StickyMicky

well i had a brain wave @ work, on top of my shocks there is, what looks to be a inner tube valve thing, which is recessed, now i was thinking, "this must be where they pump the gas in"

so i thought "if i let a bit out then the shocks wont be as stiff"

so i started on the back ones
held the valve in "pssssss"about .75 of a seconds worth of gas then nothing, so i asumed this was to let out excess gas every once and a while (like sum of the motorbikes) so i did the other rear one and did the drivers front, all kinda the same, got the the passenger front, and when i did it i saw the car drop a few MM!!

i had only went and let the ****en whole lot out, there musnt have been much in to start with, not very high preasurised it seams, took it for a spin, was horrible, felt really grumbly and the shocks were banging like **** on the bigger bumps.

took it to Quick Fit, i know the stuff that was in them was nitrogen, so we deceided to replace it with air
we made a special tool up from a wheel valve and shoved it on the fronts, whacked a bit of preasure in and the car moved back upwards

got a tiny bit of air in the rears but couldnt get them fully up because there wasnt enough room to get the home made tool in, will have to go down on sunday and take the rears off to pump them up

the regional manager for quick fit arrived and looked a bit miffed when he saw me pumping up, what looked to be my back seats
lmfao

front of ther car does seam a lot less bouncy, drive around slowley is a lot better now, i just had to avoid the big bumps so the back didnt knock lol

front felt fine, back was semi fine on the left and still crap on the right
i think quickfit actualy use nitrogen to pump up sum wheels for a small charge anyways? might bang sum more nitrogen back in.
Im a bit reluctant to send the coilovers back to Japan or America to have them refurbished
this is what i have
JIC FLTA2`s


anybody know what sort of preasure coilovers are set at?

Creepy

I think it depens on the type of spring/diameter of piston but my AST coilovers are filled with 12 Bar of Nitrogen.
Anything less will be a damper rebiuld because the inner valves and shims are matched to that sort of pressure.


Creepy

StickyMicky

12 bar!!!!!!


omg, honestly there wasnt even a fleas farts worth of gas that came from mine
im not exactly sure what the gas does, acording to the blurb, it looks like its a combination of both oil and gas that does the damping

after driving home tonite, the front of the car feels perfect, the back was still crap, but i know that we didnt do a good job on the back for a number of reasons, we are having another go tomorow with the car jacked up and the suspension at full travel to see how we go,

i shall report back

StickyMicky

i fixed them
jacked the car up and used one of them tiny portable compressers to force 12bar of air in, did all 4, dropped the car down, sat a bit higher

took it for a spin
OMG there fixed!!!
sumbody must have let sum preasure out b4 i bought them as the car seams to drive soooo much nicer now

well impressed now, considering swapping the air for nitrogen

does air expand when hot?
ie will the damping get stiffer or softer as the heat builds?

Creepy

Do you have a pic of the valve you created to fill up the shock ?
I was once in the factory of my coiovers and I saw they pricked the valve with a big needle to let the pressure out, but they used a new valve then and filled it up with a needle-like tool and nitrogen...

I think nitrogen is more stable then just air, also air can hold moist, nitrogen not IMHO...

Creepy

PS you can mail pics at vf25@hotmail . COM

StickyMicky

i dont have a pic at the moment, good point about the moisture, i will tell you how i made my adapterits scarey easy

basicaly get a car wheel valve and cut the end off (the bit that goes through the rim) you need to leave a "half bagel" section on the end

what you do is push the fitting diagnoly onto the valve, this pushes the needle down, the bagel bit stops the air escapeing out, the compressor then forces the new air in, ovb you have to hold down quite hard otherwise the air will escape around the seal

the thread inside my valve was perfect for screwing a full valve in,but by the time i would have unscrewd it i would have lost all the preasure, so i used the hold down method

held it till it showed 12bar on the guage and whipped it off, you do lose a tiny bit of air but im not that botherd at the moment, ill try to get a pic of my creation

Creepy

OK, I will wait and see then,

Creepy

phok

does anyone know any places that can re-condition coilovers?

drb5

iTrader: (4)

i may be sellin mine if anyones interested?

AvalancheS8

The nitrogen is for volume compensation - i.e, when the shock compresses, a larger amount of the shock shaft is pushed into the shock body, so you need a way of displacing that volume of oil. If the shock was completely full of oil you wouldn't be able to push the shaft in at all because the oil is incompressible. The nitrogen and the oil will be separated by either a piston, or a bladder. The pressure is high because the oil needs to be kept under pressure in order to prevent it from foaming as it passes through the valves in the shock piston. Nitrogen will be less affected by the pressure changing as the temperature changes, and should be "dry" so it won't lead to corrosioin inside you shock.

StickyMicky

thanks
it had me a bit miffed

Fatman

AvalancheS8's comment about water moisture sounds entirely plausible. The corrosion benefits of using 100% nitrogen (instead of ~78% nitrogen, i.e. atmospheric 'air') would be two-fold. Using dry nitrogen would exclude both water and oxygen. Oxygen could (although not necessarily would) corrode internal materials, too. That would entirely depend on what materials were used.

StickyMicky

would diffrent gas preasures change the damping force? might sound daft but i belive the gas is there to take the place of the oil, so im not sure?