Defective Koni??

[brv@chrysler.com]

Mike said on March 3:

"The left hand side was nice and firm
     lotsa damping, the right hand side felt no different to the old
     shocks. Soooo, we removed the bouncy shock and tried to readjust
the
     stiffness, no matter where we adjusted it this shock could be
easily
     moved up and down with two fingers and a thumb. Tried pumping it up
     and down a couple of times, no improvement. The other strange
thing,
     you could hear a bit of air inside the shock and depending on where
     the piston was in its travel there were points where there was
hardly
     any resistance."


Mike-

what you have here is a shock that has not been primed.  Twin tube
shocks (especially those that
are NOT gas charged like the Koni reds) need to have the air pumped out
of the pressure tube since they
have probably been sitting around on their side on a shelf for sometime
and possibly shipped upsidown.
Your hand pumping of the shock is sometimes not sufficient enough to
purge the shock so that it fully functions.
It needs to have some higher compression velocities  placed on it to
force air through the foot (base) valve and
out into the reservoir tube.  If you just left it on the car and drove
around for a while it would probably purge itself
and you would not have to rely on a replacement.

I have the same shocks on my car and I seem to recall a similar
situation with mine when I first removed them from the box.
Luckily for me, I brought the shocks to work so I could run them on a
shock dyno. This device strokes the shock  prior to
measuring the force vs. velocity characteristics for the exact reasons
I described-to purge the air from the pressure tube
where the piston works.    After a dyno run, the air was then in its
proper place and all went well.

Any other listers planning on using twin tube shocks like Koni Reds
(actually very primitive design that doesn't have a nitrogen gas charge
to
reduce cavitation (foaming), Monroe, some Tokicos, Boge (I can't
remember which on is the monotube) , Gabriel etc. might want
to try and manually prime the shock beforhand but may also want to
install it anyway and let the ride motions of the car purge the
air.

If you have any specific shock questions feel free to mail me privately

Good Luck!!


Brian Vinson
86 5KCSTQ w/ Koni reds, H&R, ugly wheels and a QLCC soon...right
Graydon?
BRV@Chrysler.com