Others have said over the years that Koni can sort of adjust the height of your suspension. Never followed up because I never wanted to pay for Konis. Now, I may consider it.

Here is the actual text someone wrote. It's not coilovers.


On the Konis, the spring perch sits on a metal spring collar that can be removed from the shock body with a set of snap ring pliers. The shock body, depending on the model, has up to 5 groves in which the spring collar sits. The middle perch is comparable to the stock height on a comparable stock shock. The other groves are spaced .25" apart and therefore allow the car to be lowered or jacked-up over a stock shock by .5" (That's if the shock has 5 groves like the Koni SP3). Now, in order to lower or raise the spring perch, the shocks have to be taken off the car and the spring compressed enough in order to get your snap ring pliers to remove the spring clamp. It's a PITA but it's what I do every fall and spring to raise or lower my car. I have to say it's worth it. The Konis offer an amazing ride.

True or false?

I looked at Koni's website and can not find any information to confirm this. Educate me.
http://www.koni-na.com/index.cfm

 

On the Accord the front has 3 perch and Rear has 2.

The rears if you want to remove the circlip (This is the round clip that goes on the perch and holds the sleeves) You just have to hold the sleeves up and use a needle nose pliers to remove the circlip.

The front is totally different ( well mine is that way) you have to loosen up the spring first before you can raise the sleeves and do the adjustment.

If you jacked the rear the whole spring comes down its like its missing a helper spring or something but I guess that is the way it was design.

 

yes, there are a few grooves which to choose your perch height and will affect ride height. its a key feature on Koni Yellows. the neuspeed edition ones have more grooves than the regular yellows, come with an internal droop limiter (dont worry about it, really does nothing) but valved the same as regular sports.

once you go with GC sleeves on koni's its redundant tho.

 

Standard Koni Sports for 92-00 Civics and 94-01 Integras have 2 grooves on the front shocks and 3 on the rear. On the front you have stock (upper) and -1" (which translates to about 1.5" at the wheel) and on the rear you have stock (middle) or higher or lower by 5/8" (about 1" at the wheel).

You cannot go higher than stock on the front shocks, and I'm fairly certain that the Neuspeed SP3 Konis simply add more grooves in between the grooves on stock off-the-shelf standard Koni Sports. So you don't get any larger range of height adjustment, you just have more in-between options.

 

Is someone willing to post pics so I can better educate me? Thanks. I assume every shock have a perch, and only Koni's can be adjusted? Adjustment is during installation only? On the rear for example, the springs don't sit on a perch (right?), so I have a hard time imagining it.

Let's use newer Accords for example, and not double wishbone (Integra) on all four. And OEM springs.

 

google???

http://www.team-integra.net/sections...a0d8a84148.jpg

 

Does it really matter where the circlip is located?

You're just gonna adjust the height of the springs through the adjuster or is there a Pros for it.

 

From what I understand about koni, is that they are great products. they give you the adjument of the shock height, how that translates to ride hight, I dont know for sure, but what I do know is its a pain in the *** to install, b/c you have to take the factory spring pirch off the stock shock/strut, and put it on the koni. my hpde instructor told me not to use them, and to use either tokico 5 ways, or a nice full coilover, I went with skunk 2 pro S. and its great on the track, and fun on the roads.

 

Sounds like your instructor doesn't know much about Koni shocks. They come with a spring perch. You do not, and in fact cannot, use the OE spring perch because it's welded to the OE shock body.

For Civic and Integra applications (not sure about others) you DO need to slide the front brake line brackets off of the front shocks and install them on the new Koni shocks. This helps the shock fork get seated and positioned correctly.

 

The point is that these guys that are using the circlip don't have ground control coilovers, they're using stock springs with yellows. Basically, with yellows you have the ability to raise and lower your car even if you have stock springs.

 

It's optional. There are no problems with zip tying the brake line to the shock. Also, the shock has an indent where the bolt goes to tighten down the fork so it's not budging. Also the shock is tapered so it sits fine. The shock might sit alittle lower and closer to the axle than it would if it had the bracket but that's it.

 

IMHO it's not optional. Not using the brake line bracket and relying on that little indent in the shock where the bolt goes to support the weight of the car is half-assing it.

 

its not a big deal not using the original brake line holder collar.

in fact you can get the shock lower in the fork for an even better way to acheive lower ride height. this only works in the front tho.

while i wont say both things are endorsed by koni, i dont hear their north american director saying its a bad idea.

 

Sorry mate, you've got the wrong idea. The bolt never touches the shock.

 

companys that "half *** it" dont last for 150 years. I have owned more than 20 sets of Koni's and never had one issue. You will not find a better, more consistant quality damper.

 

It will if the fork isn't pinched down enough and the shock slips down in the fork.

LOL you don't think I know about Koni shocks? My current set of Koni Sports have been on my car since 2002 with over 180K miles on them and they're still working great. I NEVER said Koni half-assed anything. What I meant was that the person installing the shocks, not using the brake line bracket [if it's available] is half-assing it, unless you're trying to do the "shock fork trick" to get the car lower.

I guess I'm just too much of a perfectionist or something. I wouldn't want to rely on the friction between the fork and the shock body alone to support the weight of the car. I prefer having the brake line bracket in place for the fork to seat against.

I guess I can see not using the brake line bracket if you don't have OE shocks available. But if you're replacing your OE shocks with Konis, why would you NOT want to run the brake line bracket?

 

I think he meant well, actually supporting what you said


Not that i want to support the not-using-the-bracket idea, but wasn't there a topic somewhere on/or a common(?) practice by CRX drivers to get more piston travel out of Konies by mounting the shock body lower into the fork (by not using the discussed bracket)?

Now I see you mention it yourself:

 

if you dont want to "half ***" it, then you grind down the brake line collar so its just a ring, then you can drop the fork down lower. i think there used to be a thread that showed this at the top of the forum.

but there's more than enough "friction" once you clamp the fork down that you dont necessarily need the collar or fork against the shoulder of the shock. ive never heard of it slipping, ppl do it all the time.

 

^Yes, that's my point. It's not budging. But ofcourse for peace of mind if you really wanted it there it's ok. I'm using DC shocks on my DA so I couldn't use my stock brake line bracket but I could've gone to the salvage yard and picked some up no problem. After talks with some Honda Challenge buddies I decided to skip it altogether, if they don't have problems while racing then I sure wont' have problems just doing some HPDE's and Autocrosses w/o the bracket there.

 

I dunno... There have been times when I've torqued the pinch bolt to spec on the shock fork, but the fork wasn't fully seated against the brake line bracket, with maybe 1/32" to 1/16" space between the fork and the bracket. Then shortly after I start driving the car I'll hear a metallic *pop* as the fork seats itself against the brake line bracket.

If people have run it without the bracket w/o problems then that's cool I guess, but my experience I just mentioned is why I think it might be prone to slip.

 

i think you need to tighten that pinch bolt more.... you seem to have issues with torquing things properly before too. such as your upper control arms. just sayin.


hose clamps and zipties work fine for the brake lines, especially with steel braided lines that dont even have the factory hardware to fasten. use two, one to wrap around the shock body, one to wrap around the hose, and cuff them together. simple.

the only issue ive had, and i blame the guy who bought excessively long lines for our racecar, is that the lines worked its way so that it touched the rims, got cut, leaked and sent me towards the wall in the dirt with no brakes and a soiled underwear... but like i said, i dont blame the hose clamps and zip ties for that... just keep it in mind.

 

What? Come on man, I torque things to spec whenever and wherever possible. The one time I tightened that pinch bolt with a 1/2" ratchet, the bolt head snapped off. Now I use the torque wrench and get out the Helms manual EVERY time. You'd think I'd have memorized the numbers by now oh well I just keep the front and rear suspension torque spec pages dog-eared.

*edit* oh yeah, my new OEM front upper control arms have been on for like a year now and are still quiet as can be. No problems from them whatsoever. POS eBay crap upper arms I had before =

 

Ouch! Glad that didn't turn out any worse... Is the e-brake even an option in cases like this assuming you even had it?

This is why I like to check everything over after every session just to make sure I'm all set for the next. Right after installing the ss lines, they weren't routed properly and one of mine had been rubbing against the tire slightly, glad I caught it before it got any worse.

 

Maybe I should have title this thread Shocks For Dummies. Any experts want to start with Lesson One?

 

The answer to your question is True. Don't mind the useless jabber, you CAN lower or raise your car with just Koni alone. However, it's only giving you a .5" range in ride height adjustment.