After some advice from a few members on another post I had and watching NMK's shock absorber video I decided to pull mine off and clean them up and see how they functioned off of the machine and this is what I found. Unlike the CFMoto shocks which most of the machines come with the DNM shocks that the factory sometimes uses have the piggyback reservoir in line with the mounting bolts and on my machine this caused the reservoir to push against the plastic rear protector panel and the plastic was literally sawing through the aluminum reservoir. I cut away about 1/2" of the plastic and swapped the shocks left and right to keep the plastic away from the grooves it had already cut into the shock as it traveled up and down.
Servicing the shock was another story, the adjustment knobs were packed with dirt, sand, and dry mud and barely functioned, I flushed them out with cleaner and compressed air and now they work smoothly, I can feel the little indents click in position as I make adjustments. These shocks have rubber O-rings on the bushings to keep the dirt out which they didn't do, the Heim bearings were packed in dirt and basically frozen in place, 2 of them had some scoring from the sand that had got in there, I got those all cleaned out and greased and now the shocks work perfectly, without the springs on them I could make different adjustments, compress the shock and make sure that the compression and rebound rates actually changed.
Now I still have the problem with the springs being very stiff, even with zero preload and the compression set at the softest position I can't get these springs to compress when I jump on the back bed, are the CFMoto shocks that stiff as well, I am thinking about changing them out, does anyone know the spring rate on the factory spring which is 11" long with no load on it
I keep reading the posts on this forum and continue to learn from all of the experience that you guys have, thanks for putting out the effort to keep this forum interesting and educational.