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Kevin in NJ · 09-14-2019, 08:14 AM

Some shock notes from taking a bunch apart.

Generally if you see rust in the chamber through the fill hole the shock is bad. All the ones with rust in the chamber had pitting in the wing area.

So the shock works by having really tight machining between the body and the wing. It is unlikely that you can get them to interchange. Honestly it is surprising the number of internal variations.

So any with play at the shaft are bad. You will need to do extensive work to save it. End of story.

It takes some work to get them apart. I tap around the cover, expanding it, to break it free. I use heat to burn away the rubber seal. I made a tool to grab the cover. The inner nut is an odd size. I bought a deep impact socket and borrowed a 3/4" air impact and put it in my 200lb vice. A couple did not free up and I did a couple of heat and drop in water cycles. I did not heat it up red. To get the fragile valve out I did heat the end of the shaft. Mostly to burn out the packing and do some heat cycles. Unless it was a bad wing then I heated the crap out of it as the valve is the hard part to save.

Once apart you can see how much play you have. If you have any pitting then the shock is not going to work, it is done. If you have nice chambers then you have to look at the play in the wing to sides. In good ones they are really tight, good luck on finding ones that good. What I have found is nice chambers and a bit of looseness (couple of thou maybe) will work but you are going to have to experiment with thicker oils.

So a few years ago I got the weight and dimensions of the KRW testing tool. I had been told that good shock is really stiff. That is when you put the original arm on the shock and close the valve it should be really hard one way and a bit looser the other way. I have done a few shocks to that standard ages ago and the cars handled great.
So I was going through my shocks and had some that were that good. I made up a loose copy of the KRW tool. I forget the time but in the Service Bulletins they list the times. Like 15 seconds to do an arc of so many degrees. Well the good shock took only like 5 seconds. So the real standard is much higher then what you might think.

Oil, yes oil. Ford changed to oil for the shocks and this was reprinted into one of the national magazines way back. I have scan of the article some place. So when I used what is close to a factory oil some shocks that were fairly tight had very little resistance. A guy a work had some thicker motorcycle shock oil and I tried that and it made some difference but not enough. At some point I need to revisit the who oil thing but I have to buy some thicker oils.
My hypothesis is that you need to have more than one viscosity shock oil. Each shock will need a oil the allows the best time for the play in the wing. From what I can see there might be a wide variation for sub thou differences. I have a nice selection of fairly tight shocks and they each were giving much different times for the same oil.

So does anyone know which rubber seals work on original shocks? That is another problem as the ones I had laying around were not doing so good.

09-14-2019, 08:14 AM	#40
Kevin in NJ Senior Member Join Date: May 2010 Location: South East NJ Posts: 3,398	Re: Houdaille Shock Problem Some shock notes from taking a bunch apart. Generally if you see rust in the chamber through the fill hole the shock is bad. All the ones with rust in the chamber had pitting in the wing area. So the shock works by having really tight machining between the body and the wing. It is unlikely that you can get them to interchange. Honestly it is surprising the number of internal variations. So any with play at the shaft are bad. You will need to do extensive work to save it. End of story. It takes some work to get them apart. I tap around the cover, expanding it, to break it free. I use heat to burn away the rubber seal. I made a tool to grab the cover. The inner nut is an odd size. I bought a deep impact socket and borrowed a 3/4" air impact and put it in my 200lb vice. A couple did not free up and I did a couple of heat and drop in water cycles. I did not heat it up red. To get the fragile valve out I did heat the end of the shaft. Mostly to burn out the packing and do some heat cycles. Unless it was a bad wing then I heated the crap out of it as the valve is the hard part to save. Once apart you can see how much play you have. If you have any pitting then the shock is not going to work, it is done. If you have nice chambers then you have to look at the play in the wing to sides. In good ones they are really tight, good luck on finding ones that good. What I have found is nice chambers and a bit of looseness (couple of thou maybe) will work but you are going to have to experiment with thicker oils. So a few years ago I got the weight and dimensions of the KRW testing tool. I had been told that good shock is really stiff. That is when you put the original arm on the shock and close the valve it should be really hard one way and a bit looser the other way. I have done a few shocks to that standard ages ago and the cars handled great. So I was going through my shocks and had some that were that good. I made up a loose copy of the KRW tool. I forget the time but in the Service Bulletins they list the times. Like 15 seconds to do an arc of so many degrees. Well the good shock took only like 5 seconds. So the real standard is much higher then what you might think. Oil, yes oil. Ford changed to oil for the shocks and this was reprinted into one of the national magazines way back. I have scan of the article some place. So when I used what is close to a factory oil some shocks that were fairly tight had very little resistance. A guy a work had some thicker motorcycle shock oil and I tried that and it made some difference but not enough. At some point I need to revisit the who oil thing but I have to buy some thicker oils. My hypothesis is that you need to have more than one viscosity shock oil. Each shock will need a oil the allows the best time for the play in the wing. From what I can see there might be a wide variation for sub thou differences. I have a nice selection of fairly tight shocks and they each were giving much different times for the same oil. So does anyone know which rubber seals work on original shocks? That is another problem as the ones I had laying around were not doing so good.