Shocks only do two things. Firstly they hold the springs in place. The springs rarely wear out. The main purpose for the shocks though is to provide compression and rebound damping. Without damping, the bike will pogo up and down in the back as there isn't anything to slow the rate of spring travel. The best way to figure out if your shock has any damping left is to remove the springs and then extend and compress the shocks by hand. If they extend and compress easily, then the damping is shot. If they are hard to pull and push, but still travel smoothly then the damping is still fine. It's difficult, if not impossible to judge damping with the springs in place. Those Partsnmore.com shocks are good shocks. They are a bit on the stiff side, but I use them on vintage race bikes and they stop all wallowing in the back of the bike.
Tracy
I'd agree with that.
To follow up on Hush's original post, if bottoming out is the problem, that's a spring problem not so much a shock problem. The shock will slow down the rate of spring compression, but it won't stop it from bottoming out.
And many of the older shocks did most of their dampening on the rebound, relying primarily on the spring to control compression.
I mean, the best shock will still bottom out if the spring is too weak. Either you are too heavy,
, or the spring is sacked. Do what Triffecpa says, remove the spring then test for damping firmness and you can feel if the oil is gurgling past its valves meaning the oil is done for.
Of course you can just buy the new shocks and you're probably safe. Are we talking about replacing the original shock that came with the bike? If so, you can bet its sacked. The concensus is factory shocks on all but the recent 15 years of sportbikes or higher end streetbikes, are/were inferior on the showroom floor. So anything new is probably a step up.
