Good morning everyone, and happy first day of Spring (here in the lower 48 anyway!)
A quick update on the Boge shocks. In a moment of nostalgia and weakness I bought the pair of shocks from the salvage yard. Got them home and disassembled.
One was decent, still had a small amount of oil (sludge) in the body. The other one though was dry on the inside and several of the parts were rusted together
. I dunked the parts into some WD-40 rust eater stuff I have and left them over night. The parts came out better but not in any usable condition.
Back into the solution and over night again. I was able to get the compression valving apart with only one broken screw! And I found a replacement in my bolt bin! Got the rebound valving apart so I have the rusted/pitted shaft all by itself.
I found Adams Vintage Racing in Logan Utah on the interweb. Contacted Terry there and he assured me he could reproduce the shaft at a reasonable cost. Things are looking up.
I mailed the shaft to him yesterday, he said 7-10 day turn around.
I also found a blog that had a Boge rebuild although not the LTG like I have. The guy replaced the seals in the top nuts with double lip seals from NAPA. I am currently searching for seals, 12x25x8 or 10. After that all I will need to the rubber bottoming pads on the shafts.
I still have not found any oil capacity specs for the LTG series shocks, but I have watched several Youtube videos about rebuilding race shocks and it seems just getting the oil level high enogh so as to not have air in the body is the key. I guess I will just have to experiment.
I know there are better components available, but these shocks were popular when I was racing as a youngster. On my RM250A (long story about that one), I used either a set of Works or Fox (not air), I don't remember which. I have pictures of the bike with them installed. I just remember the springs were white and blue. Oh well.
Sorry for the long post but I'm excited about making some progress. Today the left side crank bearing is going in and hopefully get the cases back together!