I took apart the rear shocks from both the ’84 and the ’87. Kinda different on the inside, so I went with the ’87 shocks because that matches my parts diagram better. The bushings were no good and the boots were completely destroyed, so I’ve got those on order again. It took a little doing to disassemble: After getting the boot off, there is a little snap ring/c-clip in a groove and it’s the type without the little holes for the snap ring pliers. After messing around with it for what seemed to be forever, I discovered via the internet that you can tap the bottom washer up into the body of the shock a bit which gives you the space needed to lever out the wire. Once that was done it wasa simple matter of popping them open with air and then draining the fluid and replacing the oil seal. I found that for some reason I could not get the oil seal to drive in to the shock with that metal bottom washer in place. Taking that out and pressing it in with a section of black iron pipe and a hammer worked perfectly, though. Go figure.
While I wait on those parts, I’ll go ahead and continue on to see what I find. Scary fact: One of the reasons that the bike was rattling and clattering so much over bumps was that the right shock wasn’t actually bolted to the bike on its top mount. The nut that is supposed to hold that and the frame for the luggage was missing and everything was just kind of banging around. Isn’t that great?