After shock#

Sun Jan 18 15:11:06 2026

What's missing from this motorbike? The answer is shocking.

I removed the shock from my motorbike today so I can take it to ABE tomorrow to be rebuilt. Some notes for posterity and so that I remember how to reinstall it.

I mostly followed the Haynes manual: the words are good but the pictures are awful. They say to remove the fuel tank, but I didn't really want to, on account of how it's full of fuel. I found it worked to lift the tank a bit and stick some wooden blocks underneath to hold it up. While doing this the vent/breather pipe popped off, as it always does.

In the order that I tackled them:

• the reservoir needs to be removed: use a JIS screwdriver to loosen the strap around it and then just slide it out.

• to get to the nut/bolt at the lower end I had to loosen the rear hugger - two screws removed. I used a socket on the nut and a spanner on the bolt to stop it from spinning while I turned the nut.

• I can't see any way to get a socket onto the nut/bolt at the top end, but it eventually succumbed to two spanners. Reassembling this is going to be "fun" if it's finicky about torque settings.

• then it's "just" a matter of untangling everything to remove the shock and its reservoir. I had to unplug the connector for the stator cable, as there was no way to get the reservoir through the tangle otherwise.

Hopefully having now written this down I'll not forget to reattach all the bits