Compressing coilover struts by hand - any danger in "bottoming out"?
 

Hi all,

I was testing coils (off of the car) today for how it responds to changes in damping adjustments by compressing the struts by hand with the springs off.

It occurred to me that the front struts (since no bump stop) have quite a bit of travel - is there any danger in compressing them by hand to essentially "bottom out"? Wanted to know as with springs in at full compression, I don't think the piston can retract as far as you can push it in by hand.

Weird question, I know.

Thanks!

No, unless your hands have the strength of the Hulk.

-alex

The last few sets of shocks I bought came with the shafts fully compressed and strapped down.

Both fronts and rears?

Yes. These were OEM style shocks from koni and tokico.

Don't slam them with a hammer or anything, but the way I've always tested low pressure shocks to see if they were good when they didnt have springs on them was to compress them and see if they extend themselves again smoothly.

@murdoc cool, thanks for sharing your experience :) just curious if it's the same with coilovers since it seems the potential travel length on my front strut (ohlins) far exceeds that of the rear (which has a bump stop)

That's a good question.

Manufacturers are usually pretty good about letting you know not to break things, e.g. every coil-over or shock I've bought has told me not to spin the shaft with an impact wrench, but none have said not to over-compress the shock.

I'm sure that without a severe impact force you won't damage it.

Don't flip out over this... the fronts are inverted struts so there won't be a traditional bumpstop.

-alex

@murdoc I was actually a bit surprised at how light the reading material was with my Ohlins, probably what you get when they were originally written in a different language. Ironic though, that all the best brands (KW, Tein, Ohlins, etc.) are all foreign and suffer from the same issue.

The other problem that led me to compress my shocks by hand in the first place was the lack of explanation that the Ohlins technically only have 20 usable clicks of adjustment but the adjuster can actually keep on clicking WAY beyond the 20. I wasn't exactly counting and went from end-to-end. Afterward, freaked out a bit that it should only go 20 (instructions have a recommended for road use of ~10-20 clicks soft but no mention of limit) so I tried compressing by hand while varying the adjustments just to check that everything was still okay - hence this thread topic - after compressing front struts for what seemed to be way more travel than rear (due to bump stops) and "bottoming" them out when on a soft setting.

@mav1178 Thanks for the supportive words - I'm pretty OCD about this stuff...really should've done some more reading before fidgeting with everything, particularly the adjuster and going full soft. Would suck if broke it before even installing haha

By hand? No, but don't put too much force on it at the ends. It's a hard impact (such as hitting a large bump at speed, or a pothole) that will damage the dampers.

@CSG Mike thanks Mike - what do you mean by "at the ends"?