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Once we had our front housings ready to go we needed to prep the inserts themselves. What we did is not required, however in the interests of a sano setup we deemed them necessary. The top most portion of the housing of the Koni insert has a larger diameter than the coilover sleeve and as such the sleeve would not slide over the top of the damper. This would mean that we would have to assemble the sleeve to the housing before we put our insert in place and frankly that was no good for us. We chose to machine down the top of the strut to allow the coilover sleeve to slide over it.
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| We turned the strut top down so the koni sleeve would slide over it. |
While we were machining things we came up with a brilliant idea. Koni provides an OEM style spring perch for the rear dampers, because they had the correct inner diameter to slide over the factory housing we simply machined them down to accommodate the coilover sleeves. The sleeves themselves have a machined step inside of them and we machined our perches to match the step. Frankly we wanted to have the smallest overall outer diameter possible to increase tire clearance.
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| The Koni supplied rear spring perches were machined in to our new front perches |
Once we had our perches machined it came time to weld them in place of the factory spring perches. We wrapped masking tape around the housing to hold the Koni sleeve firmly in place, this allowed us to ensure the perch was level and in the right location for welding.
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| The stepped diameter on the perch mates with the inside of the Koni sleeve. This helps to center and support the sleeve. |
With the front housings all prepped it was time to check out the rear setup. In the B14 and B15 chassis Nissan applications, Koni offers a bolt in replacement for the rear dampers. The Koni sport rear’s use a circlip on the shock itself that holds either the slip on OEM style perch or the Koni coilover sleeve. In this case we used the Koni sleeve; as it is a universal length we put it on the band saw to trim it to length and then machined it smooth so our perches would thread on easily.
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| The Koni sleeves are too long for the rear shocks, we trimmed ours on a band saw and cleaned them up in the lathe. |
With all of the modification and prep work done it was time to address cosmetics. We had the front housings sandblasted and then powdercoated flat black. We wanted them to look as good as they performed and they came back looking like new. I get a little geeky when I see a part that previously looked like a rusty piece of junkyard scrap come back looking better than new….
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| I’m a sucker for clean parts. Hard to believe these are the same rusty housings we started with… |
