Heres my problem:

I sent my Konis in to get revalved and have the fronts shortened and inch.

When I put them on the car, the shortened shocks apparently lowered the car and extra inch, which was something I was not aware would happen. I thought that shortening the shock would only increase suspension travel. Keep in mind that the ground control perch is as high up as I can get it. It seems as though they also cut the damper rod, which reduces the amount of suspension rebound travel available, thus reducing my ability to raise the GC perches.

This resulted in about a 3 inch drop. I went to get the toe aligned and the lasers wont line up because the camber was around 2.5 degrees.

So I got some camber kits, which were an adjustable ball joint replacement. Unfortunately, with a 3 inch drop and ball joint camber kits, that left me with a whopping 1/4 inch of suspension travel. Puts some nice dents in my shock towers from just a 100 yd journey down the road to test it out.

What really upset me is that this all happened this week and I had already paid to attend an HPDE at TWS. So I had to put my factory suspension in the front and run like that....which was actually kinda fun considering the massive amount of oversteer i had.

But anyway, is there anything else that I can do before I throw a $400 pair of shocks in the trash and buy new ones to be revalved? Any suggestions?

 

Standard shortening of the shocks will not lower your car at all, something else must be out of whack likely. When the body is shortened an inch, the rod must also be shortened the same amount if not a tad more to keep the shock from bottoming internally. When this is done, it will reduce the compressed length by one inch and reduce the extended length by two inches thus the available stroke is reduced by one inch.

Inside the shock (especially a Honda shock), there are several inches or rebound stop or droop limiter. At the time of the shorteneing, there is an option to keep or remove some or all of the rebound stop to give back some, all or more stroke. By removing one inch of rebound stop, the stroke goes back to what it was stock, just now the min and max lengths are one inch shorter than they were. Removing two inches will give you back the same max length that you had and give one more inch of stroke than you had even though the low ride height of the car may never use it. Normally we will decide how much rebound stop needs to be removed to get the best droop for the customer (too little and he looses stroke and might top out and lift wheels, too much and his springs fall out of position when he jacks it up).

Regardless of the rebound stop, shortening the shock through normal procedures of removing body length from the top of the body can have no effect on ride height and effect the lowering. The height of the car is a factor of the spring height when compressed on the car (basically the point fom the lower spring perch and up the spring) and the fixed length from the lower mount to the bottom spring perch. If the shock was shortened by taking an inch out from below the spring perch (extremely uncommon and more work to do) then the car would be lowered. Look on your shock and see if there is a new weld in the body below the spring perch or if a new spring perch groove has been cut in the shock. I can't think why this would be done, especially on a Honda shock.

Give me a call at the office at 859-586-4100 ext 316 and we can discuss it. It will be very helpfull if you can get the Koni part number stamped in the shock body and also take a measurement from the bottom to the top of the shock body. If the shock is off the car so you can get it, a measurement of the max length of the extended shock would be helpful too. Let me know and I can help sort it out but something seems very out of the ordinary for this to be a shock issue.

Also, in the modern world of laser alignment tools, the negative camber of performacne suspensions can be an issue and the lasers miss the mirrors that they are supposed to bounce off. Prior to the laser systems, the alignment system companies used elastic cords or rubber bands that did great for big negative camber alignments. Finding a place with the older equipment can be a good idea.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Lee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Standard shortening of the shocks will not lower your car at all, something else must be out of whack likely. When the body is shortened an inch, the rod must also be shortened the same amount if not a tad more to keep the shock from bottoming internally. </TD></TR></TABLE>
What if we (like me) got the neuspeed Konis in which the dampening rod is shortened by 20mm, would the service center futher shorten the rod if I wanted the shock body shortened by 1". I asked because this is what I would want, i.e. the body shortened by 1" and keep the rod length about the same.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RAB &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
What if we (like me) got the neuspeed Konis in which the dampening rod is shortened by 20mm</TD></TR></TABLE>

The shaft isn't shortened ( I believe) you just have a 20mm droop limiter added.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RAB &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
What if we (like me) got the neuspeed Konis in which the dampening rod is shortened by 20mm, would the service center futher shorten the rod if I wanted the shock body shortened by 1". I asked because this is what I would want, i.e. the body shortened by 1" and keep the rod length about the same.</TD></TR></TABLE>

This is the shock that I had, the Neuspeed. And I get the feeling that the rod was shortened even further.

Lee I will take the measurements of my shock tonight after work. I will give you a call in the morning tomorrow. Thanks for the very informative answer.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 89civicdx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
The shaft isn't shortened ( I believe) you just have a 20mm droop limiter added.</TD></TR></TABLE>

This is correct. The Neuspeed bodies and rods are no shorter than the Sports but they do have an additional 20 mm of rebound stop for a shorter max length. When we shorten them, we still need to shorten the body and the rod the normal amount then we can decide how much if any of the rebound stop to remove to put us back to our goal max length.