I need to know how to check and see if these older Koni Reds are serviceable enough to put on the rear of my car. I have a new set of Koni yellows for the front

I have a set of older Koni reds on the shelf, complete with springs. The springs that are on the Koni's right now are black with two yellow stripes... whatever that means.

I pulled these off a roller with unknown mileage. The outsides of the Konis are pretty weathered, but the chrome is in good shape and there's no appearance of leakage.

I haven't installed a non-adjustable hydraulic shock in a while. I'm guessing I need to remove the springs to check the shocks. Once I do that, how should they act?

-Rusty

QUOTE (Lawrence @ May 9 2005, 07:23 AM)

The springs that are on the Koni's right now are black with two yellow stripes... whatever that means. I haven't installed a non-adjustable hydraulic shock in a while. I'm guessing I need to remove the springs to check the shocks. Once I do that, how should they act?

CD's 914 Coil Spring Data Page reveals that if those were /4 springs, they should be ~54 lbs/in

that Koni probably is adjustable - at least, i've never seen a non-adjustable Koni and that includes the ones on my '53 Coupe... if there's an arrow and "Heavy" (possibly "Schwer") it's a standard internally adjustable Koni. there have been a couple of threads with pictures from the Kino site telling how they work inside. yes, you'll have to unleash the spring, then you carefully fully compress the damper until you feel the piston rod engage the foot valve. it can then be turned in the direction of heavy for more rebound damping (jounce - compression - is not adjustable).

so - you should feel "some" resistance in compression and rather more in rebound. ideally, you'd feel less when adjusted to the "light" and end more on the "Heavy" end. i do not recall how much adjustment there is - somewhere between half a turn and 2-1/2 turns i think - sorry - it's been a really long time since i did this. i'm a Bilstein guy :-)

But the shock should expand to full length after I compress it, right?

QUOTE (Lawrence @ May 9 2005, 07:38 AM)

But the shock should expand to full length after I compress it, right?

it's not a gas pressure damper - there's nothing inside to make it expand all by itself, like a gas-pressure damper (e.g. Bilstein).

you'll have to excite it in both directions, as the suspension on your car does.
it's *just* a damper.

Yeah Rusty... jack it.


M

QUOTE (Lawrence @ May 9 2005, 05:23 AM)

I'm guessing I need to remove the springs to check the shocks. Once I do that, how should they act? -Rusty

I just put a set of these on my 911. On full soft one could pull and push the piston up and down by hand. It wasn't what I'd call easy though. Once I turned the adjustment anything beyond zero I could still compress the piston but I couldn't pull it up by hand at all. To extend the pistion in order to install the shock, what I finally did was put the top nut/washer back on, put it in my vice and then put all my body weight on the bottom of the shock and it moved very slowly.

Thanks, Rich and Anthony.

I'm going to try to set them on full soft... see how that rides.

Ask Toast how the yellow car rode...."collapse to adjust" Konis on rear with stock new springs, set full heavy.

Thanks for the tip, Ron.

I'm going to swap out the 52 lb POSs for some 140s when I do the job.

-Rusty