speedooo

First things first, this thread is not here for people to bash Omni Power. I needed to find out what happened to my strut, and I did. If you're gonna say they're crap...gtfo. My last set of Omni Power Coilovers lasted 2 1/2 years and 50,000-60,000 miles before my car was stolen with them on the car.

CLIFFS:
-6/13/08-I ordered Omni Power Sport (12k/10k) 1 piece coilovers for a 92-95 civic
-6/20/08~ish-Coilovers are installed on my 1994 Civic Dx Coupe.
-6/28/08~ish-Motor in coupe blows up, coilovers are transferred over to my 1994 Civic Cx hatchback that sits for another 2-3 weeks before it is driven.
-9/1/08-I go back to college where the hatchback sits for 5-6 days without being driven.
-12/15/08~ish- I noice metal/metal noise coming from rear of car whenever I hit a bump
-1/2/09-Noise becomes substantial and I park the car after taking a 200 mile round trip
-1/3/09-I remove shock from car, compress once with hand, top hat+rod shoot out of piston.
-1/4/9-After being educated by a few members and posting some detail pictures I can now see that the nut that holds the shaft in the piston worked its way off, resulting in the strut splitting into two sepperate pieces. No, I haven't spoken to Omni Power yet, this happened on a saturday afternoon and I'm not expecting any immediate answers until Monday.
-1/5/09-It is now monday and Omni Power agreed to repair the strut under warranty. Their customer service gets an A+.


Here's the original mess, my dad snapped this with his camera since I was covered in whatever is inside the piston




Some people claimed this happened because my car was too low...yet the bumpstop shows no wear at all.




After gaining some knowledge on the construction of the shock, I snapped this picture which shows (in theory) red thread locker where a nut used to hold the shaft inside the piston.




The struts have MAYBE 5,000 miles on them, never autocrossed, they have seen the 1/4 mile twice but were mainly used on my college commuter that sits 6 days of the week.

mar778c

iTrader: (1)

Damn, this is the 2nd thread with type of non-sense. Steve has got to step-up and handle these situations.

iluvmyda

where they all the way down/

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

It appears that way. Not exactly the best way to run, but still...

RyanA

If it was unscrewed, I think I'd ask how these were assembled. Too many people just zing the nut on with an impact. By not holding the top of the rod, you allow it to spin. Allowing it to spin can also allow it to come loose like that.

Now, I'm not saying that's it; I've seen more than I'd like to of Omni failures lately.

Targa250R

This is definitely not the same problem discussed in the other thread, which was a material failure (and a known problem that has been documented previously).

This looks like either an assembly or an installation/usage error. The piston came off of the rod somehow, from what I can see. I'd like a closer shot of the end of the shaft. I can only speculate on what could cause that; possibly imporper torque by the assembly worker, or improper preload setting by the user allowing the piston to constantly top out or bottom out?

Tyson

not to give omnicrap a way out, but looks like the spring perch was too low. you were probably bottoming out the bottom end of the piston.

but this is a first time ive seen the piston rod separated. lol. go omni!

are you saying the bottom tip of the piston rod is threaded? like its screws into the valve inside?

mar778c

iTrader: (1)

I never said those problems were the same. I know the difference.

Here let me clarify for you.

This is the 2nd thread I seen lately with a omni coil-over coming apart.
They seem to be defective from the factory be it an assembly or design problem.

RedneckRicer

i see people talking about dont run them all the way on the low perch

thats like the new GTR... heres launch control but if you use it your warranty is voided.

a properly designed suspension should allow you to run any height that you want without this happening

speedooo

thats what I would think; anyway, the too low argument is voided by the fact that this only occured on 1 strut, I would assume that if all 4 struts, or atleast the two rears, were created equally that they would all make the same noise. However, only 1 did this so that argument can be silenced.

Tyson

lol. i agree with everyone omnipower is just crap. but saying that it only happened at one corner ....

nevermind, lets just leave it at as crap.

speedooo

I wouldn't dismiss OmniPower as crap; this isn't my first set of coilovers from them. I purchased their sport drag set (12k/18k) back in July 2005 and they were still mint 50,000 miles later when my car was stolen. I'm hoping this is an isolated incident and nobody else has this problem

beanbag

Good thing you didn't get injured.

How is the piston held onto the shaft? Is there a nut that holds it on?
Umm, normally the piston isn't supposed to fall off.

Also, the piston isn't supposed to bottom out because of the bump stop.

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

damn man, 3" of adjustment, that's like 4.5" of adjustment at the tires. Is that not enough?

PIC Performance

I'm curious - how did you manage to compress a (i'm guessing) 560lbs/in spring by hand while it was still mounted on a damper with the upper mount and fork lower mount still attached? And if you noticed the sound two weeks ago and it got to the point that you became afraid to drive the car, why would you still take it on a 200 mile round trip?

speedooo

WHat you see in that picture is what I see, just the shaft with no nut attached to the top hat. Also, that's a very good point about the bumpstop; you can see in those pictures that the bump has no wear on it whatsoever.

I meant total adjustment on the car, there was hardly any room for height adjustment

speedooo

Here's a few shots with a better camera...

you can kind of see inside in this one


Here you can see the lack of wear on the bump stop, which should keep the strut from bottoming out


The lack of a rough edge or sign of breakage is shown here

beanbag

Yup, looks like the nut holding the piston on fell off. In no way could this be your fault.
On Bilsteins (the only monotubes I know anything about), that nut is staked on, i.e. impossible to come off by itself.

Looks like poor assembly by Omni.

Didn't you notice a lack of damping while this shock was making funny noises?

I just have one more question, which is "why does this company suck so much?"

nskforlife

Why you bashing? Are You running any of his items on your car, has anything else besides his first batch of these messed up on you?. . . doubt it.

Targa250R

Thanks for the additional shots. The lack of damage to the threads and no evidence of a break is almost certain proof that the piston nut just worked its way off, so the problem was likely caused by imporper torque on assembly. Looks like they even use red thread-locker compound on there, which is the "permanent" stuff.

That's not really a valid analogy.

If these coilovers used a conventional design where ride height is set via the spring perch, I would agree with you. However, Omnipower coilovers (along with a number of other popular generic Technicolor coilovers such as D2, K-Sport, Function/Form, Megan Racing, some Teins, etc.) use a fixed-stroke damper with separate adjustments for ride height and preload. The spring perch is intended to be used to adjust preload only, and all bets are off if the perches are incorrectly used to adjust ride height.

Civichatch2k

omni states in their installation instructions that to set the preload of the spring/shock that you move the spring with the spring perches all the way until you at full adjustment. The top of the shock nut(wax filled) should be back off until the shaft is at the top of the wax nut. Then from that point, you adjust the spring until the top hat is tight against the spring. Secure the spring perch and then install.

After you put the coilovers on the car, adjust the third collar, shock collar for ride adjustment. Once you have set the ride height tighten the shock nut at the top to the recomended specs.

If you were bottoming out the shocks I don't know that you will have any ground to stand one. If you dropped the spring down to adjust the height seperate from how the company recomends that you adjust the preload and ride hieght, you may have sealed your fate.

Good luck, I am glad that you are ok.

Nick

speedooo

Thank you, I know how to read instructions and I know how to preload and adjust the springs. This particular shock out of all 4 that I have on my car began bottoming out and the sound continued to get louder, indicating something inside the shock was changing despite the same ride height. Also, the lack of wear on the bumpstop shows that piston was bottoming out when it wasn't supposed to be because the bumpstops would have prevented it.

uniseriate

Quality dampers don't come apart like what happened shown above. The guy could have had a serious accident and you wonder why people are bashing the product? You don't have to own the product to call it as it is. People need to stop putting a personal interest in the brand of their car parts. It is just a brand, nothing more or less. Buying a particular one doesn't increase the length of your manhood like some marketers would like for you to believe.

Even if the original poster didn't hold down the shock rod while fastening the top nut that shock rod would have to be left hand threaded in order for it to unscrew.

Civichatch2k

All I was saying is that if all three of the collars were at the bottom then I could see OMNI stating that they were installed/used incorrectly resulting in this issue.

I figure that if you can type an adequate response and post on this forum that you can read.

Ok, your last sentence is a bit confusing but I think I understand. So what do you think prevented the bumpstop from doing its job? (maybe the spring?) You said the spring was loose, to me it does not sound like it was adjusted correctly. I don't know I was not there, good luck with trying to figure this abnormal situation out. I am glad you are ok.

speedooo

The bumpstop should be squished between the components in the top hat and the shock assembly at the bottom before the piston bottoms out. The bumpstop is there for the sole reason of preventing the shock from bottoming out. The lack of wear on the bumpstop indicates that the piston was bottoming out when it wasn't supposed to be. Either way, lowering the car too much would only cause the shock to blow, not to complete disentegrate.Thanks for the support though, I also hope this gets sorted out tomorrow.

This is true...and back to the original comment "too many people zing that down with an impact", imo, it should be tightened down wbefore being shipped out. Not everyone is going to see that that nut is only threaded halfway.