First clamp the shock in a vice.   Punch out pin with long nose punch, prise pin out with plier.

Unscrew top ally bit. It is screwed onto the threaded rod that goes through the seal (in the skinny bottom part of the shock). The painted cover also has a thread… hence everything will spin endlessly if the parts are slightly rusted.

This is as far as we got. You can see in the background of the previous photos the first shock we dismantled… of course, we didn’t take pics of that. What we’re doing in fact is screwing in the painted shroud untill it bottoms out on the unthreaded part of the rod. This stops the spinning rod and gives us a chance to unscrew the seized top part. This one resisted all attempts.  I spared you the worst: I had to cut open the shroud and make a special tool with a lock plier in order to grab the rod and unscrew the top… not pretty.

Before that I also made tool with a 34mm socket used with a impact pneumatic tool to try and unscrew the top bit… it wouldn’t budge, the rod kept spinning.

You can see the culprit: the top shroud washer had unwelded itself from the shroud. It is only spot-welded twice to the shroud. 

This is where it belongs.

Completely dismantled shock… there is a rubber damper at the bottom, close to the seal, not in the pic. Don’t forget it when you reassemble, I did…  Pass a tap and die on all threads and coat them with TONS of copper anti-seize… The marks On the rod should really be higher that the seal lips, try to grab it as high as possible.

Finished product. Mounted on bike… It took me more than 5 hours to do that shock… the first one took 5 minutes… Luckily I had a set of new painted shrouds, so I could sacrifice the one in this post… Got me fuming for an afternoon. Bottom line: it either works nicely or expect trouble, BIG trouble. If they show leaks… dismantle them to recuperate the shrouds (if you can) and buy a used set… the seal is under a pressed washer in the body and CAN’T be extracted without destroying the shock ie NOT servicable. I think you’d be better off painting the shock without disassembling them if the chrome is OK.