Good shock building tip.

[wade7575]

I was over at my friends house today and he was rebuilding his shocks and won't listen to advice no matter who it comes from and he told me grab a shock if you want and start rebuilding so did and we were on his last 2 shocks and everyone he built had air in them and he could not work it out by pumping the shock shaft up and down and then wanted to know why mine did not have the squishing of air like his so I told him and I thought I would share this tip as I know a lot who build them the way the manual say's.

What I do is attach the piston to the shock shaft's and then drop it into the shock body and the lube the O-rings and the shock shaft with shock oil and sometimes really thick diff oil if I know the shocks are prone to leak a bit by design but will stop after they settle in,next I slide on an O-ring then a spacer then the last O-ring then the bottom ends of the shock shaft and the reason for doing it this way is because now I don't need to worry if the shock shaft is straight and possibly nicking an O-ring.

The next step and this is the important part to get air free shocks,alot of the manuals say fill the shock body up all the way and move the shock shaft up and down slowly and I feel this is 100% the wrong way to do it why I'll explain later,what I do is fill the shock up at the most half way and then move the shock shaft up as slow as possible and all the bubbles for me shoot right to the top but slow as the key as well the slower the better.

Here is what I feel is wrong with the way manual teaches,you are dealing with an oil that is thick and when the Air bubbles come to the top in the way I prefer to do it are very large and break apart right away,but now when you fill the shock all the way up with oil the air bubbles break apart into smaller air bubbles and you can see even when not working the piston up and down the air just hang's in the oil and have had it so bad the pumping the shock shaft was completely useless then I stopped one day and thought about it and said there's got to be a better way then this.

After all the air has come to the top just lower the shock shaft and fill the shock up the rest of the way and bleed out any extra.

I hope this tip works as well for you as it does for me because I know it won't help my friend at all as even when he see's something that works better then his way is to Pigheaded to change his ways and ask's me to fix it for him Oh my God is all I can say.

All I have ever used is Team Associated and Team Losi oil but I have heard that Mugen and Kyosho is better but I do not know what it's like for getting air bubbles out.