Koni woes

Graham Jagger · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 12:53 am **Posts:** 1718

You guys are glutens for punishment. So far all these Koni threads have shown me is these things are poorly made and not properly tested. It maybe all well and good they will work on custom designs for an off the wall car like a Crossfire when most vendors probably wouldn't bother. Not being able to make them right and/or last on BMW or Honda. Pretty sad. I'd just buy Bilsteins or Sachs, bolt them on, and call it a day.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Sun May 15, 2011 8:46 pm

Graham Jagger wrote:

So far all these Koni threads have shown me is these things are poorly made and not properly tested.

At least they have a lifetime warranty I suppose. This reminds of a situation when I worked at IBM back in the late 80's in the Proprinter group. The X24 ProprinterIII (24 pin dot matrix printhead model) had an electrical component (can't recall at the moment which one) on the motherboard that tended to fail after a number of hours of typical use. The FRU (field replaceable unit) that IBM sold at the time was the whole board of course which cost a ton (around $400 retail on a $600 printer). Lots of testing was done, and it was determined that almost all printers would not fail during the warranty period; therefore, no fix for the problem -- just let them keep being built.

I wasn't in a position to control that outcome at the time, but I did unsuccessfully object up the line to that decision. It was one of many lessons I learned about "what gets rewarded is what gets done." Nobody in the management chain was going to get rewarded for making perhaps the appropriate long-term decision, but they definitely would get penalized instead. In any event, this was toward the end of the demise of the "original" IBM...about 3 years prior to the almost bankruptcy (according to Gerstner's story about being recruited for the job) of the company in early 1993.

Jason Mauldin · **Posted:** Sun May 15, 2011 9:19 pm

Graham Jagger wrote:

You guys are glutens for punishment. So far all these Koni threads have shown me is these things are poorly made and not properly tested. It maybe all well and good they will work on custom designs for an off the wall car like a Crossfire when most vendors probably wouldn't bother. Not being able to make them right and/or last on BMW or Honda. Pretty sad. I'd just buy Bilsteins or Sachs, bolt them on, and call it a day.

but, but, but....

How could you live without your eleventy billion shock adjustments!?!?!11!!

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Sat Jan 28, 2012 10:40 pm

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

Ok, we put the new shocks on this morning, and as I expected, they are silent -- all the clunking is gone. I sure am glad I saved the OEM shocks all these years as they got almost 4 months of use while waiting on Koni. So all is well now (for the time being anyway).

Well, ~7 months and 4k miles later and....it's baaaaaaackkkk! :shock:

JamesShort · **Posted:** Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:59 pm

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

Ok, we put the new shocks on this morning, and as I expected, they are silent -- all the clunking is gone. I sure am glad I saved the OEM shocks all these years as they got almost 4 months of use while waiting on Koni. So all is well now (for the time being anyway).

Well, ~7 months and 4k miles later and....it's baaaaaaackkkk! :shock:

Just put my name on your warranty claim and they'll rebuild them in less than 2 days

.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:16 am

It's bizarre that Koni has this issue with top adjust shocks while their struts do not have any such issue (in my experience).

Jason Mauldin · **Posted:** Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:25 am

Can you adapt a set of these to work?

http://www.bilsteinus.com/products/circ ... n-mds.html

Cash Davidson · **Posted:** Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:09 am

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

Well, ~7 months and 4k miles later and....it's baaaaaaackkkk! :shock:

That's one reason I just finished installing Bilsteins.

Having been down the Koni road before - sure their product is great when it works and their customer service is great. Its just too much hassle swapping parts and sending them back and swapping again.

Good luck with it.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:56 am

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

It's bizarre that Koni has this issue with top adjust shocks while their struts do not have any such issue (in my experience).

My experience corroborates that. On both the Civic and WRX, the struts were always fine and the shocks were the issues.

When I was talking to Lee Grimes last week when he sold me those double adjustables for a figurative five-finger-discount, he brought up my Civic clunking noise and said his Mazdaspeed 3 started making that noise in the rear (similar suspension design where the lower arm is a double-shear 'taco' with the shock eye sandwiched in the middle). Anyway, he end up torquing the lower bolt much tighter and it went away. Brice said the same thing about his Mazda 3 (same-ish) rear suspension. But I went 60% greater than OEM torque spec on that bolt and I wasn't trying any higher. I know the bimmer has a single shear bolts for the lower connection point, but have you tried torquing it higher?

Chuck, did Koni ever given you a diagnosis on the last set? Or did they just rebuild and send them back to you?

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:15 am

4 months Chuck? Whoa...

I have a front strut insert from my Civic that I need to send off before I sell them. It started seeping a little bit of oil after 10 months & about 15k miles, just enough that I don't feel comfortable wiping it off and selling them through the Civic forums.

In retrospect, I'm not sure if I'd do any SA Konis again as I'm not really sure they make the car faster than the stock shocks (at least on a low mileage fwd Honda). Setting them at full stiff all the way around *felt* faster but I'm not sure it really helped putting the traction down on the slower sections. Trying the DA's would be something I'm up for in the future, maybe on the S2000. I'd give Koni another shot but those Bilsteins look pretty sweet and I was happy even with the non-adjustable set I had on my '00 ITR several years back.

BriceJohnson · **Joined:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:33 am **Posts:** 2230

I have had two struts leak at the adjuster, and my rears have been fine fwiw.

They most definitely made my car faster, but that was compared to 100k mile stock shocks. . .

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:05 pm

JamesShort wrote:

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

It's bizarre that Koni has this issue with top adjust shocks while their struts do not have any such issue (in my experience).

My experience corroborates that. On both the Civic and WRX, the struts were always fine and the shocks were the issues.

When I was talking to Lee Grimes last week when he sold me those double adjustables for a figurative five-finger-discount, he brought up my Civic clunking noise and said his Mazdaspeed 3 started making that noise in the rear (similar suspension design where the lower arm is a double-shear 'taco' with the shock eye sandwiched in the middle). Anyway, he end up torquing the lower bolt much tighter and it went away. Brice said the same thing about his Mazda 3 (same-ish) rear suspension. But I went 60% greater than OEM torque spec on that bolt and I wasn't trying any higher. I know the bimmer has a single shear bolts for the lower connection point, but have you tried torquing it higher?

Chuck, did Koni ever given you a diagnosis on the last set? Or did they just rebuild and send them back to you?

I've not tried higher than spec torque on that lower bolt. You just reuse the BMW lower bolt of course. I wonder what the factor of safety is on the torque to the yield point.

Koni wanted to give me two new shocks for some reason. I think they were backed up last winter/spring with rebuilds perhaps. Anyway, we waited for a few months to get new ones from Europe.

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:46 am

Sometime this year, I'm going to put a set on the Mercedes.

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