Oops

The Emperor has a new right rear shock.

He didn’t need it though.

The one that came out is perfectly fine. I made an assumption and you know the old saw about what that means.

At around 60,000 miles I replaced the worn OEM shocks with some Koni Yellow Sport adjustable shocks. When it came time to to replace those worn Konis, I went with some Koni Orange STR-T non-adjustable ones. I had two reasons for this, one, I adjusted the yellow sport shocks once, to the mid-point where they felt fine and two, the orange non-adjustable shocks were half the price at $70 vs. $140 each.

Because they came from the same manufacturer I thought they would be plug & play, but nope. The yellows because the adjusting mechanism runs through the shaft it is slightly larger in diameter at 12mm, than the stock shaft’s 10mm, so the hole in the top plate of the shock mounts had to be enlarged to accommodate it. The new orange shocks are meant as a slight upgrade to the OEM units, so its shaft is 10mm in diameter.

What I thought was shock failure was really the new smaller shaft poking through the enlarged mounting plate hole. My mechanic used a metal shim/washer with a 10mm hole in it to make things work. We are good for now, but we’ll take the car back to him next week and let him do the other three prophylactically.