This is a tech article on rebuilding your King Coilover shocks.
It was originally posted in our forum by member Tailgunner.
The original post can be found here.

With that said, here we go:

Put it in a stand or something.

Loosen the one allen screw on the dust cap.

Loosen the dust cap.

Bleed out nitrogen and push down on the next peice to get to the c-clip.

Pull out c-clip.

Pull out the shaft and all the goodies, dump old oil.

Here is where the money is made.

I am replacing the shafts, so off comes the lower rod end.
Since my shafts are already pitted i used vise grips since they were stuck on from 6 years of dezert use….

Here i am holding a compression shim. if you hold the shaft with the shim and valves on top and the rod end on bottom, the stack of shim on the very top is for rebound and the shim under it is for compression. each peice of shim is bigger and the work like a progressive spring stack. you take out the second to largest shim on compression like i did you will see a big difference. pull a smaller one and see a smaller difference. don’t take out the biggest one tho…..

Taking one out.

All back together, waiting for oil.

And here are the coilovers.
Loosen the allen screw in the upper ring for the coils and loosen till the coils have slack.

Remove the coil carrier thing.

Loosen allen screw and take off cap.

Take off cap.

Dumped out oil. inspected all the seals and they are all still fine. waiting on oil to post up how to put them back together.

Ok, got them back together. i used 1 1/2 gallons of oil for all four. from talking to some friends i got a whole bunch of different ideas on how to set the independant floating piston length inside the resivior and none sounded good so i figured out the best way myself. i didn’t cover it before so when you want to take apart the resiviors all you have to do is let out the nitro and push the caps in and take out the c-clips. the caps will slide in as far as you want them so follow be on this one….. for the coilovers i pushed in the line side untill i felt pressure  meaning that the IFP was bottomed out on the shock oil side, then i kept pushing and slowly bled out remaining nitro as i slid the line side cap in pushing untill i thought that the IFP was halfway into the resi body. then i put a bunch of oil in the shock and pulled the cap back out sucking the oil in since there was kindof a vacume keeping the IFP halfway on the nitro side. move the shock around to get all the air out of the lines and fill the shock up till the level is about half an inch from the groove for the c-clip. slide in the shaft assembly but the part with the o-ring (the one you push down on to get the c-clip out) you want to have oil overflowing from the body before the o-ring slides into the shock body. this will get all the air out of the shock body. then press down and insert c-clip. screw on cap but hold off on the allen key becuase you have to charge the shock with nitro before you can tighten it and lock it into place with the allen key. for my bypasses it was a little harder. luckily the IFP was already almost bottomed out on the oil side so i loosened up the clamps and pushed up untill i felt pressure meaning the IFP was bottomed out. i filled up the shock body with oil untill level touched the line going to the resi. then i measured out what i thought was enough oil to fill the resi halfway. i poured some in and pulled down in the resi sucking some in. since i have that bend i had to work the remaining oil in like this: i blocked off the shock body with my hand and pressed up on the resi body till i felt pressure. then with pressure i bleed out nitro and you can feel the IFP move down as the press in the shock body forces it down and suck some oil in. remove hand and put some more oil in and pull down on the resi body sucking in more oil. add oil to shock body, block it off with hand and repeat till my measured oil was all in the resi. then i topped it off and slid in the shaft and c-clip and such. there is probably an easier way for my bypasses but i don’t know it. here are the pics……

Press Down.

Set IFP half way, fill shock, pull down on resi, fill shock all the way.

Inset shaft SLOWLY!!!!!

Let overflow.

Put in c-clip, screw on dust cap, charge with nitro.

And for the bypasses:
Measure out oil for resi.

Push up and bottom out IFP.

Fill up to line, add measured oil.

Pull down, repeat until measured oil is on the resi.

Top off, slide in shaft, seat and c-clip and screw in dust cap, charge…..

A great writeup from Tailgunner! Comments?

Discuss this article in the forum here.