This afternoon I was pulling out of a parking lot to return home with the roadster. When I made a right turn and started up in first gear, I heard a clunk and then the right front side drooped and trapped the tire in the fender well. I pulled over to the curb without incident. At first it looked like the head of the shock at the rod end facing down had broken off. After a friend (thanks Karl!) came to assist me, we found that the shock had come unscrewed at the head. There was minimal damage (mostly the right 4 inch tube scratched up from sitting on the road). So I removed the shock from top and bottom and reattached the pieces as tight as I could. I drove home with no problem but now I'm wondering how to keep this from happening again. I was not aware of any maintenance requirements for these shocks. I thought they were permanently assembled at the factory. So should this be one of those checks you do periodically or is there a more permanent fix that will assure piece of mind. When these come apart, there is no safety backup!

My first thought was to drill thru the head and tap it to insert a locking screw. Drilling thru the entire piece may not be practical with the hardened rod. Anyway I feel quite lucky as a couple of days before, I was zipping along a mountain road at speed. That would have been a totally different outcome given the circumstances!!!

Mine is an older build as a lot of time was lost (three years due to unavoidable circumstances). But I do remember contacting FFR at the time when I heard about the Bilstein recall. I was told that my shocks were not affected so I left it at that. Also, this is not a broken shock so I don't know if that would have been applicable. So I'm at a loss at this point. Hate to discard the shocks but also don't want to flirt with death. I think there is a little of that risk by definition when driving these but I just don't want to stack the odds against myself even more.

Has anyone experienced this before? I didn't see any threads about shocks coming apart in my search. I will give FFR a call tomorrow but I don't know if they can help at this point. I guess worst case scenario is go to different shocks: Koni, Pro 1, etc...... Unless and until I get a satisfactory answer, I guess I will not be on the road for a while.

Thanks,

WEK.