The Purpose of this Technical Information is to provide you with info that will help you understand and enhance the performance of your snowmobile.
Why go through the hassle?
Your shocks worked fine at the end of the last season, right?
First off, shocks ingest water. Water acts like a cancer inside your big dollar shocks. Water dilutes the oil and damping action. Water freezes and lock ups shocks in cold temperatures.
More important, from a performance standpoint there is the slow and gradual loss of the high pressure nitrogen charge that passes through the seals and into the oil.
Remember, these are Internal Floating Piston (IFP) shocks that use a floating piston to seperate the 200+ pounds of nitrogen gas from the oil inside the shock. This piston has o-ring seals around it, traveling up and down inside the shock. This movement of the o-rings inside the shock causes friction.
Friction causes wear. How long can one expect these seals to hold back hundreds of pounds of pressure? The seals slowly let the nitrogen pass. Once this happens, you now have an "emulsion" shock, where the gas and oil are mixed. The valve stacks that work with good oil and proper pressure are far different from what works with emulsion oil.
Shocks go "soft" after awhile, suspensions bottom out and then things begin to break. The bumps in your paths get through the suspension leading to broken torque arms and suspension rails. Not to mention what it does to you.
How often should shocks be rebuilt? Tough call. No hard set rules, just guidelines and experience. Depends on usage, type of shock, type of seals, oil quality, personal desire. FOX shocks, used by Artic Cat and Polaris typically should be serviced every 1000 miles or at the end of the year. Sound a bit extreme? Some riders will service their FOX shocks every 500 miles...racers after every race or two.
The harder one works their shocks the more the need...
Shocks are in a constant state of deterioration, only you can draw the line of when you need to bring them back up to their top level of performance.
Shock Therapy Inc. uses the blue "TECH-SYN" seals on all it's Fox shock rebuilds.
TECH-SYN seals are a higher quality of seal material which provides up to twice the service life. Getting a solid 2000 miles is not unheard of out of TECH-SYN equipped FOX shocks.
Any "2000" with over 2000 miles is a suspect including any "1999" or older models. Remove the high pressure gas shocks and send them to:
MOST SHOCKS TODAY CAN BE CUSTOM TUNED & MATCHED WITH RIDER'S ABILITY TO PROVIDE COMFORT IN RACING AND TRAIL RIDING!
Specific Questions in regards to Your Snowmobile are Best Handle with one of Our Professional Technicians over the the phone.
