How much force does it take to compress your Konis? Once I had the shock tower cap off, I would have been able to push it down with my little finger. I recall the shocks on my old 75 LeSabre. I made the mistake of cutting the wire holding one of them in a compressed state and all the kings horses and all the kings men could not recompress that thing. If it is so easy to compress them, it kind of makes you wonder how these Konis work.
Well, technically your springs are what is holding the car up not the shocks, they merely dampen the movement of the springs. I've never held a Koni so I wont comment on them, but every performance shock I HAVE held/examined required significant pressure to compress (perhaps not all the king's horses though...lol) and the includes Tokico/Monroe/KYB/QA1 brands. All of them were gas charged, perhaps yours are simply hydraulic and not pressurized at all.
these Konis are in fact a hydraulic shock. Two different guys I talked to at Koni assured me that what I experienced was consistent with the good working order of the shock. They said that I would have defective shocks if it did not take considerable effort to uncompress them (which it did). So all is well.
BTW, your sig shows that we have both made similar choices as to the add-ons to our cars. May I compliment you as to your good taste.
A shocks job is to control spring oscillations primarily, and springs bounce both ways. Even with that, many shocks will want to expand when disconnected, because they are engineered to resist spring compression. That really should be the job of the spring. Konis are a little different, apparantly.
All the Konis that I know of are just normal hydraulic. The only reason that other manufacturer's 'gas charge' their shocks is to prevent oil 'frothing', Koni's superior design doesn't require it. (No true damper should provide a spring component also)
The 'gas charge' is actually a gas compartment at the bottom of the shock, separated from the hydraulic oil filled section by a floating piston. The idea behind the that is to keep the oil pressurised and therefore less likely to froth (liken it to a softdrink bottle- shake it up, but keep the lid on and all is well. Release the pressure, and bubbles all over the place)
I haven't come across a Koni that isn't adjustable in the rebound. You usually need to remove the bump-stop, compress the shock fully (a nut at the botton of the shaft locks into a recess in the casing) rotate clockwise for tighter rebound, ccw for looser rebound.
For road/race use they're pretty good value for money. (I've had a set on my '92 Falcon for at least 6 years now (150000km+) and they are still brilliant)
Indeed you did, Sir. once I was properly informed by the good people in the Koni Tech department, I felt the need to share the info in order to correct some of misperceptions some folks had. I thank you and the others who knew the answer straight away.