Shocks: How to disassemble them

From MopedWiki

When you want to take apart your shocks to repaint them or change the seals for example, you'll have to have some knowledge about how to do it. Here's a how-to.

Pre-Disassembly

If you take apart a shock without keeping it compressed, you will probably be seriously hurt from the impact of the shock exploding. There’s such a big force behind it that it will rip apart anything it hits. To save yourself from that, you need to build a retaining device.

Building a Retaining Device

The retaining device will go over the two top ends, so you’ll need to measure the width of A and B (see picture)

Now you take two square pieces of wood (About 3/4 inch thick is enough) and cut two holes in exactly the center. One in the size of A and one in the size of B so they fit over the shock mount but rest on the rest of the shock. Mind that there's a nut on one side of the shock, and this nut must be able to turn freely.

Now get some good threaded wire (don’t know the English name) at least a quarter inch thick, and make four lengths that are slightly longer as the shock.

Drill 4 holes in the square pieces at least 1 inch away from the corner or the wood. It is important that all the holes align well, so use one square as a template for the other. Make the holes the size of the threaded wire.

You will now have 2 pieces of wood that look like this:

Using the Retaining Device

Your construction is almost done. Put the 2 pieces of wood around the shock, put in the threaded wire and put on some bolts and some good, big washers so the load gets distributed well.

Then you will have something like this:

Now tighten the nuts crossways, till the spring is compressed far enough to release the holding nut on it. Release the nut on the shock itself and then slowly undo the nuts on the holding device.

You’ve now successfully taken your shock apart. Putting it back together is the other way around.

And about painting it: You’ll need a flexible paint for your springs if you want to paint them too. The metal flexes a lot, and regular paint can’t stand that that well. A good paint is RC-car paint, as this is designed to be able to flex with the body of the cars.