. Also the hyper screw which takes a small allen wrench to to take
that in and out. So as we put this back together we have our shock bullet here this just helps
the seals go over the shock piston rod prevents them from getting hung up or torn on anything.
But you'd go your wiper seal and your closure nut first.
Then we have this washer that goes in between the closure nut and the gland so you put that on next.
Then you'd put your gland assembly on.
And then we're back to our valving. So your compression stack will go on first.
There are different shim assortment sizes and thicknesses I highly recommend getting yourself
a caliper to measure each one when you put your shock together just make sure your thicknesses
and diameters are what they're supposed to be. It's a good habit to get into but before we put
our compression stack on there's always a washer that goes on first called a valve stack washer.
Then we have our valve stack valve plate and then our compression stack.
Next we'll go our piston. Remember that our the side with the
six ports on the compression stack would be the compression side so that side goes down.
Our rebound stack is on the top this one is where we typically put our bleed shim. So this does need
to line up with an actual port on the Piston. if it's clocked off one way or the other it it
won't have the proper bleed into it. So you'd set your bleed shim down so it lines up with a port
and put the rest of your shim stack behind it and you should be good to go.
So we got that lined up I'll put the rest of it on here.
And then followed by a valve plate washer.
And then the nut.
And always hold the the shim and the Piston together are torque in the nut down.
And
another thing to check too when you're rebuilding is that your piston looks like it's in good shape.
Or just replace it if you have any concern over it. There is also an O-ring behind the
Piston band you can see that. These are always good parts to replace if you're
just doing a yearly refresh or something just put new new ones in. The base valve
that is a press fit. So that that just takes we just can use an aluminum tube
or something just to get into the end of the the the compression tube and you just
it'll pop out of there. If you change it for anything any valving reason you need to change
from a soft to a firm if you're going up with your compression stack. You know anything anything a
five compression and under would use a soft. Six compression through a nine would use a medium base
valve and then anything 10 and higher would use a firm. Then we also have a soft firm base valve
which would be for compression valving. Five and under with rebound valving 10 and higher
so your your tie down shocks and that just has a bleed set in it that will match with your piston
bleed and not you know cut down hysteresis and be more consistent. To put the base valve back in um
if you got a press you can just press in or just tap it in with a hammer. Once you finally torque
everything down in place with the closure nut it all snaps into place the way it should be anyway.
So now that we got our base valve back into the compression tube
we are ready to reassemble the shock. So we're going to put our shock body back in the Vise here.
First thing you want to do is put a small amount of oil in the the body itself about an inch off
the bottom. It doesn't need to be perfect we just want to get some oil in there so when we drop the
base valve side of the compression tube in there it helps bleed some of that air out of
there and doesn't get trapped. So we take our compression tube along with our gas bag we wrap
them together I like to make sure that there's oil on both the compression tube and the gas
bag it just helps to keep air from trap being trapped in there. So I kind of oil them both up
and then hold them together when we drop them down into the tube. Just hold them like this.
Your gas bag should be down just a little bit from the compression tube and when you get it
down in there it might rise up to about the same height as the compression tube but you don't want
it any higher than that. That can cause it to get pinched in the gland and cause a leak. So
just take your time once you get used to it it goes pretty easy. You just drop it down in
so we have our compression tube and our gas bag inner shock body we got a little bit of
oil on the bottom and then we made sure that our gas bag is not higher than our compression
tube nor is it too low where it's underneath the compression tube and get pinched on the bottom.
So now that we have that in there we're going to fill the the shock up with oil
just above the top of the compression tube both on the inside and outside of the tube.
So now the oil is filled up just above the compression tube.
So now that we have our oil filled up in here we can take the
rod assembly out of the vise. We're going to want to undo or remove our hyper screw.
All right so we take our hyper screw out. Set that aside for now.
Hold the gland all the way up against the closure nut and hold those together. Now
we're ready to drop the Piston down into the compression tube.
And as you push it down in there you'll see some air bubbles start to come up
what I like to do is take a take a hammer and tap on the end of the Piston rod.
That does that pops open the compression stack and allows any trapped air in the Piston to to
release. And once we get that down in there we just cycle the the Piston Rod up and down.
And do that a few times until you see that there's no air coming out.
Okay so when that's all ready then we'll drop the gland into place that just slides down.
Always kind of nice to have a little paper towel around it because the
hyper screw Port will shoot oil out of there.
And then you have to snap it into place in the compression tube so
you can just push it down with your fingers
and your gland is in place. So now you have oil on top of the gland which is
what it's supposed to do for now. We want to hold the gland down into place
and pull the rod up so it said it's fully extended position. This is where we want it
when we put the hyper screw in and then the seal on top of the gland. So hold it in that location
and you put your hyper screw in
and don't over tighten this
doesn't take much to keep it in where it's supposed to be. Now we'll drop our
our main o-ring body to gland o-ring and we'll push that down into place.
It's just a groove on the outside of the gland now this residual oil that
we have here on top of the gland we got to get rid of that we don't want
that there anymore. Now we have their seals in place and our hyper screw. So
we have this little bottle that works well for uh suctioning all the oil off of there
and you can also just use a paper towel or a rag just to wipe it off.
Try to get this fairly dry. Next we have our our washer that we put on
that helps hold the main seal in place so you want to make sure that is in there and
then we can tighten down the bring down the closure nut and tighten that. So I'll get
it started by hand here sometimes you gotta spin it back and forth to find the threads.
Tighten it down.
And that should do it. It's always good to cycle it up and down once you get it
together to make sure that you still feel like you have all the air out of it. And
then if you got a dyno or access to a dyno it's always great to dyno test them just make
sure you got everything together properly and everything's working the way it should. If you
have any questions feel free to call our tech line or you can visit our website at QA1.net.