Hello, John Talley here with Partzilla.com, and welcome back to our
build series of a 2018 Honda Grom. Today we're going to be focused in on the
suspension. Now the parts we're going to use is actually two separate part
numbers. You've got one that's the complete fork dampener, and it's going to
have your compression and your rebound side along with all the other pieces
that you're going to need to get it swapped out on a stock slider and tube.
Now the other piece we're going to be using is a rear shock from Ohlins. It is
actually completely adjustable, compression and rebound adjustments on
it. Really a nice unit and it's going to
make a huge difference on how this machine handles. Now the neat thing about
this one? When we're through building it we're actually going to give it away. So
if you would, check the link in the description below. It'll carry you to a
landing page where you can enter to win. But if the contest is already over, why
don't you leave this little note in the comment section and tell us what machine
you'd like to see me modify and then us give away. So if you're ready, we'll go
dive into this thing.
Just to give you an overview of what we're about to do-- and now granted this
one's already broken down a pretty good bit, so if you're doing this from the
start you would end up having to remove your seat in the rear tail section. And
once you get that out of the way, we're gonna have to go a little bit further
there is a lock mount that I need to remove on this side and then I need to
remove quote, the rear lower fender. Once I get that out of the way,
I'll bring over the floor jack, support the machine from the middle, and then we
can remove the two bolts and then pop it in there, I figured we'd start on the
easy and first and then we'll deal with the forks later in the day. Let's start
with this lower fender first. This just got a few five millimeter bolts going
through it. The real trick is the other side, I don't think there's enough room
to get around the exhaust. We may end up having to pull off the muffler and then
we'll get this lifted out of the way. So what we'll do is loosen up this and then
get the muffler to shift up out of the way. Alright, where the seat release
lock is there's a bracket. Screw here, then one up top.Their both Phillips. That
should swing out of the way enough for us to get to that top bolt for the shock.
There we go. So now we can get to both of them. Let's go ahead and get the jack
under there and just support it so it doesn't collapse when we drop them out. That
should do it. What you have is a 14 on the bolt side and a 17 on the nut side.
It's like it's the same thing don't low. Let's see if we can pop at least without
having to hold the other side just yet. Yep, lookie there. There's one. There's two.
Look at your difference here kids: completely adjustable, spring rate,
compression, rebound. Absolutely non adjustable. Alright let's get it back
together. Now we're actually gonna put this in upside down so it'll actually
clear. Now if this bothers you, and you don't want to install it, you know, upside
down, they do make one-- they being Ohlins, to where it is they remote reservoir. The
reservoir ends up sticking out on the side. I have no problem with installing
one of these things upside down so that's what I'm gonna do. There we go.
Done with that for now. Now we use the original nuts and bolts that came out of
this, and we're gonna take it back to the factory spec of 34 foot-pounds for both
the bottom one and the top. Alright so only thing we need to do now is
go ahead and remount this holder for the lock switch and then get that lower rear
fender remounted. Then reinstall the muffler and then we get to do the fun
part: the front forks. Okay so the easy parts over with, let's really dive into
those forks now. So what I'm gonna do next is take the bike off, spin it around,
support the front end and pull those forks, and then we're gonna dive into
them. So we're getting ready to drop out the the front tire, caliper, and then
we're gonna drop out the forks. But before we do any of that,
let's go ahead and loosen up our top caps because they're gonna be really
hard to hold still, and the the clamps are actually doing a great job of that
right now, so let's take advantage of that and at least go ahead and break
them loose. What I'm doing now is removing the handlebars because yes, I
could grab a large wrench and break those loose but when I go to put it back
together, well guess what? I've got to torque it back to spec and you won't be
able to that with a wrench. So we're going to go
ahead and drop down our handlebars where we've got easy access to these fore caps.
Now if you want to make sure you get your handlebars they back in exactly the
right position, go ahead and make a couple of marks, and make it easier to line back up.
when you go to reinstall them. There we go. that'll give us plenty of room to get
around there. And these are both 36. Alright, good enough.
Now let's get that front tire and the caliper off. This one is an ABS unit, so
you need to disconnect the speed sensor wire as well. Be careful with it as they
are easily damaged. Also looks like they had red loctite
in there as well, so we'll be adding that back in when we go to reinstall it. A
couple of 12s on our caliper. There she goes. Quite tight on those two. Next let's
get our axle bolts out. Should be able to loosen up the clamps. Alright we've got
the right one out, let's head over to the teardown table and start pulling this
thing apart. So I've got it clamped down in our vice, just have a little towel
there to keep it from scratching it up. It doesn't have to be super tight
because we're just removing this cap which is already loosened. And when
you're doing this, you want to make sure that your table is clean. All the
surfaces you're going to be working on are clean, because you do not want to get
any foreign contaminants inside of your forks. Next we're gonna grab that and
then remove our cap. Whenever I'm taking one of these apart, I
just lay them out in order. That way I won't spend so much time running back
and forth to the diagram. Now let's go ahead and dump out the oil and pump it out.
When you're doing this, you do not want to pull all the way out on the lower
fork tube because we actually gonna leave this together. There's no real
reason for us to pull the seals out, because that's not what we're after.
We're gonna let it hang here and finish draining. While it's doing that, I'm gonna
go ahead and remove the other fork and just lay it
to the side. Hopefully this thing will be through and then we'll continue taking
it apart. Alright Ohlins makes a special tool to hold this, and what you're
basically doing is creating a clamp and it's actually putting a protrusion
inside of one of these holes to hold it still. Well, I didn't buy that tool. What I
did do, is I already had a 31 millimeter seal driver. All I did was just drill a
hole in it and then put an 8 millimeter pin through it. Now there is a little bit
of a rough edge on this tool, so what we're going to do is wrap it with a
piece of paper because we're not actually clamping down on the tube we're
just holding this pin into one of those holes. That's all we're trying to
accomplish. And when I place it up in there, I'll drop it down, put it in the
vise, and that should hold it still. Now just all that doesn't fall apart, I'm
actually going to tape it together. One modified special tool. That should do. Now
the fun begins. I'm gonna go grab a heat gun, bring this up to around 200 degrees,
and what we're trying to do is break down the Loctite that's inside of this
particular connection. But here's the real important part: this is a reverse
thread so we're actually going to turn this clockwise to loosen it. So, 185, 184.
Let's give it a shot Yeah, resist the temptation to just grab
this with your bare hands. You won't be happy. Keep in mind that tubes gonna be
pretty hot as well. While all that Loctite is still warm, let's go ahead and wipe it
out of the bottom part. Still warm. Alright, next let's go and get this end
cap off and this is a 14 millimeter.
Alright these last couple of threads, you're gonna get your hand near it
because spring's gonna try to kick it out and the washer. Not a lot of pressure but
just be ready for it. There we go. Cap, our washer.
Alright, let's go ahead and get this out of the clamp so we can get the dampening
rod out of it. That worked well. That's what we were after. So, we've got
everything fully disassembled now but there are a couple of pieces that we
need to take off the stock dampener rod and transfer them over to the new one
from Ohlins. Now the one we're going to start with is going to be the rebound
side, and you can tell we're on the rebound side because the this little
ring right here this is actually called a piston ring. And the flat side is
forced up against this end of the dampener. And we're actually going to
take it off and transfer it over to our rebound side of our new Ohlins part. And
you know this is the rebound side one because it was marked inside the
packaging, and plus I put an R on it, but if you took it out of the packaging and
you've got mixed up as to which one,s which? You can tell because your spring
is on the bottom side of this holder. So to take off this piston ring, we just
want to carefully expand it just enough to get off the old dampener rod and then
we're gonna reinstall it into the Ohlins piece. The other piece that we're gonna
transfer over is this return spring, and that is all we will need off of this
particular piece. So let's put this dampener rod back into our fork tube.
Next we're going to put in the springs and I've decided to go with a heavier
the two. They send it with a 5.5 and a 6, we're gonna go with the
six. I'm guessing the person that's going to win this is about my size, so
we're gonna go with the larger one. At this point we need to reattach our tool
and then clamp it back in the vise. Critical that you get this lined up
correctly. Once again let's tape these two halves together so they don't fall
off as we get it in the vise. So now we put in a couple of new pieces. We have a
washer and a spacer that came with the kit.
Now we reinstall the bottom cap. Make sure there's some oil or either grease
on this o-ring as we put this in. And we're gonna take this to 40 Newton-
meters, or 29.5 foot-pounds. Now let's take it out of the vise and start
working on the other end. Next let's grab our circlip and get it put in place.
See how strong my fingers are here. Now we'll just slide it down and slip it
into that groove. There we go. So with our circlip on, we take the Ohlins washer and
you want the chamfered side facing toward the circlip of course. Then, you
take the rubber bump that was in the old top cap, insert it into the new Ohlins
one, put that in place. Then we'll take the crush washer and the Ohlins bolt, apply a
little bit of Loctite, insert it, and then we're gonna tighten that to 15 Newton
meters. There we go. Next, let's go ahead and get it back into
the vise and then we're gonna fill it up with 235 milliliters of fork oil. And I'm
actually using some five weight from Maxima, but if you wanted to use the
Ohlins, we carry that as well. So, it's really up to you which one you want to
go with. I've always had good luck with this particular brand so that's what I'm
gonna go with. And as we're pouring it, you want to work the valve up and down
to get air out and fluid in. Otherwise it's not going to take it over to fill
out the top. So just keep that in mind as you're pouring it in. So let's get a
little bit of grease on this O-ring and then we can put this cap on. Now we won't
do our final torque until we actually get it back on the machine, where the
machine is actually holding it in the clamps. And that's what it'll get
tightened all the way. But right now, we just need to seal it back up. Now let's
get it out of its vise. What we're gonna do next is get a little
bit of Loctite. We're gonna run it lightly around the threads, get this on,
clamp it into the vise, and then torque it down. Now here's the real trick: up to
this point I've been using a standard 14. You need to make sure that you have one
that extends out at least two and a quarter to two and a half inches, which I
just happened to have. And guess what? We'll be through with this fork.
So here's the only thing that's different from one fork to the other:
compression, you can see that the springs on the opposite side of this channel. And
that is the direction that we want these protrusions to face. So regardless of
what you took off as far as the direction of the factory dampening rods,
this is the way the Ohlins is set up. You want to make sure it's always pointing,
no matter which side do you're talking about, toward that little spring right
there. If you've got that with the protrusions pointing that direction?
You've got it. So let's get these things installed. Be
careful bringing them in not to scratch them. Just maybe a millimeter above the
edge right there. We're just gonna snug them down for the time being, then we'll
come back and actually set the torque. Each one of the pinch bolts gets torqued
to 27 Newton meters or 20 foot-pounds. And then when you're doing these,
especially the bottom ones, do one then the other and then go back and check
that first one. Make sure it's still at the same torque value.
And let's go back. See? I had to go back and then bring it a little bit more
because that other one that pulled it down and gave it a false reading the
first time around. Alright let's jump over and do the other side. Now with
those tightened down, let's hit those top caps. This is gonna be 30 Newton meters
or 22-foot pounds. There we go. Let's get our clamps put back together.
Remember correctly at the beginning of this, I made one little small dot showed
the correct position. Other dot you need to pay attention to is the top part of
the clamp. You want that facing forward, and that is also the end that gets
tightened down first. We tighten this one down and then go to
the back one. Now we will be taking these back off later when we start working on
the air fuel management system. Because there's actually going to be an air fuel
ratio gauge that's going to get mounted there, a read out for it. But put it back
together for the time being. Now just need to get the front tire on and the
caliper and then the fender and that's pretty much done with this. And we're
going to take that front nut to 40 foot pounds. There we go. Let's prep our bolts
for the brake caliper bracket. And we're also going to put a little dab of red
loctite. And then once we get it on, we're going
to take it to 22 foot-pounds. Just pushing our caliper Pistons back so
it'll be easier to wiggle it on the rotor.
Next let's go we can get our speed sensor and that associated cable holder
in place. Now let's carefully slide our fender back into place. Well alright guys.
that pretty much wraps this one up, but as you can tell I still have some work
to do. So if you'd like to be notified when that happens, why don't you go ahead and
subscribe. Listen if the contest is still going on, why don't you check the link in the
description below that way you can enter to win this. But take heart, if the
contest is over, why don't you leave us a comment telling us what machine you'd
like to see me modify next. Listen, we just want to say thank you for shopping
here with us at Partzilla and we will see you in the next video. Y'all have a great
day.