RCGears Calgary Alberta Radio Control Off-Road Racing Headquarters

When building your shocks if you look at a setup sheet it may tell you shock length, rebound and oil weight (wt).

Here’s how I do it.

To measure shock length
Get out your calipers and you’ll measure from the middle of the shock cup hole to the middle of the shock end bushing.
You can change length by screwing or unscrewing the shock end.  If you can’t shorten you shock anymore, then you can put spacers on the shock shaft under the piston before you slide it into the the shock body.

Shock rebound
Once you have your length set right, filling and setting rebound is next.
I use my calipers to measure how much of the shock shaft sits outside of the shock body, lets say 34mm.
To build shock with 50% rebound that means when you’ve built your shocks the shaft should come out 17mm after being compressed.
Once you have filled your shocks, let them rest to remove air bubbles.
Put the bladder on and the shock cap. Tighten the cap 1/2 way and push in the shaft in 1/2 way (more if going for less rebound).
Keeping the shaft pushed in and tighten the cap.  Oil and air will push out the air hole in the cap.  Once tightened pull out the shaft, then push it in and see if it comes out 17mm.
If is doesn’t repeat until it does.

Shock oil
Also depending on what shock oil your manufacturers  says to use it may not be available at local hobby stores.

Erik Shauver hpi blitz designer says:
Hey guys, I wanted to share some info so we care more easily share shock data. To start, let’s cover oil “conversions.” The most appropriate unit to list the kinematic viscosity is in centistokes (cs). However, since the past rivalry of TA and TL was so intense, I’m guessing they wanted to hide the true measure of the oils and assigned an arbitrary “weight” to them. This makes it a bit difficult to compare shock setups without knowing the oil brand.

Quite a few companies list their oils in a straightforward manner: Xray, Mugen, Kyosho, HB,

For these oils, the number on the label is almost exactly the centistoke value of their oil (within in a tolerance range, +/- 20ish?). So 300 Mugen is very close to 300 Kyosho.

HPI oil (bear with me as I did not pick this ), is listed as “weight,” but in acuality, a modified version of a centistoke labeling. Just add a zero to our label weights to get the true centistoke value. 35 “weight” = 350, 40=400 and so on. So our oils will compare directly to those in the list above.

Now for the TA/ TL oils… I’ve got a list of the cs values for each weight (measured) for comparison.

Team Associated
10=108
20=208
25=286
30=373
35=454
40=525
50=707
60=725
70=960
80=1040

Team Losi
15 =110
17.5=158
20 =243
22.5=243
25 =294
27.5=345
30 =381
32.5=397
35 =459
37.5=477
40 =546
45 =657
50 =886
60 =844
70 =970

So, if I wanted to use an Asian/ Euro oil to match say a Losi 70, I need either a 900 or 1000 (yes diff oil).
Also if you needed HPI 40wt shock oil and Only Losi is available, then you would get Losi 32.5wt.

Hopefully this helps when sharing shock data!