Anyone hear ever hear of this happening?

 

Stress caused by lowering spring? Hit any massive holes in the road? Could just be a faulty shock at a guess.

Did it happen parked or driving bud

 

WOW! How did that happen?


Surely if it were that big of a pot hole there would be tire/ rim damage..

 

yikes. i have seen someone post similar pics a while back, that guy said he hit a huge pothole.

how did this happen? how many miles?

 

I was wondering from your title if you had Bilstein Damptronics installed. But I see you appear to have stock struts, but H&R springs. So, I'll be flippant, did a monkey install your springs? This has happened on a number of members' cars with Bilsteins. I am convinced these issues have come from faulty installation. The upper nut requires very low torque. It is a retainer only and has a locking aircraft bolt on top that will not come loose. You'll note that the shaft is hollow. I only imagine that MANY are overtorqued by installers. I had a set of coil overs and the nut was overtorqued on them when I checked the nut. Check the required torque and double check the tightness of your bolts!

 

That just happened to mine. It's caused by an improper installation of the stop plate. It's the piece that's dome shaped. There are two, one on the top which you see thru the front trunk. One in the bottom which you are holding wrong. The dome faces the bottom. Ask me how I know? I did the same mistake. When installed that way, the piece gets tightened to the rubber piece which is now compressed. It holds the shock piston in a position that does not allow the swivel piece(bearings) to have the proper geometric movement. Therefore it snaps due to high torsion applied while making wide turns. You should have had a loud snap! Mine did and scared the **** out of me. $650.00.

 

Can you post me some pics of what your talking about?

 

Part number 8. I put mine on concave up. Should be concave down. Obviously kind of easy to screw up!

 

This^^

 

After analyzing my mistake, the cause of the break is do to part #8 installed concave up. The force of the strut assembly due to weight of vehicle plus the part installed concave up, secures the "piston" from rotating on the bearing. This causes a tremendous torque force on the piston and rips the piece off. Furthermore, the moment is amplified at the extrem arc of travel. In other words, when you turn the wheel to it's maximum angle...snap!!!!

 

Perhaps. Seems that it increased the distance, as a result, you over torqued the aircraft nut on the top. Did you check the torque setting of that bolt? The top of the piston is hollow and it has a very low toque requirement. You can certainly see that now.