What the hell happened to my rear suspension??!! lots of pics

[brandnew161]

So i leave for my afternoon class today and everything is fine. Come home later and i'm working under the hood and i glance over down the body line of the car and $#%^ my rear suspension is all screwed up! My heart sank and at first I was panicking because i thought maybe the axle was bent. After looking it over for a few more minutes it looks like something gave (on both sides but pass side worse) which allowed the wheel to tuck under the rear fenders. This didnt happen out of the blue..i remember on the way home i took a different route and the road was very bumpy and there were quite a few potholes. However i never noticed any noises or vibrations out of the ordinary.

On the car are
• Koni Sport multi-adjustable shocks
• HP racing coilovers
• Ingalls front and rear camber adjustment kit

As you can see in the pictures I jacked up the car and the wheels straightened out. It is when i drop it down does the wheel "bend". (car is currently up on stands). The pic of the front wheel shows how much gap there originally was roughly at the rear. I bought this car last week and just got it running. I dont know what to look for or how to approach this situation. Any help is greatly appreciated

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[snowborder714]

The suspension in the 3rd to last picture doesn't look right (or maybe it is and I've never seen a setup like that before). It looks as if the coilover fell down the shock body. You might also want to make sure your Ingalls kits are tight.

 

[98gst14b]

Possible that when you were heading thru the potholes you loosened the locknuts on the camber adjusters, i use locktite on things like that, neway thats not even that bad you should see mine .

http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/han...ng-split-how-adjust-camber.html#post151827381

 

[brandnew161]

ok thanks for the tips. I'm going to go out and check the coilovers and also the camber adjustment if i can locate it

 

[tehehodi]

are those hp racing coilovers an ebay special? happend to me before, pretty sure that your "coilovers/adjustable springs" fell down to the bottom. take off the wheel and you'll understand why the car sits like that, time for springs! your rear suspension is screwed, you going to have to buy a new set of struts, get springs this time

 

[brandnew161]

yup thats what happened. Coilovers fell to the bottom. Not sure where they were bought from, purchased the car already modded

 

[EclipticalGS]

dude..did the coilover break off the koni base plate where the base of the coil-over sits on and pushed it to the bottom?? do you need new struts now?!?

 

[PL69]

Control arm painting FTW l !!

 

[TSiAWD666]

Yeah like others said the spring perch that now supports the coilover collar broke loose and is sitting at the bottom of the shock. The car is not drivable like that and you need to get it fixed. I couldn't tell you if it's possible to weld the perch back in place (not sure if the heat might damage the shock) and I personally wouldn't bother and would just try to by a replacement, or get the shock body covered under warranty.

Fortunately working on the rear shocks is child's play so at least you shouldn't have much work ahead of you.

 

[brandnew161]

^^^hahah well...the guy who i bought the car from lost the lug key so that will be the fun part.

And yes from looking at the struts it just seems that the welds holding the perch in place broke.

But i found the receipt for the konis that were purchased centuries ago. Just contacted koni and they are going to call me back tomorrow. I guess they have some "looking into" to do since the shop the konis were bought from went out of business.

Poor koni yellows

 

[EclipticalGS]

who the hell buys koni yellow strutsand cheaps out on the actual spring part (cheap coilovers ) in your case....slap that man in the face. pronto!

 

[brandnew161]

your guess is as good as mine

I found the instructions for the coils while looking for the koni receipt. I guess they are "circuit pro" coilovers made by toucan industries. I googled the name and came up with ones for a sentra/ integra etc...but they still look like ebay coilovers to me. Real shotty

 

[brandnew161]

i noticed on my rear koni yellow's that there is no "groove" or any resemblance of the circlip or "ring" that holds the perch in place. On thing i see are the tack welds on the upper body that held the perch. These koni's as stated on the receipt were specifically bought for this car so idk whats up.

 

[rEclipserGST]

i noticed on my rear koni yellow's that there is no "groove" or any resemblance of the circlip or "ring" that holds the perch in place. On thing i see are the tack welds on the upper body that held the perch. These koni's as stated on the receipt were specifically bought for this car so idk whats up.

Nice car, its a shame it actually was molested. But if I were you, I would replace every part on the car that looks "ebay". ESPECIALLY an ebay suspension. Air intake, FMIC, mani's and solid things of that nature are fine and reliable. But if he cheaped it right there... he might of went cheap elsewhere

Check it out for your safety and for maintenance sake in the end.

 

[daren_p]

Are you sure those are actually Koni shocks? The yellow looks abit off (Koni's are abit more of an orange yellow usually) & like you say they normally have a groove with a circlip to hold the spring perch in place, not welded like you mention. Unless Koni did something like this years ago, I'd be wondering if you actually had Koni shocks....

 

[Killa_dsm]

Are you sure those are actually Koni shocks? The yellow looks abit off (Koni's are abit more of an orange yellow usually) & like you say they normally have a groove with a circlip to hold the spring perch in place, not welded like you mention. Unless Koni did something like this years ago, I'd be wondering if you actually had Koni shocks....

+1 those don't look like they are koni's.

 

[brandnew161]

^ they are koni's. I have the original receipt when they were purchased in 1998. Also the koni sticker is on the shocks and the serial number is forged into the shock body. I also have the dampering adjuster I guess they are not technically welds but locating bumps for the perch to sit on. maybe before the circlip design hit the market??

Here is what the email from koni said,

Hello Bill,

I am sorry to see that you have had problem with the spring perches on your KONI Sports. As you can see from the photos, there are locating bumps tooled into the side of the shock body for the factory spring perch to seat on top of.

The only way for the spring perch to be pressed down over those bumps is for a long term solid hammering on the perches to extrude the perch downward over the bumps. This cannot happen unless the spring assembly has repeatedly gone solid or into "coil bind" on the springs. This means that your combination of spring rate, length and preloaded height are too little for the amount of suspension travel that the car is actually using. Only when the spring goes into coil bind does the perch itself take the brunt of the impact. Although you may not have hit a particularly large bump at the moment that the rear of the car fell down, that was only the last straw in a long series of bottoming the springs out that culminated in the falling.

Although I have never seen a car push the factory spring perches past the retaining bumps in the body in over 13 years working here, this coil binding and hammering effect are not uncommon on drop-on coil-over sleeve kits that don't really properly match the car and its suspension needs. We also see similar issues on some vehicle applications where KONI and other brands use a metal circlip in a groove and ill fitted coil-over sleeve systems bottoms or loads improperly and strips the circlip from the groove. Your situation where you have stretched the factory perch over the metal bumps should be even stronger and is therefore more evidence of the repeated pounding that the system has taken from coil binding.

Coil-over systems like this can be very useful when designed and installed correctly and can't hit the point of coil bind but they can be damaging when not well made or poorly designed for the car and allow coil binding to occur. Do you have bump stops installed? Although they cannot stop a coil bind situation, when used correctly they can reduce the chance and impact of the coil binding.

If you take a look at the inside diameter of your factory spring perch, I am sure that you will see that the metal has been moved and stretched to allow it to pass over the tooled bumps. Unfortunately your factory perches will now be deformed enough that they will need to be replaced and not reused. As you can see, the bumps are still present in the KONI shocks so it is not the fault of the shocks themselves that this has occurred. Something (specifically the coil binding of your coil-over kits) has hammered the perches down over the top of the bumps until the rear of the car finally fell down.

I wish there was something more that I can do other than to tell you to get a fresh set of factory spring perches and recommend that you either replace the coil-over kit with a better system for your needs or at least change them to make sure that they can't reach coil bind again. If there is internal damage to the shocks themselves from bottoming when the rear of the car fell (most easily identified by the damping adjusters most likely being stick or getting reduced numbers of turns), then I would be happy to get a reduced price for new replacement shocks for you. This is not a warranty situation as there is no defect in the shock itself that has caused the problem but we can make arrangements for reduced price replacements if the shocks were damaged in the aftermath.

Good luck with your repairs and let me or our tech staf know if we can be of further assistance.

Lee Grimes
KONI North America

____

so tomorrow i am going to go to the salvage yard and pick up a used set of struts and get the perches off them. And of course..i'm buying a new set of real lowering springs tonight with my tax return

and the "hammering" she mentions in the email is undoubtably from the crap ebay coilovers providing no shock absorption. My last car i bought these came on it and it was a PITA to replace them. Thought i wouldve gotten away from them when buying this car but they follow me everywhere!!

 

[EclipticalGS]

like i said, that owner needs a slapping. Who does that?? Thats like buying 20" rims, and putting walmart wheels on. nice..

 

[brandnew161]

exactly. I posted the shocks/struts up on ebay. Hopefully I find a buyer. The shocks are all good, no damage, all they need are two new oem spring perches for the rear shocks. I'm think i may jut downgrade to the gr-2's or tokico hp blues, not sure which yet

 

[Morphius]

Take a good pic of the shock on the good side.

Pic a point on your car to measure the height of something... wheel lip or rocker seam near the rear. Find 1-3 friends and weigh them. Then get them to sit on the corner of your car. Again measure the height at the same point on your car. Take a pic while you are at it, of the shock.

I find it hard to believe what the Koni rep said. I just don't see that happening. Especially, when the shocks are designed to work with stock and aftermarket lowering springs. Seems like an easy cop-out.

 

[brandnew161]

i believe it, the stock oem perches which needed to be used in the early model koni (1998) arent as strong as the perches koni makes right now. When I took them perches off they were deformed out you can see when the perch slid over the locating bumps. The springs on the car (ebay) didnt match the dampening quality of the yellows. Also, the guy had the front yellows at "all soft" and the rears at "all herd" so the cars dampening was in a sense lopsided.

I understand what you mean with the usage of aftermarket spring but in reality not all springs are as good to use with the koni's...he was saying that the only good coilovers to use with them would be ground control or the coil adjustment kit which they sell.

Oh yea, also coil bind was to blame for the oem perches failing