Well not the worst day of my life but it could of been really bad. After realizing what had happened I could of been dead... anyways.... yesterday I went to Tirerack in Indiana to autocross with a group of friends. I have been excited about this event for about a month or 2 and as soon as I get there I wasn’t able to autox my car. We rarely go down to South Bend, IN because its 2.5 hours away and I don’t like taking my car to far places. The reason why I wasn’t able to race my car was because the passenger side coilover broke. The place where it broke was where the fork attaches to the lower collar of the shock body. It completely ripped off. While we were driving to Indiana about 1.5 hours into the drive I started to hear hard knocks and rattling noises. I was a bit scared at first but I figured it was all the loose tools flying around in my trunk. When we arrived I unpacked everything in my car and headed for the sign up station. Luckily I was assigned to work corner stations after lunch so as I waited for the 2nd group to begin driving I did another inspection, filled up my tires with air, and headed to the gas station for some food. When I left the parking lot of Tire Rack I went over a couple of bumps and that horrid noise was back. I then turned around and headed back to the parking lot. I jacked up my car only to find that the shock and fork had completely disconnected. Before I jacked the car up the shock body was over the arm by half an inch and was leaning on the frame of the car. I was surprised that the car held up with only half an inch over the fork and nothing connected to it. I figured the really loud knock was the shock body hitting the frame because of the huge imprints it left. So now that I found out what the problem was I started panicking about how I was going to get home (there is no way I was going to tow the car home because at this moment I don’t have that much mula haha). Well to make this story a little shorter there was a junkyard about 4 miles from Tire Rack and they had 2 98 civics there but only 1 with the shock assembly I needed. I probably spent 2 hours at this junkyard because we had to find the car ourselves. This junkyard was huge and smelled like bad odor and wet animals put together. After the junkyard we went back to tire Rack and I co drove with my friend. It was a fun day but also one hell of a scary day. I’m going to call omni power and see what’s up with this bull crap. I’ve only had the suspension for 2 years.

edit: sorry for the long post guys but this is one crazy miracle that i wanted to share with you guys. i also have pics of the damaged shock. i will post em up a lil bit later. peace

This post was last modified: 06-29-2008 08:33 PM by ej815.

Your right it could have been a lot worse. Luckily you noticed it when you did. Glad your OK.

"bad odor and wet animals put together" FTL.

This post was last modified: 06-29-2008 08:55 PM by gimmezell.

damn dude, good thing nothing worse happened!

Glad you made it out ok bro.

Glad you're alright. Sounds like an adventure

Wadda day. Lucky it wasn't that bad of a fix and u could still get it home

pics as promised




^^ part of the shock is still attached to the fork^^

i was reading up on the first gen omni coilovers and this has happened to others as well. there is a manufacture defect where the lower collar breaks off after a while of stress. now i really have to call omni.. for anyone on this forum that runs the first gen omni coilovers i suggest calling omni about the lower collar problem and have them replaced. sigh now its time to spend money on the koni/gc with custom spring rates setup..

Damn man, that's not cool at all. Glad you made it out ok though!

Omni will replace it for free and cover shipping costs. The new design is much better, but it still can't compare with a Koni/GC combo. One of my friend's Omni coilovers broke while autocrossing. It was pretty awesome. It drove home just fine.

well they replace just the lower collars or a new set?