Rebuilding Coilover Shocks at home?

[Casa de Mesa]

Exactly. I don’t know why it’s so hard with car shocks vs bike shocks.

I rebuild my own bike shocks. It's relatively easy with a manual and some patience. Bleed the pressure off (air) or pull the coil spring and from there its just disassembly. But they are designed to be serviceable by the end user, probably because their service schedules are narrower and it's not practical to be shipping shocks to be rebuilt every couple months (or at least to have their oil baths, seals, foam rings and other consumables replaced). I have a buddy that's an engineer at Fox Racing, I could find out the exact reasons why. Bike shocks are pretty high tech, so serviceability must be one of the design factors, I'm sure.

Contrast that with car shocks. Fact of the matter is that most people are not going to rebuild their own shocks so my guess is that is why they are not easy to rebuild. Could be pressures ls involved with some of them, or the type of gas specced for use. I'm honestly not really sure, but it's likely because you (and this group of people on this community) are the 0.01% who would actually rebuild their own stuff.

[0-60motorsports]

I rebuild my own bike shocks. It's relatively easy with a manual and some patience. Bleed the pressure off (air) or pull the coil spring and from there its just disassembly. But they are designed to be serviceable by the end user, probably because their service schedules are narrower and it's not practical to be shipping shocks to be rebuilt every couple months (or at least to have their oil baths, seals, foam rings and other consumables replaced). I have a buddy that's an engineer at Fox Racing, I could find out the exact reasons why. Bike shocks are pretty high tech, so serviceability must be one of the design factors, I'm sure.

Contrast that with car shocks. Fact of the matter is that most people are not going to rebuild their own shocks so my guess is that is why they are not easy to rebuild. Could be pressures ls involved with some of them, or the type of gas specced for use. I'm honestly not really sure, but it's likely because you (and this group of people on this community) are the 0.01% who would actually rebuild their own stuff.

Yeah you got some really good points there. If you could ask your friend it would be interesting to know why we can’t do rebuild for car shocks like bilstein and koni etc.

[eacmen]

I was told that rebuilding a diff should be left to professionals and it could not be done. Was even told this on THIS forum. I rebuilt my diff and it's doing just fine.

I'll just leave this here....should answer your question.

Yeah i’ll admit I would usually advocate forum members get a diff rebuild by a pro. Although racingdiffs have certainly made this process more accessible to the average DIYer in the past year.

Difference I see here is that kits to rebuild the diff are readily available. Access to parts and specs. (charge pressure etc) are not available outside of authorized service centers (at least for bilstein)

Seems like the bike and offroad folks rebuild all the time. I would actually think rebuilding shocks would be much easier than the diff if the info/parts was freely available.

FCM has some videos but not enough for me to dig into my old bilsteins.

[bigjae46]

Yeah i’ll admit I would usually advocate forum members get a diff rebuild by a pro. Although racingdiffs have certainly made this process more accessible to the average DIYer in the past year.

Difference I see here is that kits to rebuild the diff are readily available. Access to parts and specs. (charge pressure etc) are not available outside of authorized service centers (at least for bilstein)

Seems like the bike and offroad folks rebuild all the time. I would actually think rebuilding shocks would be much easier than the diff if the info/parts was freely available.

FCM has some videos but not enough for me to dig into my old bilsteins.

If you just assume that it can’t be done then it will never be done and we don’t learn anything.


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[Rudbari]

It could be done ✅ just do it and share the rebuild it would be amazing

[0-60motorsports]

It could be done ✅ just do it and share the rebuild it would be amazing

I really wish someone sold rebuild Kits or can supply the parts and I can attempt to do some koni GC DA shocks