The winter projects on my S were going perfectly until this past weekend. I am upgrading my springrates to 650/550 and bought the sakebomb lower cups to ensure i can get the ride height i want.

When removing one of the lower cups on the rear shock, it hit a stick spot. I could spin it back up but no further along this seize point. I put it back on the LCA and gave it the beans. Nothing. Now it won't go either direction, great. Put PB blaster in the threads, put it in the freezer, and the next day gently heated up the cup (perhaps too gently in hindsight), and got still nothing using an oil filter strap wrench and a vise. Double spanner wrenches didn't work either. At this point I'm damaging the collar teeth.

My next idea is to dremel some long notches into it to relieve the bind, with wallet on hand and Ohlins on speed dial. Any other ideas?

 

I think you can carefully dremel a groove that you then crack open with a mondo flat blade screwdriver.

You should do a pair of grooves like maybe an inch apart. Will make it easier to crack off that one inch piece, which should be all the relief needed to spin the cup off.

If you carefully cut the groove just shy of the peaks of the shock body threads, should be able to prevent further damage to threads.

Use the cup you were able to remove to try and measure how deep to cut groove. How much meat exists between outside of cup and start of threads.

Before you go down this road, maybe try freezer, followed by heating cup quickly.

 

Put it in the freezer again and when you take it out use a heat gun on the lower cup.
You want as much temp difference as possible between cup and damper body to help free things up.

 

This is easy my bro.

Put it back up in the car. Fully install it.

Tighten the spring perches together. Make sure the cup lock is loose.

Turn the whole body out of the cup via the spring perch. Use the 2nd one from the top and turn counter clockwise.

Same thing you would do to raise ride height. Knowhatimean?

The perches are jam nuts.
the body is a screw.
the cup is a nut.



easy peasy.

OR....


put the shock on a bench or on the ground.
tighten the spring perches.
have someone hold the spring perch still.

Stick a rod/screw driver thru the hole in the lower cup.

Work that mother loose. turn the whole body via the spring perches or just the cup via the rod.

 

Whenever you try to adjust or take apart a coilover...make sure the threads are clean first.

You probably had dirt in the threads. And you jammed it into there and seized everything up by trying to turn the cup out while the whole thing was dirty dirty.

 

That was step one my dude! Did like you mentioned, locking the collars and using them to turn the shock body out of the cup. Also had a friend holding a socket extension through the fork holes when using the vise. I'm telling ya, it's really in there. I'm alright with tools and I managed to destroy the sakebomb DFV wrenches when they slipped off from full force and ruined the biting edges.

Thanks all for the suggestions, it's in the freezer again and gonna set the heat gun to kill this time.

 

Hey, sad to hear you're having issues removing the cup but shoot us a pic of what happened to your wrenches and we can help discount a new set if you need them in the future.

Also, if you're having issues this sounds like you need more than wrenches. This has happened to a few people before and threads have been damaged beyond repair and needing a new damper. If you want to send it to use, you're welcome to shoot us an email at info@sakebombgarage.com

 

Success

Cut off the bottom w/ Mr. Dremel and the remaining cup screwed off without complaint. Very odd. If anyone else has this issue it's pretty easy to cut through, seems like pretty soft aluminum. I nicked the shock body a few times, but I measured with my "good" shock and fork where I should cut, so no meaningful damage. If yours doesn't unscrew after cutting off the bottom, do two vertical cuts, being careful to not hit the threads. I was planning this but didn't need to.

SBG I'll send an email about some replacement parts.

 

Congrats!

 

Perhaps thread machining on lower part<under the line> are not matched up to upper thread machining..

Maybe the older ones only that had this line <inc my DFV>
apart from that,seems Very strange and can think of nothing more
Would thread new one on with the above in mind !!!