There should either be a groove that the pinch bolt sits in or a welded collar that prevents that from happening.

Did you line everything up during install?

 

I'd say that's *NOT* normal...

 

 

OP,
Did the bottom of the shock hit the axel? In your picture, it seems there are a few inches of clearance, but it occurred to me that the axel may be hanging low because you lifted the car.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a picture from the stock forward shock I replaced on my 2005 TL base. There is a ring, instead of the rectangular plate on the koni, that is welded so maybe less likely to fail as there is more area to weld. That said, the koni yellows have a very good reputation. Maybe a manufacturing defect like OP wrote.

 

The stock rings aren't welded on. You can remove them via hammer pretty easily.

They butt up against a thicker portion of the shock, however...which prevents them from sliding upward.

OP's shock likely had a manufacturing defect...or the pinch bolt was under-torqued...or the parts were assembled in an incorrect orientation.

I don't think the design is very good. But...Koni yellows are meant to be massively inexpensive.

 

Koni Yellows have been pretty popular here on this site and this is the first I've seen of this failure..


@justnspace Have you seen this happen before?

 

I've seen that failure on a cheap set of shocks that had a similar spot welded tab.

The tab probably isn't doing a majority of holding the car up. It seems to me that its just there to locate the shock.

The pinch bolt (when properly installed) should be doing most of the heavy lifting. Don't take that as direction to over-torque the pinch bolt though.

You're definitely putting a crushing amount of weight into that point. They really should design the shock with a thicker section to prevent upward travel....similar to stock...or similar to Tein, etc.