2006 vista blue GT here...
Put in Steeda Ultralites a few weeks ago.
Ride was always stiff but tolerable. After Ultralites the car sits slightly lower and fills the rear wheel well a lot better, but the ride quality has gotten significantly worse. In fact, i think the ultralites are causing the stock shocks in the front to bottom out (or i might be hitting the bump stops, but unlikely). So...i'm getting some Tokico D-Specs hoping that a beefier shock/strut will eliminate the problem of the Ultralites "overwhelming" the stock shocks. Does anyone else have experience with this? Am i wrong about this whole thing? I would love to hear from some of the more seasoned folks because i am truly an amateur hobbyist when it comes to working on cars.

Also, i am considering getting the J&L lower control arms and panhard bar. Any thoughts on this brand? Are there better one? I'm hoping these upgrades will also improve my ride quality. Thoughts?

Thanks all for your advice.

 

With a car like the Mustang, having great handling and a good ride are mutually exclusive. So, when you installed the Ultralites, you increased your handling, but compromised your ride quality. You don't get both. And, you're still using shocks that were meant for springs that are longer than the ones you now have. The Tokicos will help. But don't expect the ride quality of the car to be the same as it was before, regardless of what the vendors tell you. Any time you do a mod, there is a trade-off involved.

Keep us posted on the Tokicos. I am considering a set for my car.

 

Obviously i'm aware of the trade off, but hoping to remedy the situation as much as possible with Tokico's.

Any comments re: J&L? Is there a consensus preferred manufacturer of LCAs or panhard bars that everyone is using?

Thanks

 

I have BMR tubular LCA's with relo brackets, Adj. UCA and Adj. Panhard bar and support all use Poly bushings.

I have no issues with any of the BMR parts. The only problem is that the OEM swaybar can hit the right LCA relo bracket and sometimes does.

Other than that... BMR is good stuff and resonably priced.

Bobby M.

 

You are making the right move, complementing the springs with the Spec D's. Keep in mind, you drop the car one inch, you now have one inch less bump suspension travel. That is roughly 1/3 reduction in what you started with.

You better hope the bump stops come into play before the shocks (they do). The shocks / struts can't take much of that.

After you install the Spec-D's you may still find you are bottoming out more than you like which means you need something a little stiffer yet.

Don't get fooled into going heavy on the firmness of the Spec-D's to control that. Too much rebound damping is not good either. The wheels never get a chance to get back to normal ride height. A lot of users think if feels better (and subjectively it does), but it does not really make it ride or handle better.

 

How the heck are you bottoming out the shocks with ulralites?? It's crunching down and whacking the stops or are you just feeling a lot of chatter up front? I've nailed large bumps, bad dips(compressing enough to scrape the chin spoiler on the ground at speed) and speedbumps and have come nowhere near bottoming out. The ultralites only lower the car about 1/2" up front and 3/4" in the rear.

 

Appreciate the good feed...can you expound a bit more on how to tune D-Specs for my configuration and what can be additionally if the Tokico's aren't enough.

Also, any thoughts on the J&L stuff?

 

I agree with you wholeheartedly, and i don't have an answer why it happens, but it does. I will try to explain what happens and maybe it will make it clearer what is going on.

If i approach a speed bump very, very slowly (so slow that the car seems to hover on top of it undecided if it is going to roll back or go over the bump) the car comes down and the nose dips very fast (and comes back up very fast) and definitely hits something that makes a noticable sound. Now what that sounds is, i don't know. Could it be the shock simply not having as much travel (compared to stock) since it sits lower on the ultralites? (i don't know, hypoth. question obviously) It is hitting the bump stops? (again, i don't know, that's what i'm hoping you smart folks will help me understand)

Now, (this is perhaps important to distinguish) if i go over that same speed bump at a normal speed (kinda idling speed or about 5 mph) the jarring inside the car is much much more severe (almost unbearable inside the cabin), but the car handles the speed bumb just fine. <----i'd really prefer not to this any more, it almost hurts how much that's felt inside the car.

I also don't even pretend to understand how the Tokico's will help, i was just told by a gear head buddy that they will, so if someone has a layman description/answer for me that would be awesome. I will also fess up that i went to howstuffworks and saw all kinds of diagrams and animations about suspensions and i definitely understand all the basics of suspension (even without howstuffworks, lol ) but i'm not sure i understand how the suspension basics relate to the problem I'M having. aka, i have no clue what is wrong with MY setup.

 

There are other alternatives if you don`t want to hassle with the adj. D-specs. FRPP has a set of dampers (shocks/struts)for their lowering/handling package. Also Tokico has non-adj. dampers for lowered Mustangs. Steeda has some good dampers also. All are around $400.00 or less for the complete set. Saves about $200.00 over the adj. D-specs. If you are interested in something like that.

I don`t know about the J&L suspension stuff. Mostly you see guys mixing Steeda, BMR, MM, etc. I`m going with a mix of the better known parts from those guys. I would recommend the BMR stuff just from the customer service that I have gotten before the sell. I talked to Dennis at BMR via email and he showed me how to save some money on control arms. I was originaly going with a more complicated set up, but he showed me how to get the adjustability I needed, but in a less expensive way. Saves me money, but it costs BMR in sales. I`m always impressed when a company would rather make me happy than make more money.

The ride of your Stang will get better with the proper dampers, but it will still be stiffer and rougher than stock. For the most part all the lowering springs have stiffer spring rates than the factory pieces. That`s to help control body roll for improved handling. Put a good set of dampers on it and give it a little while. You may get used to it and it won`t seem like such a big deal. If all else fails, you can always go back to the stock springs. Good luck.

Eric

 

Sounds like the strut tower caps, pop a little bit when the load is lifted(or will pop if you say pull into a parking spot and straighten the wheel quickly) and they chatter on bumps(ford calls it chuckling) where it feels almost as if the tie rod ends have an inch of slack in them. When you bottom out a car its brutal, like the feeling when you pull up to a curb and crunch the bottom of the car up on it.

 

You are just slamming into the bump stops because you now have less bump travel than you did at stock ride height. Looking at it another way, the suspension has less travel to absorb the energy of the bump and shock bump dampening is not enought to dampen the inertia of the moving suspension with less travel. This is why lowered cars have to have higher springs rates and higher damping to control the recoil. Its not just there for roll stiffness.

 

I have no other sound issues at all. I'm aware that there is a TSB for front upper strut mounts and i am taking my car in for that tomorrow, but i'm really not experiencing any noises at any other time other than when i go over bump and the car "bottoms out".

 

This is a complicated subject to do w/o writting a book. Getting the springs and dampening right is a balancing act of compromises. Stiffer springs resist bump motion of the suspension more than softer springs. When you lower a car, you have less bump motion in the suspension, so you need more spring stiffness to absorb the bump. The shocks are doing two things. They provide some of that resistance for the wheel bump motion controling how quickly that bounces and how much that wheel rebounds, and they serve to dampress resulting cyclic motion (bouncing). If the dampening in either or both directions is too ecessive, the result is not very pleasant.

Start with the recommended setting out of the box. Get used to that and then try half a turn up or down in increments and try to feel and notice the difference for a few days. Just remember if you go too stiff there will be degregation in performance, particularly when the wheel does not have time to get back to normal ride height before encountering the next bump.

On my coupe I was hoping they would control rear axle motion better than stock. But rear live axles like these are heavy unsprung weight, and I'd say I got marginal improvement for small but sharp bumps. For the rest of most road conditions I really like them.

The shocks can't do it all and even the Spec-D's have an upper spring rate threashold where they can not dampen the spring motion.

Koni's are another good choice, but I got inpatient waiting for them to release product for this car. They are available now and would have been my personal 1st choice.

Not familiar with the J&L products.

 

Lots of great info, thank you. Can you explain to me the benefit of getting aftermarket LCAs and panhard bar (re: panhard bar, other than to be able to adjust properly to center), what do the aftermarket ones do that the stock does not?

 

The stock pieces aren`t bad as a whole, but the soft bushings cause some problems in performance situations. The aftermarket pieces are lighter and stronger. They use harder bushings which aid in control of the suspension. You most often see this in a reduction of wheel hop on acceleration. Wheel hop is caused by the softer stock bushings allowing the rear end to twist then release, twist and release. This sets up a repeating loop and you get wheel hop. The harder bushings often stop this. They don`t flex like the stock rubber bushings.

From what I gather the aftermarket PHB`s are about the same. Stronger, lighter, with less flex under load. And as you posted, adj. PHB`s allow you to re-center the rear end after you lower the car.

For the most part replacing these parts beefs up the rear suspension. Allows you to put more power to the street. And with adj. units allows you to tune the rear suspension after lowering or for track conditions.

Eric

 

Could your problem be as simple as the upper strut mount not being re-installed properly... if I remember correctly, there is a small tab that has to be installed into a small notch with faces outward toward the wheel opening.. If the strut mount is not installed that way the bearing cap doesn't seat properly and can cause problems.

Just throwing stuff out there to be considered.

Bobby M.

 

Stiffer, lower springs need better shocks. I went with bilsteins. Perfect.

 

Yea I'm getting the bilstiens too in a couple weeks, but I still come nowhere near bottoming out with just ultralites on the car I'm thinking something might be installed wrong. The ultralites only lower the car to a point that a couple passengers, gas and some stuff in the trunk would, and have a higher rate then stockers.

 

Well, the car is at the dealership (*cringe*) today for the front upper strut mount tsb...we'll see if they end up doing it without hassling me and if that makes any difference.

How do the Bilstiens compare to the Tokico's?

 

They are non adjustable, but are renown for using top-shelf parts, carry the highest pressures with wonderful valving and just have a lot of engineering in them. Think of them as more of an BMW M-spec factory part rather then a fully adjustable race part. I had them on my RX7TT and Miata and they were fantastic. There's nothing wrong with the D-specs either, I just have no use for adjustable shocks.

One my last stangs was adjustable-everything under the car and it never did me any good on the street and was more of a headache then it was worth. To me it just seemed like 30 of the parts under my car had additional parts to break or loosen, not to mention the myriad of possible wrong setting combinations. Fix the true inadequate parts with a few select high-end pieces is my opinion. A lot of it over the years have seemed like a 3-fold price increase for a 5% overall performance increase, and that of course was if you set everything perfectly and were willing to constantly check, lubricate, and tweak all the time.

You would never be able to exploit the difference between a setup with a good set of shocks/struts, springs, upper and lower front strut braces, a true tower cap solution and some good solid LCA's versus the entire race K-member/a arm, adjustable everything car-for anything remotely resembling sanity on a public road. Adding the right set of tires tires would make more difference then the extra $3000 in parts to build a street 'race' car. If you are outrunning the basic good setup and decent tires on the street you are going to kill someone.

I also banged the car pretty good over some speed bumps today on the way to work(as in a 5mph roll-over without slowing at all), it hardly compresses at all. I cant imagine what it would take to bottom it out, cut two coils out of an ultralite maybe