I noticed some Bilsteins have schrader valves. Why is it that mine don't, yet are able to be rebuilt (bye bye crimp top). Is it for convenience?

 

the valves are for changing the pressure of the nitrogen gas below the floater piston.

 

Yup. I don't know if any of them actually came with these valves from the factory. All the ones I've seen have been added during a rebuild by someone like FatCat Motorsports.

 

So what's the purpose for doing this? Ease to revalve or changing the characteristics of the shock on the fly or...?

 

When Bilstein assembles a shock, they have a magical machine that allows them to teleport the nitrogen gas into the bottom of a shock through the steel casing. Folks like Shaikh can't afford this technology, so they drill a hole in the bottom and fit a valve into it.

It's purely an affordance to allow the shock to be re-gassed after a rebuild. I've heard of folks adjusting the gas pressure as a tuning mechanism, but for me, that's a bit like adjusting the front/rear weight distribution by changing the amount of brake fluid sitting in the cup. (It's a far finer level of detail than I'll ever need.)

 

So Bernie from Stewart Dev has this contraption since he doesn't place schrader valves?

 

Or maybe he doesn't use nitrogen

or maybe he has a nitronge-filled glove box

or maybe he backpurges them with nitrogen and holds them upside down to reassemble them

my advance-designs had the shrader valve. I busted one off once because it was too close to the mounting portion and ran into the lower suspension arm.

 

My understanding is that he does have a way of nitrogen pressurizing his shocks, and that it's the device Bilstein uses.

 

Yes, I do have the equipment to pressurize the shocks without the use of a schrader valve.

I can do the shocks either way, but I prefer not having schrader valves. This way the shock won't leak down over time.