Monoshock Rebuild

Step 25) Gently tap the dust cover back into place with a soft mallet. Position the two holes front to back in relation to the bike, so that any water accumulations will naturally drain. Again, work your way around the cover with lots of small taps. No need to try and force it in with big hits. That will get it wedged in crooked, and damage the cap and the shock body. Remember that almost everything here is aluminum.

Step 26) Call in the bomb squad, and slip that spring back on the shock. Re-install all of the retainers just like they were. You do remember how they came out don't you? It definitely helps to snap a few pics along the way to help remind yourself at assembly time. Now carefully let off the spring compressor while making sure that everything settles back into place correctly.

If a retainer doesn't seat fully straight, then DO NOT proceed. Re-compress and fix it before you let that spring off. Flying retainers have a nasty habit of breaking things like your head if they are allowed to escape under spring pressure.

Step 27) Once the spring is fully seated and the compressors are removed, then you can finally breath a sigh of relief. Now just return your preload adjuster to its previous setting.

Step 28) This one can cause a lot of contention. You must pressurize the nitrogen reservoir. My Race Tech printout said to use 200psi. Now there has been much debate on the internet about alternatives to nitrogen. First of all, nitrogen is thermally stable, and dry. That's why all the OEM's use it. Some will tell you to use argon from your welding rig, and I have no comment on the use of argon except that in theory it should work, if you have a argon cylinder and the proper filling manifold. The final option, and this one causes all the problems is good old air.

As you remember from science class air is 78% nitrogen. The main problem with air is the humidity as I understand it. Trapped moisture can turn to steam under the right pressure and temperature combination. It is also difficult to get dry air out of an air compressor. My air compressor will only do 150 psi anyway. Since I am a cyclist, I do own a floor pump that will achieve 200 psi. Race Tech actually says that you can use DRY air to charge your reservoir.

I temporarily pumped mine with my bike pump to verify function, but will take the bike to a local shop to correctly fill it with nitrogen. They usually charge about $10 or less, so really, why not do it right? Just my .02

Thanks for taking the time to read through my tutorial, and I hope that it will help someone achieve a safer, better handling motorcycle through proper maintenance.

I should add that after installing the shock to my KZ which as most of you know is not on the road yet, it seems to have improved the dampening immensely. Just testing it in the garage next to my 2004 zx-10r, it seems much smoother. I look forward to riding the KZ in the near future, and similar work on the Ninja to see how much improvement I can gain there.

Good read and write up, a lot of it applies to rebuildable shocks, just a bit different parts.
+1 on the nitrogen.

You're right Motor Head. I haven't torn apart a set of piggyback shocks, but they are probably just the same arrangement. Only smaller components. Shocks are all just variations on the same theme.

thanks for doing the write up,good job.
should help some folks out in the future.

leon

I agree Josh, a very well written thread. This will demistify the monoshock for alot of the guys running hybrids and you showed the importance of shock maintenance. Great work!!!

Great write up Josh. someday i may do my rear shocks. I'm sure this will be very helpfull.

Mark, you have the ZRX shocks on your bike, right? I would be interested to know if you could get into them to do a service.

i did read an artical on them a while back. as i recall , the only issue was getting the gas back in. u need a good shop for that. true or false ???
i also have a cbr6 that will need a rebuild, likely first, since the KYB's are fine . the kz will not see much more track action. the cbr will see more track time.

A good MC shop that rebuilds shocks should have the equipment to charge it for you. As for the cbr shock, I believe that they use showa shocks also. It should be similar to the one that I pictured in the writeup.