One out of the four was bad when received (May 2014) - leaking. Four new ones shipped overnight. Three months after the install two are clunking badly over minor road imperfections, patched pot holes and the like. We are still waiting for Koni to send a new batch.

They do ride okay when new but I am thinking about going back to stock just because of the horrible quality issues with the Konis.

 

The first question most will be interested in is; what is your source?
Anecdotally speaking, I've had KONI FSD's for a couple of years providing impeccable service. In fact, my first KONI struts were installed on an ancient British roadster back in the early 60's and they were great then.

 

This is surprising to hear, the FSD's are supposed to be decent struts. Wonder if anyone else has had an issue, Koni is good company with quality products.

 

I went to my local and trusted shop guy. He bought them and is dealing with Koni for replacements.

 

I think its more likely that something was taken apart and not put back together correctly than 2 sets of Konis being defective. Make sure everything is tightened, especially the top nuts as you will have all sorts of noises if they are loose.

That, or your car has developed a new problem over the past few months that are you are just noticing now. Any number of things (control arm bushings, ball joints, endlinks, bad sway bar bushings etc) could be giving you noises over bumps.

I guess what I'm saying is don't be too quick to blame the struts, as you could replace them and still have issues if you don't check all the possible causes of the noise(s).

 

Is your car lowered?
Anything but stock height mini's DESTROY Koni FSD'S pretty fast....the valves are destroyed with the lower ride height....
Guess anything can be bad out of the box...
But sounds like you are having an unusually bad experience with them....not sure why you would be getting failures...is the clinking the rearswaybar by any chance?

 

+1 to all of this ^

 

Springs are stock. All strut bushings were replaced. The left side is fine. The noises are in the right side, mainly the rear and developed after 3 months or so.

 

I've had trouble with Koni STR.T struts failing within a few years on my wife's VW just recently.
I've had one Bilstein fail on my old VW years ago, and I've had MANY Tokico Illuminas
fail on the same over the course of a decade. Thank god for the limited lifetime warranty on
all three of those products, but it would have been nicer not to have to make use of it.
I'm looking at Koni Sports next spring for my MINI and am hoping they hold up better
than the FSD or STR.T ones, as there aren't many other good strut/shock options for an R50/R53
on stock springs. I still have the original OEM dampers on now.

 

I had clunking noises like crazy in the rear when I first installed my Yellows. I didn't tighten the top nuts enough. Tightened them up and its been all good for almost 2 years now. They need to be tighter than you think they do. Check that first before you do anything else. The rear shocks come out very easily and its not worth going through the whole warranty process again or changing back to stock over a minor error in the installation.

 

The Koni's are gone, and back to KYB stockers. I may hit up Koni for some relief. There were some spot welds broken, rotating spring seat, etc. All together bad. I am through with that shop. Carry on...

 

Darn, I just ordered a set of Koni FSD's for my Clubman after my original struts began to clatter and rattle after 7 years of perfect dampening. It's a huge bill and scary on the $, so I hope they are reliable. I hear good things about them. Anyone else have an anecdote or some confidence building data?

 

I wouldn't worry konis are excellent quality.

 

Interesting...I had a set of Koni FSD's installed with totally new bump stops, spring pads and all about 6 months ago and they have become progressively harsher and noisier over the last 3 months to the point where I've taken the car to a shop and put it up on the lift to try and find the source of the issues....

We removed the right rear as it is the loudest, checked the assembly sequence and torque on the top nut, no visible or tactile problem we could find.The noise and harshness of the shocks has me thinking they might even be counterfeits .The ride and feel of the car has become pretty awful.

I am now in the process of changing out all the various other wearable bushings in the back end and looking for any damage to the control arms and trailing arm that could cause the trouble.It has really taken the joy out my R53 for now...I don't trust the suspension and I won't until i can identify and fix what's wrong.

I will post what I find, once I am certain I have the trouble located.

Mad Gepetto

 

I've had koni fsds with eibach pro springs for about 20k miles now. No issues here.

Eibach pro springs apparently have a near identical spring rate to stock...which is why they work....or have worked so far.