Dave brought this up today, every car I've put Koni's on I have had problems.
The Z28 I had all sorts of issues with the upper shock mount.
The 350Z I was unable to get the Konis off the car when I went to sell the car.
The Z06 things went on alright, though when we put them all I found one of the shocks hard to adjust. I thought I had fixed that and gotten it to adjust fine. Well today in Georgia at the Dixie tour I was unable to get the left front shock to adjust on the car.
So we started to remove the shock from the car, which isn't all that easy, though we figured out later it was harder because of problems with the shock. When we got it off we were able to free up the adjustment for the rebound, but at the time we freed it up I heard something all down the shaft inside the shock. Not good, the shaft for the adjuster also popped out of the shaft of the shock a bit, probably a centimeter. Well, guess what happened next, the shaft moves a bit further and BOOM out comes all of the oil in the shock, all over the car, me, the tools, and anything else that was around.
So.... there we are, at South Georgia Motorsports park in Adel Georgia, with Konis that haven't even been on the car a week, and now one of them is shot. And I said to myself before leaving to Georgia, oh I don't need to bring the stock shocks, I just put Konis on.... Lesson learned
I immediately call Nick and ask him to start calling around Valdosta to see if he can locate any shocks for the car. Nick gets a hold of Napa who says they have 2 Monroe Sensatracs in stock so Dave and I head down there, about 20 miles away. We make it down to Napa and guess what? They can't find the 2 they have in stock. They can't locate any others near by, so we head off to try a few other stores. No one in Valdosta has them, even called a chevy dealer in town.
We head back to Napa, thinking we'll drive down to Jacksonville to pick some up at their distribution center. The guy at Napa advices against it and sends us to Sylvester Georgia to pick some up there, about 60 miles from Valdosta, I pay for them there in Valdosta, $54. We take off, it starts raining like it has never rained before on the way up there, granted we expected rain today, so not a big deal. We get to the distrbution center and I think about taking them and leaving, but then decide I should probably open the box and double check to make sure they are the right ones.
Guess what? They are the part number we asked for, but Napa had looked up the wrong part, so there is no way these would work. Score another win for the team, not. So now what? Napa figured out that we need a different part, but they of course don't have that in the distribution center. Dave and I take off to Tifton which was on the way up 75 to Sylvester. Tifton has quite a large selection of stores so we figure perhaps we will get lucky.
The dealer there in town doesn't have them, another dealer I called in Macon didn't have them either. We called Summit Racing in McDonough, Nopi in Atlanta, and a million other parts stores in the area, without any luck what so ever. Dave starts looking up other options, perhaps some Afco shocks would work.
We settle on trying to find some shocks for an 81 Camaro after looking up information for Afco. At advanced auto parts in Tifton we ask to see a set of Monroe Sensatrac for an 81 Camaro. They look pretty close to the Z06 shocks, have the right attachments, but look to be about an inch or two short. We decide that short shocks are better than no shocks so we take them and head back to the track.
We get them installed and the car is teched. We'll see how they do tomorrow.
It is still raining, I'm not sure what is going to happen tomorrow, probably more rain. I hear they have a drought here in Georgia, but you sure wouldn't know by looking around, there is water EVERYWHERE.
I didn't realize I would need to buy rain tires so early in the season. I wished I had realized and done that.......