Suspension mods - so much confusion?

Holy cow... listen to yourself... you are concerned about potholes (something to indeed be concerned about), but you want to LOWER your car another inch for street use..???? WHY? Leave it alone!!! Don't lower anything!!! Or maybe just go get a bone stock Mustang GT suspension out of a wreck and swap it in. The stock suspension is GREAT for all-purpose street use, good ride quality, good height, excellent handling (for street use). I would not change one single thing about my stock GT suspension, at least for street use. You are about to spend all kinds of dough and basically wreck your car just to try to lower it an inch??? Please step back and realize how little sense this makes. Not trying to make you feel bad or anything, but I think we can all use a wake up call now and then. Simply read you own post to see how wacky it is. Do yourself a huge favor... leave the car alone, and save your time and money... it can surely be way better spent elsewhere. Still don't know why you want to lower the car for street use, especially in a pothole environment... leave it alone, drive it and enjoy it.

---------------------------

What are your goals? What do you intend to do with the car?

For a street car, you can lower it and not worry about bumpsteer kits, ball joints, and endlinks. The caster/camber plates are only necessary if you can't get the lowered car back into alignment. And some folks just hog out the holes in the strut tower and get the job done that way. On the pre-'99's this was a fairly common issue.

You only need a stiffer anti-sway bar if you want to manage the body roll a little more or you want to adjust the grip of the car. Unless you track the car alot that kind of adjustability isn't necessary.

The offset bushing are only necessary if you slam the car. If don't lower the car extremely, they are unnecessary, imho. The rule is there the steering rack ends up. If it's parallel to the ground, your OK. It's low enough that there's an angle on it, you will have bump steer issues. The Mustang usually takes about 1.25" of lowering in the front before that becomes a problem.

Coil-overs rule all :). There's nothing wrong with the Eibachs and that's the least expensive way to go. With coil-overs you *must* get an aftermarket caster/camber plate and it *must* be stout enough to take the load. Maximum Motorsports 4 bolt plates and Steeda's heavy plates are the best. I, personally, don't think Kenny Browns plates are stout enough. Also, you'd really have to get appropriately valved struts and shocks. This all adds up to make the cost significantly higher.

The flip side is that you can run very high wheel rates (which is the primary band-aid to improve Mustang handling) with none of harshness that you get from running the same rates using stiffer springs in the stock location. Also, road inputs are much tamer even though the suspension is stiffer. I run coil-overs on the front and I love them. The car is very comfortable, even on rough roads, even though it's also very stiff. I run wheel rates four times stock and it's not bone jarring at all.

Add to that, the ride height with coil-overs is fully adjustable so that you can tune it to your roads or whatever.

The stock struts and shocks are valved for a specific amount of travel. When you lower the car you reduce the amount of travel that the dampeners have to work with, this makes them heat up and wear faster. So, if you had fresh struts and shocks, they might last a little while but they will die sooner than with the stock ride height.

Dan

I had steeda sportsprings with shorter endlinks on my 95GT. worked well. I bought caster camber plates but ended up not needing them. Using the max adjustment was exactly enough. I would wait with adding the cc plates, you can always add them later. The ride WILL get stiffer. This will lower it about 1.5 inches. I think you don't need the bumpsteer kit when you lower it only 1.5 inches. I never had any problems with bumpsteer.

not sure about the x2-balljoints. Doesn't that lower the car more ?

Remove NO-SPAM from email address when replying

what kind of street use are you talking about ? Driving it to work and back over the freeway the stock suspension is okay, however if you do some twisties I think it could use quite a bit of improvement. Remove NO-SPAM from email address when replying

The x2 ball joints from Steeda help restore the stock suspension geometry. It also seems to decrease steering input. I lowered by 94 GT, with Eibach Pro Springs (1" - 1.25"), install subs, caster/camber plates (enabled me to dial in more aggressive settings, also eliminated that annoying side wear Mustangs seem to enjoy on the front tires). They were well worth the money. I've already blown one power steering rack so hopefully this will save me from doing the same thing again.

----- Original Message ----- From: "[80s.fan]" Newsgroups: rec.autos.makers.ford.mustang Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 11:01 PM Subject: Suspension mods - so much confusion?

Curious..you've done the above mods and you're not going to use it at the track.... why?

In any case, I know what you mean by the streets and highways in Montreal... potholes will swallow Hondas (Yea!). Same here in Toronto, just not as bad. (Potholes only swallow mopeds.) That being the case, forget about lowering the car and maintaining "softness".

I've got Eibach Pro springs and KYB adjustable shocks and struts, subs and tower brace... it looks good and stiffened up the whole suspension just like I wanted. Its great for the twistys and zooooming around, but its pretty annoying to passengers even at the softest settings. I also have problems with speed-bumps and entrance-exits or driveways that are sloped. Cripes, I even scrape the tailpipes if I'm not careful backing out of my own driveway!

What you can do however, is to upsize your rims to 17 or 18 inches (18 is probably a stretch) and throw on some bigger tires to fill up the wheel wells. Not sure how you compensate for the speedo with bigger tires, different gear for the cable I'd think. Might require a couple of other tweaks..CC plates maybe.

This combo will NOT maintain the "softness", it will further stiffen the suspension and doesn't mention struts/shocks.

Again no struts/shocks.. or springs even... won't lower your car.

Pretty much the same as I've got... stiffer not soft at all. Can't help you with the coilovers.

Yes! Proper adjustment/installation is essential whenever you're talking about suspension. Personally, I'd have a pro do it.. but thats just me. Yes if you install springs you'll need new struts/shocks.

Hey, I'm glad you are satisfied with the stock suspension on the street. Some of us are not and are willing to budget both the up front cost and the long term costs of running a different suspension on the street. I don't track my car at all but the stock ride height and spring rates suck, imho, on street. And before my '03 the struts and shocks were marginal at best. For me the understeer on the stock setup is completely unsatisfactory and undesireable.

The streets in my neighborhood are rough but I'm willing to take the chance in order to have a more compliant, stiffer, and superior handling Mustang. It makes the car much more fun to drive on the street and much more consistent and predictable while maneuvering through traffic. I'd spend twice as much as I already have on the suspension to get where it's at now if I had to.

Besides all that, it just fun to do. Some of us didn't buy our Mustangs to just tootle around or to be absolutely practical. I bought mine to play with and handling is fun to play with because its relatively inexpensive to modify and the results are pretty nice for very little work.

His post is wacky :)? Hell, I think he's just started down one of the greatest modification paths a Mustang owner can travel. I feel bad for you, man. I couldn't stand it if I had to go back to the stock suspension.

Guys, thanks so much for your comments so far.

Fred, perhaps I was exagerating too much when I was saying that I am worried about a harder ride. Natually, if I am posting this initial thread, it is because I enjoy modifying my mustang and really want to mod more suspension components. But I liked your input as I do sometime realize that we should spend money on important things like Houses for example. But life is boring when just worrying about a house and retirement funds....

But, with all the knowledge here, and on the forums (Corral, ModularDepot, etc.), it is still not obvious what a decent combination is. I don't need to go extreme with Coilover or K-Members, etc. but I wouldn't mind lowering it 1" (like with Eibach Pro-Kit) and possibly other things. The confusing thing to me is that I don't want to do this myself but have the garage do it. Hence, I really need to know what is really important to do when lowering the car about 1-1.25" that Eibach springs would give for example. Steeda seems to say that all these fine parts like X2 balljoints, endlinks, Bumpsteer,caster/camber are needed. But is it really necessary?

Also, let's say that I leave all as is, should I at least install some minor extra thing like Steeda Adjustable rear sway bar (and keep stock bar also)? Right now, I have these Kenny Brown trackit brackets which lower the mount point of lower control arms and shocks (supposedly putting more tracking on the ground) but the issue is that the back of the car looks very lowered compared to the front now. I also wonder if this affected some other part of the handing of the car like turning....

Thanks guys.

This is what I did to my 90'. I went with Kenny Brown upper/lower adjustable control arms and their pan hard bar. The pan hard bar works with 2 plates that in effect lower the rear about 1" with stock rear springs and sway bars. I used the KB front springs (for their pan hard bar) which will lower the front about 1" to 1.5". I matched this with Tokico 5 way adjustable shocks/struts, Steeda camber/caster plates and offset A-Arm bushings. I finished the rest of the suspension off with poly/alumn bushings in selected locations such as sway bars, steering rack etc. The car handles excellent with out a real harsh feel.

Biggest improvements for me were:

1. Polyurethane sway bar bushings
2. Polyurethane steering rack bushings (do not use offset unless you slam the car)

These 2 changes got rid of the rut following trait of my Stang and greatly inproved steering precision and tracking. Cheap and big benefits.

1. Panhard bar. Keep the stock lowers and uppers but lock the rear axle in place with a panhard bar. You have NO idea how good a Mustang can handle until you get rid ot the unwanted rear steering input (rear axle moves up to

1. Eibach progressive lowering springs. These lower the vehicle about an inch and still provide very good ride characteristics. You will have less suspension travel and will bottom out on BIG bumps more often.

2. Bilstein shocks all around. If your stock shocks are in good shape and you're happy with them you can save some money here. However, I loved the handling improvements the Bilsteins made even though they cost some ride quality. However, everyone who drives/rides in my car is impressed by the handling and surprised by how good the ride is.

For me 1,2 and 3 are mandatory changes for Mustang suspensions. Until those are done your car is wandering all over the place of its own volition. These mods have no negative trade-offs that I have been able to detect. No additional noise, no deterioration of ride quality.. its all good.

Lowering springs and shocks are a matter of personal taste and do incur some tradeoffs. You'll have to decide if they are worth it.

LJH

Got a question for you. I currently have a subsection of the Panhard bar (the trackit brackits only). This lowers the back of the car about almost

I believe KB uses the brackets as part of the panhard bar system. Thus you'll keep them on if you go with KB. Call them for verification, they'll be glad to help answer your questions.

A word of warning, exhaust routing clearance issues can crop up with panhard bars depending on brand of panhard bar and brand of exhaust. Get a good panhard bar and then take your exhaust to a good shop to do any necessary rerouting to give the clearances you need.

LJH

I have the KB setup. The Trackit brackets are made in 2 versions one for the panhard (what I have) and one without. I don't think they would recommend you using lowering springs in the rear with them, as you can get too low. I also have the Tokico shocks and struts that work very well for the mustang. If you keep the Trackits installed check with KB for their front springs (lowers about 1.5" in front).