alfie reviews the koni

Well, I finally took the dive and installed the Koni dampers. All nuts, bolts, bushings, springs, and shocks were labelled for proper reassembly orientation. All deflectable (bushinged) items were torqued to factory spec with the suspension laden. Since the downward facing bolts and longitudinal bolts on the front lower arm tongues had no bushings, they could be torqued before lading. Actually, you won't have a choice because they won't be accessible once the shocks and wheels are mounted. The Konis themselves were set to full soft on the lowest spring perch. There seems to be some misunderstanding on the net regarding the perch equivalents, even the instruction manual was wrong. I compared the perches on the Koni against my stock shocks and found that they equalled middle perch in front and highest perch in the rear. Therefore, using the lowest perches on all shocks should yeild a lowering of exactly .6 of an inch for the front and .5 of an inch on the rear. I also found another aberration on our Phil spec Miatae. Usually we have the white marked spring for the front and yellow for the rear. Mine may have been white also in front, but my rears were pink. The pink springs were even wrapped with hose on the lower coils, probably to prevent any rattles. Anyway, the install went perfectly, I wouldn't have settled for anything less. As with any other shock, these need time to settle in, which explains why the car still measures at stock height despite using the lowest perches on stock springs and laden torqueing. I hope to give a better review on their performance later on in the near future, because I have yet to bed them in and take them thru my rounds. I decided to do the alignment when the shocks have fully settled down to their design height, hopefully within the month. Doing so now would be moot due to camber pattern changes due to ride height variances. Stock height from center of wheelcap to tip of fender lip were 14 front and 14.5 rear with a full tank of gas, almost empty brings up the rear to 14.75. The Konis fully bedded in should lower the front to 13.5 and the rear to 14 on a full load of gas which is very close or equal to US spec ride height thereby eliminating the Phil spec Miatae's jeep-like stance.In the city, the Konis are a "wee bit" harsher on bumps. What I mean by "wee bit" is like upping your tire pressures a psi or two..that's it. Body movement after hitting those bumps still seems to be the same and there's a "hint" of firmness to it now. When I realized that I was comparing my stock 9,200km shocks against brand new Konis, heck, the stockers were probably just as harsh and firm when they were new because the ride difference was negligible. Over humps, dive is practically gone, and there was no hint of bottoming whatsoever. And, you can literally "feel" the rebound reflex action of these shocks as you leave the hump, very nice. These shocks may have passed my "city" tests proving they weren't any worse than stock, but I still didn't feel that they were worth the P20k I spent for them.So I took the Konied Stocko out on the Skyway. As we all know, the stock suspension gets kinda "floaty" at high speeds. Just to make things worse, I took a heavy friend along for extra weight because this always makes the wallowing and bottoming more apparent. As we entered I already noticed some kabig. That's okay because I haven't had it aligned yet. We went thru the tollgate and did 200 again up to the end of the Skyway, this time I concentrated on waiting for the "floaty" feeling. Suffice to say that the expected wallowing and "floatiness" never occured and the added stability made it feel like we weren't anywhere near the speed we were doing. So far so good, after doing some rounds in Filinvest, it was now time to head back for my final test. Remember the peaks and dips a few meters after the Skyway entrance from the highway? This always caused the stock suspension to bottom out and "jump" even if I was alone in the car, especially at speed. Just to make things worse I gunned it even as I was going up the entrance to surely induce the bottoming. Bottoming? What bottoming? These suckers soaked it up! The body just moved with the curvature of the road, no more, no less. I was so satisfied with the way it ran that I was eager to return to Midas and put the shocks back to the stock height perches fearing that they might bottom out when they settled down to my predicted half inch drop.When I got home, I glanced back at Stocko and noticed it looked a little bit "different", and I mean "different" in a nice way. I quickly grabbed my tape measure to check for changes in ride height, if any. To my surprise, the shocks had already settled down to the predicted ride height of 13.5 front and 14 rear. This made me appreciate these shocks even more because despite the half inch loss of suspension travel (which had always been one of my biggest concerns) from the lowering, never even gave a hint of bottoming whatsoever throughout the entire tests. Set to full soft, Koni seems to have achieved the perfect shock valving for the stock springs and stock unsprung/sprung ratio. On the street, these shocks passed my tests with flying colors, and as early as now I will tell you that these are THE shocks to get for the stock springs, and you all know I've tried a LOT of shock and spring combos on different cars. Despite being a bit pricey, I now feel that the P20k I paid for them is worth every penny, provided they last long.