So the rubber bumper/silencer, on my rear shock has seen better days. Pretty damn crumbly to the touch. (1998 bike)
Money's tight, so i would rather service the old shock, rather than doing a replacement/upgrade.
But since I haven't been able to source a replacement rubber thingy yet. I wanted to ask here, if anyone has even tried replacing this little rubber bastard on a GS rear shock?
Is it even possible? :icon_question:
(http://i.imgur.com/svlAXjl.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/2f7cdOt.jpg)
It's the bump stop. You can replace it easily if you compress the spring and pull off the circlip so you can disassemble the shock. Any random auto parts store should have a generic slip on bump stop like this that you cut down.
That said, for the cost of the replacement bump stop you can probably get a whole shock and save the considerable trouble of disassembling the original. Someone is likely to try to convince you that this is a good time to upgrade the rear shock anyway. A katana 600 shock can be had for $30 if you want something stiffer with adjustable damping but it really needs to be matched with a front spring and fork oil upgrade.
I love to find ways to fix things without spending any money. However, sometimes my "fix" does not work all that well. What about shaping a piece of an old tire to make a "new" bump stop? Would that work?
Just shaping an old chunk of rubber won't work because the bump stop is a polyurethane elastomer with a specified spring rate, not a rubber puck with virtually zero spring rate. Well, it'll work, but it'll bottom very harshly. The bump stop adds spring rate at the end of the shock travel and is extremely progressive so it softens bottoming and prevents the shock from mechanically bottoming (running out of travel completely) which would likely blow the seals.
You'd be better off just getting a sort rubber bushing like a sway bar bushing (not hard poly) and replace the original bump stop with one of these just to soften the landing a little. But it's still going to be WAY harder than the stock bump stop.
You could take a soft polyurethane thing of some kind and make it into a bump stop. Or go to a junk yard and pull a bump stop off of just about anything ... the front ones from a Jeep TJ/JK/XJ would work, just peel it off and then take it home, cut it to length and poke a hole in the middle with a giant "birdhouse" nail heated with a torch... don't try to drill it, it'll tear. Or find some other creative source of an elastomer of approximately the same hardness as the OE bump stop.
Or just drop by my house and I'll give you my old GS500 shock with an intact bump stop on it.
FWIW bump stops are ordinarily available in a wide variety of hardness/compliance and length etc. It's a critical suspension tuning element on sports cars and race cars. Most likely important to get it right or close to right on a motorcycle.
Interesting reading. Happy to hear the shock actually does come apart.
Not quite sure yet, if i'm gonna work on replacing the bump stop or just get the shock upgrade done.
But in any case, thanks for the replies :thumb: