What The Fudge Bucket! (Broken Shock) aww
 

Ok, I was tightening my upper shock nut today as I thought it had come loose and might be the cause of some of the noises I am hearing from the suspension.

I was careful and set my torque wrench to 28 fl/lbs and started to tighten the nut. The fucking thing came off in my hand!!!!:vash:

The top part of the shock with the adjuster snapped in half! I am no he-man and was using a torque wrench set to the correct value, and the thing just snapped off.

Has this ever happened to anyone before??? What do I do. I think this was a defect of some kind as there was no way that it should have snapped with such a light amount of force.

Now the shock adjuster pin is sticking way out and I have a bad feeling that I need to replace the shock now.

What the hell should I do? Contact Tein?

I am really not a happy camper right now.


(sorry mods if you don't like the title, but I am pissed)

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Contact Tein, but it could also be a failure of the torque wrench. Man bad luck..

Ouch!!, yeah Id deffinately give a call to Tein, I cant see how that could brake so easily.
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I can see how it would break. it's a hollow threaded rod. no strength and stress concentrations up the wazoo.

And yeah that sucks! Tein should be able to rebuild the whole thing for not too much. If they give you shit, get ahold of emilio700 from miata.net and maybe he can get you in touch with someone useful.

I doubt it was the wrench as I was using it just minutes earlier to tighten my end links, and it clicked at what felt like 30 ft/lbs as I had set it to.

I'll e-mail tein tonight, I just hope my car is still operable. Plus I just got an alignment a week or so ago, and if I change out the shock I'll probably have to get it re-aligned.

damn man...thats insane.

I hate to tell you this but you cannot drive it like that. That is the very top of the piston which moves up and down and dampens your springs, as it is in the picture your shock will not be able to dampen for rebound and will be hitting the bottom of your tophat. Now there is a way to make this work and it is because you have tiens. You could take your shock out and remove that long spacer under the tophat and that will expose more threads but only allow the car to be about 12" hub to fender, maybe 12.5max and the shocks have no more travel after that ... (this is how I set up my basics by accident and have just recently installed them correctly. It actually would work very well that way for people who want very low ride heights like CSP cars but I need clearance.

good luck, man that really sucks. I always go sort of easy on stuff like that because if the bolt starts coming loose it lets you know quite audibly and really doesnt need even 28lbs/ft, 15-20 is just fine.

Well the upper shock nut's factory spec is from 23-34, so I thought I was being pretty gentle.

And I guess I have to try what you suggested, as I was all set up to go to a tech day on the 1st to install my clutch, and I will be very not happy if I miss that and have to tackle the clutch alone.

Will the shock still have the same travel but just make the car sit a lot lower? Or does removing that spacer eat into the travel as well? I was trying to figure out a way to ride a bit lower with the same shock travel and that sounds like a good method which could be adjusted with a different spacer, but I just need to get my car working again before anything like that.

no it adds a bit to how far the shock can be pushed down before bottoming out and takes away from how far it can go back up, if that makes any sense. I found running without the spacer and maximum ride height (12 - 12.5ish all around) that the car had crappy handling, but like I mentioned before a car running like 11.5" all around will really benefit from removing the spacer.

Well then it sounds like the spacer is needed, I was just thinking about that because I wanted to try and run closer to 12.5 all around, but at 12.75-13 as it was the car handled great.

Now I just have to wait to hear back from tein. How long did you run without that spacer? Do you think it would be safe to drive like that for a while? Like I said I really wanted to make it out to that techday, but I don't want to further damage anything on the way there.

i drove like that for like 6 months, but it was only maybe 3k miles in that time since i drive the car seldom. even took it to a few autocrosses. It wont break on you just may not drive quite as nicely. You wanna get that fixed eventually.

Ya, I want to get that fixed as soon as possible, but it's nice to know that I can drive on it without destroying other stuff. I'm almost more pissed that I will probably have to get it re-aligned after I fix the shock. I'll try and mark where the perch was as best I can, but I don't know if it will be exactly the same.

If you mark the perch, it shouldnt mess up your alignment enough to worry about it. Ride height does change campber and toe a little bit but if the height change is less than a quarter inch I wouldn't bother unless you are racing to win every weekend.

I would be fucking pissed where those new no new part should be that fuckng cheap esp one that expensive

I've had them for less than 6 months so they are still pretty damn new. I'm just hoping that Tein aren't dicks about this whole thing.

Make sure you get labor to replace the shock :)

Ok, well I talked to the place where I bought the shock from and they weren't that helpful. Pretty much said that I over-torqued the nut and that this thing isn't covered under a warranty. Said that I have to get some numbers off of the shock and send it back to tein, who charge $75 to rebuild the shock and if its the part he's thinking, $60 for the part that is broken.

I personally think this is some bull shit, as I know that I didn't over-torque the nut, and that it shouldn't have broken like that. I may try emilio700 and try and get in touch with someone at tein.

On the up side, there was a spacer underneath the nut that was being tightened that when removed exposes more threads. I may put the nut on there for now, but I am still concerned because the pin that is pushed down by the adjuster to adjust the shock strength is sticking out of the top, where I doubt it should be, and I am worried that if I drive it like this I may cause further damage to the shock.

Why didn't I just go koni...

how long ago did you buy these? (cancel the charge)

6 months ago. I think its a bit late for that, I just need to get in touch with someone at Tein. I would think that they would try and to what they can to help out with this kind of thing as it would tarnish their reputation which is usually quite good.

was the vendor a sponsor of m.net?

No, got them from upgrade motoring locally.

Damn - Too bad it's not an m.net sponsor ---
You could have "BASHED" them on m.net, so you could watch the fireworks:
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...fireworks2.gifhttp://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...fireworks2.gif

I've heard about this happening to the subaru crew. I specifically bought something other than Tein because of their inconsistent product quality.

That is what confuses me. My friend with a WRX says that scooby people hate tein and say that they suck, while lots of miata people praise them. Too bad whiteline doesn't make miata stuff.

And I called tein and talked to a tech support guy who was much nicer than the vendor that I called, and he said to send the shock in for inspection. I may even drop it off tomorrow as their facility isn't that far away, but that all depends on if they can get a hold of the part that is needed in time. Hopefully the inspection will reveal that the shock was faulty, otherwise I think I'll have to pay for a rebuild and the part. I just want my car to be running again.

why not just make an adapter that goes over the rest of the threads?

Well there is the adjuster pin to think about that presents a problem.

BUT... I went to the tein headquarters today and showed them the shock and we figured out what caused the break. The shocks were installed improperly by the shop that did them. I would have installed them myself, but the vendor offered a good installation deal.

The bumpstop was in the completely wrong place, and was doing no good whatsoever, allowing the shock to bottom out and putting immense stress on the threaded shaft.

So now I need to get onto the shop that I bought them form and installed them and make them fix all (yes all the shocks have been installed wrong) of the shocks and probably replace a lot of the hardware on them that has been weakened by the stress put on them. I may just ask for another set of shocks as these ones have all obviously been damaged by the improper installation.

I'm just glad that I have Tein behind me verifying that they weren't over torqued (as the shop accused me of) and that they have indeed been put together improperly. Time to e-mail the shop.

I wouldnt email the shop. I would get it in writing from tein what caused the issue. Then go to the shop with your credit card statement proving you paid for the service there and the statement from tein. Then make them give you 4 new shocks and refund for the labor.

Do what Loki said. Considering the vendor that you bought them from installed them, Loki proposition should come out in your favor no problem.

If they say shit, just tell them to be thankful you aren't charing them the labor to remove the shocks and install the new ones.

Also you may want to take a friend. I don't know what kind of shop it is, but I remeber a story of a miata guy who took his car to a jiffy lube or something and they basically broke shit. He started to tell the manager that he neede to pay for repairs and the manager started yelling at him. When his crew heard the manager was in an altercation they started advancing on the customer (the story teller) and had shit like a huge wrench etc.

Bottom line..if the shop was trying to tell you that you were in the wrong and you come back and try to prove that they have to pay you they might try to intimidate you and get you to back down and crap like that.

Take a gun.
A big one, like philips. Have your friend video it.
Really though taking a friend is a good idea is some situations.

Thanks for the advice, I think I will do just that and get tein to write down what the problem was. I actually asked for something along the lines of this when I was at the tein headquarters today, but I haven't gotten anything yet. The other good thing is that the tein guys know the owner of this shop, and said they could talk to him personally as they know each other and hopefully this could be sorted out with their help.

But the other thing is that although I payed the shop where I bought the shocks for installation, they were installed by some other shop that had some kind of sudo partnership with the vendor. But on the upside on the invoice from the vendor it shows that I payed them $200 for installation, and as I payed them, it is their responsibility to sort things out with the shop that acutaly did the install.

And on the bringing a friend/gun I think I will just bring my dad, hes old, jewish'ish, intimidating, and has a very short fuse and often threatens to sue people. I think it will help to have him back me up, especially as I am a "young kid" (16) and the owners of the shop will probably not take me as seriously and attempt to intimidate me or something along those lines. The shop did accuse me of over-torquing the nut when I first called them, but the owner was quite nice last time I saw him in person, so idk, better be safe than sorry.

Again thanks for all of the help, I hope that I can resolve this stuff on Tuesday (damn holidays) without too much fuss.