The cost for both roughly $340, this may vary depending on the make and model of your bike. If you need springs, look to add an additional $220 for front and rear. Plus you will need 3 quarts of oil.

The thought of servicing your shock and fork might make you break out in a cold sweat and run screaming from the room like some nelly queen, all those hidden parts. But if you follow the directions in your service manual and the directions Race Tech provides it really is easy. The best thing is you can do your fork in about two hours and your shock in about 1 ½. All you need is a bright work space, a good sized work bench that is very clean – dirt will ruin the inner parts of your suspension, a service manual, we use Clymer, an assortment of metric mechanics tools, a medium sized vise and a few special suspension tools – depending on the model fork you have – available through the Race Tech web site.

The shock needs to be recharged with nitrogen which can be done at the service dept. of your local dealer. Add to the list the most important ingredient, patience. Any of the services we suggest you do require patience and no distractions the first time through. Keep your work space clean, (did we say this already?) and organized and lay everything down in the order you disassembled it. Any task or service when performed following these rules will end in success.

We just happened to have a shiny new 2008 CRF450 sitting in the shop with about 10 minutes on it. The CRF is a perfect candidate for this kind of service, since the stock Showa suspension is notorious for feeling harsh.

After about 3 seconds of deliberation we decided, since we had the suspension apart, we should also have the tubes treated with a Diamond-like Coating. You’ve seen it before, it’s on the factory bikes and Kawasaki ships their 450 with a similar coating. It’s the coating that makes the tubes look black or some other color, Team Pro Circuit uses blue. We had our tubes done by Extremeion in Denver, NC and since they are so close we ran them over so we could have a look around.

Continued