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calm down i ran mine without dust boots until new ones arrives ;)

necessary to function? nope, it is however highly recommended to prolong the life of the shock though

could have gone cheaper and not bothered with the tooling anymore :)
in any case it should be okay, i recall accidentally running without it for about a year until i realised i was supposed to...

on the shock body itself there should be inverted dents which you can slip the collar up to, it'll stay put as you're supposed to line up the little nub to the shock fork

torque wrench mate :thumbsup:

edit; because jason's a bastard and beat me to posting i thought i'd like to add that you should use a 9mm ring spanner to hold the shock piston while tightening the...

we're talking about the exact same thing mate

as stated before, if you weren't using ground control sleeves you could just bore it out to 12mm and slip it on

otherwise my first post about it...

the 'metal tube' is the stock dust boot, it won't fit over the ground control sleeves
hence why the original poster used steer rack boots
without it, it allows dust to get in/on the shock piston...

anyone tried ordering from the ground control store lately? quoted me $200US shipping for the ground control sleeves :(