Garth S

I have made the classic error on reinstalling my HD's .... there are parts left over! .
After torquing everything down in the rear, I assembles the fronts tonight ..... and there were two large yellow zinc chromate plated cup washers looking at me ( 45mm diameter) from the parts pile .... Yep - they are the washers that 'cup' the top of the bump stops that slide over the rear piston rods.

The correct thing to do would be to tear the rear end all apart - again - and reassemble correctly ... or is that really necessary for a street car? Will the bump stops live a long and healthy life without this washer??
It is too late here to do more than feel like a jerk for making such a basic error, so I will sleep on it: if you have any advice to indicate that I can live without this cup washer and not damage the shocks, it would save the fun of redoing this task.
For reference, these are ROW turbo springs set for ROW M030 height (127mm) over HD's - I doubt they spend much time on the bump stops.

-edit: added a pic to clarify further down the page ...

InTheAir

Are you talking about this washer?

Garth S

No - that pic is the front shock spacer between the top perch and the steering plate.
The one I left out slides on the rear shock piston rod to cup the top surface of the bump stop. It is 45x 3mm ( 1.75"x1/8"). It's function is to keep the bump stop rubber from being forced up into the blue dust boot if the suspension is bottomed .... which would then jam it up into the top spring perch.


Just realized that as I press the submit button, this is the 4000th post .... and I just made my first assembly error .....

TMc993

If it were me, I'd do it over. I've not worked on this particular suspension, but I do have experience with others that are similar. While you might not ever track your car, there's nothing to say you won't, at some point, bottom out the suspension and damage the shock. Then you'd have to do it over anyway.

Just my (unsolicited) opinion.

TMc

InTheAir

Ah, so the one shown in this picture:



I can't say if it will do any harm if left out. That being said, when I installed my suspension, I had to remove the front right assembly after installing it completely in order to replace a spring perch. Once you know what needs to be done, a swapout at this stage can be pretty quick. In my world, I'd rather take the 1-2 hours to take the rears back off and install it right--both for the peace of mind and fact that these shocks/springs will be on the car for easily 30-50K miles.

Garth S

Actually, it's not shown in that pic either: it would be hidden under the blue dust boot and "cup" the top of the yellow rubber bump stop when it reaches the top of the piston rod .... the lower tip of the bump stop is visible in the pic between the dust boot and the shock cylinder.
Yes - thinking about it overnight, I'll drop the rears and install the washer correctly .... mistakes & onersights should be corrected: I will add a pic when the assembly is opened up.

Garth S

So here's the answer .... the cup washer does slide on the main shaft with the bump stop - and it does capture the top face of the rubber stop when in compression so the thing does not self destruct, so it is important to be in place.
The correct arrangment is shown in the pic below, with a spare washer beside the ruler.
All it took was another couple of hours to make it right ....

Dudley

[QUOTE= .... mistakes & oversights should be corrected.[/QUOTE]

Yep, those are words I live by - otherwise it bugs the crap out of you.

TMc993

A couple of times I've done something similar (Usually a washer) and decided not to correct it. In each situation, I immediately acquired a case of "what's that noise?" and eventually went back and corrected the error. Of course, neither time did the correction eleminate the "noise," but at least I wasn't thinking about it all the time.

TMc