Rebuilding Factory Shock Absorber AW11, others maybe similar.

[kAm]

took a while to find the thread. someone spelled it wrong

i need to take mine apart and find out whats inside. mine is currently leaking...you can feel the air pocket when you depress the strut. after the air pocket, its stiff as shit! appears to be either trd springs or stock springs. car sits rather low.

how are the koni dampeners? are the stiff as or close to stock. my old shocks were so hard that you couldn't even bounce the car leaning on it.

[dnegative]

my old shocks were so hard that you couldn't even bounce the car leaning on it.

The right hand side of my car is like that

I just threw money at my bad struts, $500-ish got 4 tokico illumina inserts.

[kAm]

are they stiff as shit?

[dnegative]

are they stiff as shit?

Which ones?

Tokico's are in the mail and the RHS ones are

[wiso]

ok, some answers on this topic if anyone wants to try it.

After a bit of research i found the most common weight of shock oils that are used in cars are around 35cst@40deg. Motor bike fork oil is around 2-15cst@40deg so way too light as I figured. Penrite do some ready to buy shock oils http://www.penriteoil.com.au/pis_pdf...ker%20Oils.pdf that are a little higher but they are designed for classic and vintage cars. they said I would may be able to use them but they maybe too thick for the type of valve on my shock. so with most people saying ATF fliud can be used with success I rang a few castrol to enquire about their product.

Castrol DX3 atf fliud has a viscosity rating of 36cst@40deg. TQF95 is 38cst@40deg and transmax Z was 40cst@40deg.

Originally I have tried transmax Z the first time and it was way too heavy the shock would not come back up through the fluid. This time I have used their DX3. and it seems good. the shock has nice bound and rebound. If you want a heavy dampening, you use a thicker oil, you want lighter dampening you use a lighter oil.

Here is a conversion chart I found for viscosity of fluids. http://bobistheoilguy.com/visc.html


Stay tuned, Next post how to rebuild them. and what you'll need.

[YLD-16L]

Motor bike fork oil is around 2-15cst@40deg so way too light as I figured.

Hey Joel, Motorbike shock oil goes up to in excess of 73cst@40deg and you could run something nice like silkolene or sunoco shock oil if you went the moto option. There are tables available that give the ratios required to mix certain brands if you are chasing a specific viscosities.

[wiso]

well there you go, I rang around a few motorbike shops trying to source some oil. but they said all they get is between those ranges. so your right, it may be higher out there in the world. how you go about getting it I don't know. you should be able to get it online if you wanted.

the penrite shock oils would be the way to go, any penrite dealer can get them in for about $15 a bottle.

[wiso]

Ok, how to rebuild them.

Disclaimer:
Don't come on here flaming me if you are a pro and don't think i have done it incorrectly, I am doing this based on what I was told by some old suspension mobs that used to do this kinda thing. I asked earlier how to do this and nobody really answered. This worked for me, it may not work for you. it is a guide only. Thanks.

Parts you will need.
shock oil. about 250ml per shock
a rectangular profile o-ring 37id 40od 4d
oil seal 20id 34od 10d


the standard oil seal is a double ring seal, I could only source a single ring replacement, like your standard cam seals etc. I don't know how long this will last. but for the cost its worth the trial.


As its hard to take pics while I am doing this diagrams will have to do. here is a legend diagram


Firstly I put the shock housing in the body, and half filled with fluid.


then slide the shaft in and filled the rest of the housing with fluid, also about half filling the area between the housing and the body.


I then pushed the shaft all the way to the bottom. at this point the fluid should be filling the whole shock body, to the level even with the top of the housing.


I then pulled the shaft back up till the stop was even with the top of the housing. this should leave the required air gap. it should be about half the body full, while the housing is completely full. with the air in there slide the guide down the shaft and push it all the way down into place. install the new o-ring.around the edge to seal it to the body.


With the new seal in the nut top slide it ove and screw it down tight.


at this point it should be done, you should be able to push the shock down and it should spring back up nice and smoothly.


Using the odd seals that I could source I am not sure how long mine will last personally. they only cost me $20 to rebuild, so if they last 6 months I can get 15 rebuilds out of these for the same cost as replacement shocks. But we'll see. Later I may get new ones but right now I really can't afford it.


Hope this helps some people out there

[StuC]

Good work Joel. Waiting rebuild pics and write-up. Were they atually a 'rebuildable' item or have you just cracked them open and 'made them rebuildable'?

[wiso]

they aren't a gas pressurized shock from standard, they are just an oil shock, so after showing them to the suspension mob they did say they looked to be a rebuildable item

[Q-Authority]

EDIT: Guess you just posted while I was putting this together. Yes, the oem assemblies were gas pressurized. End of EDIT.

Pardon me if this somehow sounds a bit stupid/obvious, and I am in no way attempting to flame anyone, but are you doing these yourself, and are peopie not aware that the oem struts were a pressurized gas/oil combination? How are you going to charge them with the proper gas, and proper pressure? Much of the reason that these eventually go bad is because the seals start to leak and the gas escapes. I suppose that they might work to a degree without pressurized gas, but I wouldn't expect too much out of them.

As for why the oem struts came with removeable top nuts, I would guess that it was simply a widespread general production method, incorporated so that the original tube could be easily reused for aftermarket inserts, which have been around for ages. Yes, complete sealed units that would replace the entire strut assembly used to be available, but it probably came to a point where it was cheaper just to make and sell inserts, than the entire tube assembly.

If I understand correctly, you have a series 2. If that is correct you should not have a problem finding insert options. I don't know how easily they are all available down under, but in the US there are certainly a number of them, and some are pretty cheap. Not a lot of high-end choices, but a number of others. Tokico (HP Blue) and KYB (Excel-G/GR-2) make the two most common ones here and are both slightly stiffer than oem. Tokico also makes the adjustable Illumina, and Koni makes the adjustable Yellow Sports as well. They are both adjustable from softer than oem, to much stiffer than oem. Then you have the secondary manufacturers that don't get talked about much up here, such as Gabriel and Monroe. I wouldn't be surprised if there are at least a couple of others as well.

I just did a quick search of these and easily found all but the front ones for Gabriel, but it was only a quick search. I also checked on oem complete replacement assemblies, and found all but the LH rear, for the NA. Meanwhile all of them are still available for the SC. Would be interesting to put a set of rear oem SC struts on an NA and see how they handle, as the SC's came with 11% stiffer rear springs. All of these were running at about $120-125, which doesn't sound too bad for an entire assembly.

[wiso]

Q, always welcome. I am aware of tokico and Koni make replacement cartridges. Deffinatly the way I would go if I had the dosh around. From the US you can buy these for about $300, then plus about $100 odd on for freight. while better quality and adjustable. I would love to have that much money just lying around when its not going into life. As for KYB. these cannot seem to be sourced in Australia. maybe able to buy them in off a US website. But no Australian listing has any KYB listing for the AW11. Gabriel is an option people have mentioned in this thread. As I had mentioned 5 years ago when I tried to source them I couldn't get them. After Dylan mentioning he got his 3 years ago I tried again. went and paid a deposit to get ordered it cam back with the same issue, I can't get them anymore, so I tried 3 differant distributors of Gabriel. Same issue, can't get them. I don't know why. its a joke I think.

OEM would not care about making the struts easy for afermarket manufactures to do strut inserts for their casings. OEM Celica struts are a full seal gas pressurised unit and these don't have a top nut on them. they are a sealed assembly. Toyota want to make money for toyota, if it were a sealed strut you would have to go to them to replace as until recently toyota sell the sealed strut.

As you say, yes rears have heaps of options, these are cheap and readily available, this rebuild was the front shocks. These are the ones I am having difficulty finding without selling my first born.

edit

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/TOKIC...Q5fAccessories hp blue about $270 landed fronts only actually these seem to be pretty cost efficient. Last time I bought the standard front gas insert for my old one it only cost $140 for the pair.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/TOKIC...Q5fAccessories Illumina about $400 landed

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/KONI-...Q5fAccessories koni set 4 $825 landed

as you can see, cheap is something only you have the luxury of in the US Q.

[Q-Authority]

Hey Wiso: Yeah, I guess some things really are just a pain in the arse to source down there. We do have it a bit better here in some ways, but I keep seeing ocassional jdm parts there that make me a bit jealous as well, lol.

Some of your landed prces seem a bit high though, even for down there. A full set of KYB can usually be had here for just around $200 or a bit less. A full set of the Tokico HP blues can be found for just a bit more. My choice between the two would probably be the Tokico, as they seem to be regarded as slightly stiffer then the KYB, but that is personal choice.

Here is a link to an ebay source that sells the full set of Tokicos and ships internarionally, as just a sample. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...4057&viewitem=

By the way, don't necessarily be fooled by the complete assembly pics, as I think those are just generally copied from older sites, and reused. I'm not sure that they have sold the complete assemblies in some time. They would most likely be inserts.

[wiso]

yeah the only things that blow the costs out are the shipping. all the shocks on ebay say about $140us to ship a pair of shocks to Australia, hence the landed cost.