Rear shock help

[quadmanw]

I was riding yesterday guys and my rear shock seemed to be very loose. I kept bottoming out on this jumps and stuff. I didn't even touch my rear suspension when I did the whole rebuild. The bottoming is killing the bottom of my nerds lol. Anyone have any ideas? I was thinking about getting the gt link and reworked shock but cant right now

[CJM]

Try this (shamelessly stolen from another thread here lol)

I have my rear shock set this way and its pretty dang good. be warned tho, either hammer thru the washboards or you will be sorry lol.


Rear: The preload is backed off as far as I felt comfortable with (about 4-5 threads are visible above the lock nut), compression is 1/2 turn in from full soft, and the rebound is backed out all the way (fast rebound). I set the preload this way for the same reason I did the front, to lower the center of gravity. The compression is backed out quite a bit because of the preload setting. Since the shock rides really low in the stroke with the light preload settings and is already into the stiffer portion of the travel, I was getting a really harsh spike on small sharp edged bumps with the compression on the stock setting, so I backed it out until it felt as smooth as possible on sharp edged hits. The fast rebound setting is what I found to work best for me, although many slower riders think it's way too fast and prefer a setting closer to stock. However, for me, if I slow down the rebound much at all, it starts packing severely in the rough sections and then it really does start bouncing around. If you have a habit of letting off when you get to a rough section, you might want to stay with the stock rebound setting or something similar, because my preferred setting will result in a severe kick if you let off the throttle in the middle of a series of big bumps. If you're one of those guys who simply pins the throttle and leans back when you hit the rough stuff, then you may like the fast rebound too.

[quadmanw]

I've never adjust the preload lol. Can you explain?

[CJM]

Preload changes the ride height, its the two nuts on the very top of the shock. If you put them far enough down, it will also make the spring stiffer to a degree.

I used the settings I quoted for pretty damn good setup on my EX.

[quadmanw]

Alright thanks CJM. Am I Gonna need a special wrench? Lol

[CJM]

Its helpful, but not needed.

I usually take a large flathead and knock the upper ring loose (its a lock ring) and take the shock off and adjust using a pair of oil filter pliers that just so happen to fit the grooves well-but regular channel locks work too.

[Drfat400ex]

Originally posted by CJM
Its helpful, but not needed.

I usually take a large flathead and knock the upper ring loose (its a lock ring) and take the shock off and adjust using a pair of oil filter pliers that just so happen to fit the grooves well-but regular channel locks work too.
The flathead hting works great, and if you're taking the shock right off and can't move the bottom nut by hand, which is normally the case, a pipe wrench works pretty good too.

[400exjoker]

SPANNER WRENCH....

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