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Good question. As for me, I guess I'm going to have to steal Art's set now!!

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Another option.

http://www.uprproducts.com/mustang-qa1- ... ck-05.html

I know NOTHING about these shocks, and I assume that the GT500 shocks are compatible with the GT. There's also a chance they may be referring to drag race handling when they say they improve your handling. I believe that QA1's are used in the circle track world, so maybe they are not just for drag racing?

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Could you clarify this? Is there a setting on the Koni's that make it prone to blowing?

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Rodney, I was in a similar boat a few months ago...deciding between fixed damping Bilsteins vs Koni yellows SA. I'm going the Bilstein route, but one thing worth mentioning given you have commented on staying in FS for budgetary reasons is that Koni's cost just a hair less to have rebuilt than they do to buy new all over again. Furthermore, there is a much smaller network to have Koni's rebuilt than Bilsteins. And from what I hear, they do wear out faster than the Bilsteins. Anyway, food for thought.

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2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

Isn't that what Les has on his C4?

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Stephen Westerfield
2009 Infiniti M35 | 2007 Honda Fit Sport | 2005 Ford Mustang GT |2000 GMC Sierra |1992 Acura Integra LS | Super Westerfield Bros Acura Integra

Sam's advice is to run the adjustable shocks at full stiff on the rears and mid on the front, so my assumption is that when Art ran at full still, he subsequently blew the shock. A possible example of the rumor mill where drivers are saying not to run the Koni's at full stiff or soft or suffer a blow out.

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

I had a long conversation with Lee Grimes from Koni about this at Nationals last year. His take was that you can't blow the Koni singles by running them full stiff or full soft. He did admit that you might wind up with a stuck adjuster in the full stiff setting if the shock bottoms frequently. You can also stick the adjuster if you use an impact gun to tighten or loosen the nut at the top of the shock. He highly recommends using a basic ratchet for this.

Bottoming the shocks will also greatly increase the chances of blowing a seal on the shock as well but that is independent of the rebound setting apparently. Theoretically, using bump stops will keep this from happening but I've seen enough empirical evidence to the contrary to suggest that isn't always the case. All of those cases involved a shorter than stock bump stop length so I guess it's possible that the bump stop was compressed so much that it acted like a hard mounting point.

FWIW, I wouldn't hesitate to run Konis (that is what is on the Type R) but I do think you need to be fairly careful with them. As a case in point, I would never use them on a Rally(X) car. Strangely enough, the shocks on the rear of the Type R were blown (complete with bent rods) the first 2 years David and I ran the car and they still seemed to at least provide some dampening. And the car certainly wasn't slow...

On the other hand, the Bilsteins seem to be nearly indestructible and last virtually forever. I honestly can't remember hearing of a case where somebody blew one with doing something extreme.

Jim

Jim,


Both times when I blew KONIs, the compression worked, but the rebound was completely gone. The one set that I sent in to have KONI look at, they claimed that the shafts were bent and wanted over $200 to do the repairs. I had them send the shocks back to me. I found a guy that wanted them, so I gave them away. He took them apart, took the parts to a machine shop and they could not find anything bent, just a blown seal. He replaced the seal and filled them with some motorcycle shock oil and they are apparently* working fine now.

Don't ask me how he rebuilt them, considering that there are only three places in the U.S. that supposedly have the tools to rebuild them.

* I say apparently, because I don't know what qualifies this guy to know, other than his experience with rebuilding motorcycle shocks.

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Hey Jason,

Oddly enough, the rear shocks on my Type R had decent rebound but the compression was *very* soft. I could tell the difference between settings on the rebound adjuster but it was pretty clear something funky was going on with the shocks. It helped that I was able to compare cars (both driving and the infamous "manually push on an end of the car" test) with a bunch of other owners.

This was backed up by operating the shocks off the car where I could easily compress the shocks but it was tough to extend them. The shocks had lived a very hard life before I got them including spending some time on a slammed STX-trim Type R so it didn't surprise me that they had some issues.

I really don't know what the real deal is but I can say that I've never had an issue with Konis that I bought new and carefully installed myself. I think Spratte had some issues with his Konis but they were double-adjustable and I can't remember the installation details. I think Donnie and Eric had some issues with theirs as well but, again, I can't remember the details.

I tend to think we hear of more issues with them due to the shear number out there compared with most other shocks. I do think they are the best value *adjustable* shock under $1000 as long as you are aware of the potential pitfalls. With that said, I'm using another brand on my new car.

Jim

Yeah, I have had a set of these on the C4 for about 9 months and I'm very happy with them so far. Quality construction, range of adjustment is remarkable and they seem to work really well.

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Rodney, if you call that place about the QA1's, let me know what they tell you. That's an interesting shock, and I'm curious what the adjustment is changing internally.

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Since you brought it up...

My big problem was with some custom built 2817's as struts. They were simply terrible. Constantly breaking the adjuster with no reason given by Koni other than "must have gotten some dirt in there or something). The adjuster was on the bottom and was exposed to dirt, but the car wasn't driven in the rain or anything. And once I started covering the adjuster (no dirt was getting in of ANY significance) they STILL broke at about the same (very short) interval. They finally seemed to stop breaking after one repair cycle with some notice given of *something* different being done *this time*, but no idea as to exactly what. Those shocks were sold to Tracy Ramsey who had them shortened and used on his DP Spyder which won a championship or two. Never heard him complain about them. My biggest problem was every repair cycle seemed to take a month or more to get them back. *sigh*

I also had significant problems with the struts on the CSP Spyder when I got it. Those were shocks that McGeorge had built on the cheap WAY back. Basically Pro-Parts took some stock struts and cut the top off, removed the guts, and then used those bodies to build a twin-tube custom strut. No, not an insert, but they actually USED the body as the new body. They worked okay for a while, but by the time I got them they were EOL and blew seals. Had them fixed and it took almost no time before they blew again. Why? Two things. One, I think the more advanced tires we were getting around that time put too much lateral load. I think the S03's and 4's of the day were at the edge, but the A6's put the car over that edge. Second, the reason Koni gave was "look inside the body here...see this little ridge? That's where this body was welded originally and thus this body isn't exactly round and that's killing our seals...they should have never been built using bodies made this way." Ugh. Koni didn't build them, but Pro-Parts built them with Koni guts, so Koni would service them at Nationals and such. But that car cost me two straight Nationals performances with blown shocks before I figured out they needed to get replaced completely (and likely a good Finale finish that would have led to a podium ProSolo points finish!).

Koni singles have never let me down. Great shock for the money if you can get it. Anything more advanced? Never been anything but a problem for me, but that's been mostly on strut cars, too. Struts and high performance? Usually a bad combo.


--Donnie

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Actually, "on the cheap" probably isn't a fair way to describe the CSP DAs. That was probably the most economical way to do it, but they weren't cheap at all. But there was no other way to do a DA for that car at the time other than spending a few grand MORE to have some fabbed, so that's what they did. He probably had no idea that this wasn't a good idea and that the extra money spent would have been worth it, or I'm sure that's what he'd have done.


--Donnie

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I was going to mention that above and it makes me wonder if their design isn't really suited to the (relatively) high-lateral loads that struts see. Of the nearly dozen sets of Konis I've had over the years, they have all been on double wishbone-type cars.

I thought I remembered you guys having issues with the shocks on the Miata but I was thinking that was after having them opened for revalving? Weren't those 30-series Koni double adjustables? The set that was on the Frank's car when I bought it never gave me any trouble but I never really ran the car very hard.

None of this is probably helping Rodney at all.

Jim

I know I'll catch some crap for posting this from the KONI followers, but the "tech" guy at KONI, confirmed what you state above. Even though their website claims the KONI yellows are for autocrossers, "they are not designed for use with R-comps on strut cars." (Those are not my words, so don't shoot the messenger)

With that said, the rear of the mustang is a shock, not a strut. I believe Art's failure was in the rear?

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