Ohlins Shock Upgrade

Hey, welcome. Fix my hog. My name's Steve Noble, and this is a video brought to you by our friends at Dennis Kirk. Today, we are going to upgrade the stock shock on the back of this thing to an Olens rear shock. Olens makes top shelf stuff, and Dennis Kirk sells it.

So, Olens has always been known for making a top shelf product in racing. So, on a sport handling motorcycle like this, it's gonna be a great addition to what is already a great bike. So, we've got our remote preload adjustment. This is really great because you can adjust it from whether or not you have a passenger and fully loaded bags, or if you're riding with empty bags and just riding solo, or if you want to easily be able to make the adjustment from bumpy city streets to smooth, curvy canyon riding, this preload adjuster will really help you do it a lot. Also, we have some dampening adjustment on this too.

So with a couple clicks. You can tune in your rear suspension to the exact style of riding that you like. Now, you don't need to be a suspension tuning engineer to tune something like this. Olens does give you a great manual that goes along with it on how to set it. And they give you some base points to start with, and then from there you can just go with 1 or 2 click adjustments, ride a little bit.

Is it better? Is it worse? 1 or 2 clicks the other way? Is it better or is it worse? And even if you're not that picky about your suspension, it's really great to have that option to be able to make that adjustment from a loaded motorcycle when traveling or carrying a passenger versus riding solo or just with no luggage on there.

First thing you're gonna want to do is remove your seat. This is going to take a 3 screwdriver. Lift the back, slide your seat right off of there and put it in a safe location. So, remove the stock shock, first thing we're gonna do is remove the stock preload adjuster. Then there is a strut or a brace that runs across the top of the shock here.

Uh, and it takes, it's got two bolts here, takes a 716 socket. You can break those free and just lefty loose that thing right on out there. You take that strut. Set that in a safe location, cause you're gonna want to reinstall that. Now you're gonna want to jack the motorcycle up before you take the rear shock off.

So, I have a standard scissors style jack here, uh, scissor motorcycle jack, and I have it seen right underneath the frame rails, and you want to give a good visual inspection underneath, make sure you're not accidentally pushing on an oil pan or some part of the engine case. And all we're really trying to do is jack the back end of the motorcycle up enough that we can take the rear shock off. So our goal will be to lift up to just enough that I can freely move the back tires where the back tire is, you know, me that high up off the lift. They have the front of the motorcycle secured with ratchet straps, so it's not going anywhere. Tools like this, they're available at Dennis Kirk, and it's well worth the money.

For years I used an old screwjack out of a car and once I used a proper jack, I was kind of like, what, what have I been doing this whole time? This is dumb. So buy the proper tools when it's required. You'll be, it's well worth the money. So the rear wheel is up in the air there.

So now, we can undo the top shock bolt. Now we can take our 19 millimeter socket and break that top shock bolt free. Now, we can remove that bolt right on at it. Yeah. Next thing is to remove our side cover.

So take these two little screws out that hold it in. Then there is a little rubber gromme on the front. Once you get the screws loose, you just kind of pull down and the little pin will pull out of that rubber gromme right there. Now, on this, on the back bow of the shock, there is an Allen wrench socket down in there which clamps the bowl in place. Hopefully you can see that.

Break that free. You don't need to take this all the way out, just give it maybe one full turn or so. Uh, just to make sure the bowl is free. Now up inside, up inside here is a T50 torque spin. Or bolt that takes a D 50 torque spin.

Shouldn't be super tight once you get that clamp bolt free. So just break it free. And spin that bowl all the way on out of there. Now once all the bolts are out, you can just reach in here, grab your shock. Lift it right on up out of there.

Do do Now we're ready to reinstall the rear shock. So it's 2 steps to this. You're going to want to slide your preload adjuster through that little gap right there. And take your shock. Position it so the writing on the shot is facing up.

Slide the bottom in. Slide the top into place. Just like that. Now we can put this top fold in. You want to make sure you have your remote reservoir in line.

So the best route seems to be, and according to Olens, is to route it with the line, the idea being the line is going to sit on the bottom of the frame rail right here, and that will mount to the bracket right about there. Just make sure wherever you route it, that of course your line doesn't sit up against the exhaust or anything else hot. But once that's in place, You can then take your shock bolt. Line up the top of your shock, slide it in there. Now it's not uncommon to have to move their jack up and down a little bit.

Even though it's a stock replacement shock, there might be a small variance, um. In the extended length when it's unloaded and we're talking fractional amounts, but it's just enough you won't be able to get a bolt in there. So you might have to move your jack up and down a little bit, but for the most part, It should go right in there. That in until it's snug. Then target spec.

Now we can route the line into place there, so kind of down and out of the way. And once we route it into place, we can secure it with some supplied zip ties from Olens, then we'll put the side cover on, and then we will reinstall the longer bolts, uh, that will hold the preload spacer or preload adjuster and the side cover. Now, the next thing we can do is put the support bracket back in place. Start each bold in and then torque it to spec. Now, you can torque both of these to spec.

Then be sure and torque your rear bolt to spec. And of course, don't forget to tighten up that Allen bit. Now, when you're fine tuning the dampening in for your shock, you can simply take your seat off, give the dampening wheel a few clicks this way or that way. Put your seat back on, go take it for a test drive. All right, that's all I have for you today.

The shock is installed, the bike's ready to be taken off the lift, and we're ready to go take it for a ride. As you can see, this is a task that you can do yourself. It doesn't really require any specialty tools that you probably don't already own. So you can do this in your driveway yourself. If you need any suspension parts, be sure and check out Dennis Kirk.