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How To: Convert your Swinger/5th to a shim damper system (#2)

Kyle_rg

Chimp
May 10, 2008
6
0
Coquitlam, BC, Canada
Hey guys,

I've been reading the first thread on this subject posted by "Fly" and I decided that I'd post another full tutorial on how to do this. You can find it here:

Swinger/5th Shim Damper mod instructions

Let me know what you guys think, if anything is confusing etc. Also let me know what other stuff you guys might want to know and I'll post it on the site (which is new and under construction right now, bare with me). I rebuild shocks/work on bikes for a living so I want to share as much knowledge as possible with everyone.

I have tried to simplify the bleeding process a bit as well for everyone. I use a more complicated bleeding process (about the same as Fly's process), but I've found the one outlined in my instructions to work just about as well and it's a lot easier to do. You're basically just overfilling the body a bit with oil and letting the oil that pours over the edges when you insert the damper carry out most of the air bubbles.

If you have some shims from another shock, you can make this work, but I'll be selling shim/seal kits pretty soon to make things easier.

I'm also thinking of starting another site (mtbfork.info) with tons of info about forks, with lots of really clear tutorials on how to overhaul them and mod them. What does everyone think? Let me know what you want to see.

I'll also be posting a tutorial on how you can convert your Manitou SPV fork to a shim-damper system. I'll be making a video showing how you can smooth out the SPV system with no extra parts needed as well. That will hopefully be coming in a couple weeks.

I'm pretty busy lately so I'll do my best to get back to your replies as soon as I can. Email me using the contact page on the site if you want to get to me quicker.

Enjoy!

-Kyle
 

Steve M

Turbo Monkey
Mar 3, 2007
1,991
45
Whistler
If you can create such a site that would be an awesome resource. However, there have been sites like that in the past (eg www.angryasian.com), but the problem is really that there's just too many forks out there to have anything like a comprehensive list. By all means go nuts with it... but my feeling is that it would be too hard to keep up to date. I think random custom mods and whatnot are a better bet, since service manuals and whatnot are usually available from fork manufacturers anyway.
 

Kyle_rg

Chimp
May 10, 2008
6
0
Coquitlam, BC, Canada
Thanks for the input Socket, I forgot about angryasian.com, it's been a while since I've been to that site. Yes, keeping up to date might be difficult, but maybe I'll just do tutorials for popular forks based on what people say they want here :)
 

Kyle_rg

Chimp
May 10, 2008
6
0
Coquitlam, BC, Canada
Any idea when you'll have shim/seal kits for the swinger 4 way air?
Hopefully by about June 10th, I'll keep you guys posted. We need to do some more testing for that shock first. It feels good so far, but the shock feels very plush, almost a little too plush for an air shock that's probably coming from a short travel bike where a bit of pedaling platform is wanted.
 

mattmatt86

Turbo Monkey
Feb 9, 2005
5,347
10
Bleedmore, Murderland
Hopefully by about June 10th, I'll keep you guys posted. We need to do some more testing for that shock first. It feels good so far, but the shock feels very plush, almost a little too plush for an air shock that's probably coming from a short travel bike where a bit of pedaling platform is wanted.
Yea, it's a 6.5x1.5 off of a Morewood Ndiza. It feels like total crap right now, it has no rebound damping, feels like a pogo stick, and occaisonaly gets stuck down. I've thought about rebuilding it just caus I'm short on cash but I might end up tossing it and buying something else.
 

Kyle_rg

Chimp
May 10, 2008
6
0
Coquitlam, BC, Canada
Yea, it's a 6.5x1.5 off of a Morewood Ndiza. It feels like total crap right now, it has no rebound damping, feels like a pogo stick, and occaisonaly gets stuck down. I've thought about rebuilding it just caus I'm short on cash but I might end up tossing it and buying something else.
The loss of rebound/compression is caused by the seals failing in your SPV valve. The SPV valve controls all compression damping as well as restricts oil flow during rebound. This is a common issue with a worn SPV shock. Some new seals will fix this, or you could get a shim kit for it when I have them and this won't be an issue anymore.
 

Kyle_rg

Chimp
May 10, 2008
6
0
Coquitlam, BC, Canada
Cool 5th hop-up from avalanche; http://www.avalanchedownhillracing.com/5th%20element speed sensitive conversion.htm

Basically they'll gut your 5th and put avalanche type internals in.
Good stuff, pretty similar to my setup on the damper head, except for their rebound shim setup, which is better. I like the new high/low speed adjusters. I'm not so sure about the "improved" quad-ring oil seal they're putting in. They do reduce a bit of friction as opposed to the stock urethane seals, but I've done some testing with those black quad rings and I found that they always weeped a bit of oil on the shaft at the end of a ride. They work well in the Fox DHX where the main oil seal is about 3 times fatter (like it should be, Manitou/Progressive undersized their main oil seal in my opinion). I found the stock seals to work best with the unfinished steel shaft that comes stock on the 5th. I do like their upgraded teflon shaft though, will work better with the quad ring seal.

Just my two cents :)
 

sriracha

Monkey
Jun 9, 2006
496
0
805
wow. that's pretty cool. i've got an old 5th just sitting around...i bet it would feel great on the my 6point, with this upgrade.
 

Fly

Monkey
Sep 17, 2005
112
1
Avalanche kit looks dope. Congrats on the walk through... basically filled in all the parts I couldn't be a**ed doing. Website is cool also.