I assembled my koni reds, ground control coil-overs and top hats the way I thought they were supposed to.

After installing the fronts, I lowered the car down and the shock rods pushed right up through the tophats, good thing I had the hood open! The upper black bushing and the metal sleeve just popped right up. Am I missing a piece for the shock to work against inside the tophat?

Thanks,
Doug

 

bump stops ? I dunno....
sounds scary to me.

 

Sounds like you forgot the Washer that goes on the under the Shock Mount.

 

Probably, what does it look like? The tophats came with one washer and I thought that was for under the top nut.

Every washer I have will slide all of the way down the rod, so none of them will stop the shock from pushing through the mount.

Am I supposed to re-use some parts from my factory spring/shock assembly? I don't have a spring compressor, so I'd rather not take it apart unless I'm sure the part I need is in there.

 

youre missing the washer. you MUST have #12, front and rear. its a funny shaped, thick and tapered washer. you were supposed to have reused it on each shock, or use one that koni might have supplied.

 

Tyson is correct, you are missing #12 that you reuse from your stock shock removal. It is a bit oddly shapped with a taper on the bottom side and that sits on the shock rod where it necks down at an angle from 12 mm to 10mm (see the neck in Tyson's posted diagram?). Then you tighten your top nuts and mounting rubber, this is the piece that everything loads against. With it missing, there is nothing to keep the shock rod from heading upward. Install them immediately before driving any further.

If you paid someone to install them, go slap them around and make them fix it for free.

 

Thanks guys, you were both 100% correct. I didn't know I had to reuse anything from the stock assembly. I couldn't get the spring compressor in the coils, so you should have seen it blow apart across the floor when I took that top nut off. Good thing I get to work in a big shop!

Anyway, I tried the whole thing again today and took the stockers apart this time and everything is perfect. Thanks for the help guys.

 

holy crap dude, don't ever let the shock assembly come apart like that! It can remove limbs

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by garados &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">holy crap dude, don't ever let the shock assembly come apart like that! It can remove limbs </TD></TR></TABLE>

No it can't

It'll leave a nice bruise, but it's not under enough load to do any serious damage unless you have your open eyeball pointed at one of the tophat studs.

 

on a civic its not too bad. but i wouldnt do it on an accord or something similar those are under alot of load