Rebuilding struts
 

Any of you old school dudes ever do this? There's a whole section in my RX-4 shop manual on rebuilding the front struts.
I'm wondering if you could make them damp more by pouring in thicker oil? Or maybe machine a new valve with a smaller hole?
Where would one get this mysterious damper oil that they show in the manual?

thanks

What weight oil does it say to use?

It doesn't say what weight oil...It says "Fill with shock absorber fluid. Capacity of reservoir should be exactly 270cc."

270cc each? OK...

I've heard to use motorcycle shock oil, but i guess i'm gonna have to experiment with what weight to use!

I used to build radio controlled cars (the expensive "hobby-quality" kind) and the more sophisticated ones had oil-filled shocks which you could tune by rebuilding them with different valving or thicker/lighter oil. So that's where I got the idea.

I wonder how similiar my RX-4 struts are to the 1st gen. RX-7 ones?

Just buy gas shock inserts that will drop right in and you do not have to mess with the oil and you get better damping. Mrmasda

Those cost a lot of money and they're not tuneable and they're hard to find. heck it's hard enough to find performance struts for '79-80 RX-7s!

Anyway, on a Capri list I read that you can't go too thick because then the high-speed blowoff would actuate too early and the damping would actually get softer. That site said 20wt oil was at the very high end of what should be used - 5 to 15wt being the area you should experiment with. But, that's for a Capri, dunno how Mazda did things vs. Ford of Germany.

At any rate, one other thing I learned is that if you experiment with non-shock oils, only use synthetic oil, because it's less apt to change viscosity with heat.