1997GT4.6
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2010
- Messages
- 1,992
- Reaction score
- 69
Hey fellas: Got a question for you suspension wiz's. Actually it's not a very complicated question. I lowered my 58k mile Cobra with Ford B springs and left the stock struts/shocks and of course they stopped providing dampening and just completely blew out (testing the if you have low miles theory they should hold up a bit, yeah right lol). Replaced them with eibach pro dampers because AM was out of stock on tokico blues, the front struts I got tokico blues. Well 2 months time passed with that set up and the front tokico blues are shot now: The ride is all bouncy and rough as expected when they blow out; but WTF how did they go bad in just 2 months????? Were they defective or was there a mistake on the install by me? I mean I did they install for the same exact struts/shocks on the GT using the blues and they are perfectly fine 2 years in. SO bad batch of struts that I received or did I mess something up??
This was install process:
1. Jack car up
2. take off wheels
3. Put light pressure on control arm with jack for preloading purposes
4. Using impact gun take off top nut on strut under the hood.
5. Remove 1 nut holding the abs bracket
6. Remove 2 lower bolts holding strut to spindle.
7. Relieve some tension on control arm and strut basically slipped right out.
8. Install was the reverse although I can't remember if I tightened the bottom 2 nuts or the top strut nut first on the installation of the tokico
(not sure if doing 1 before the other even matters) (also tightened as much with the impact gun as possible, max of 100psi on crappy impact gun; shaft spun after it tightened as much as it could be with the impact gun.)
Is any part of my installation wrong??? (might be forgetting to include something simple here) I for sure did not use any tools on the shiny rod that goes into the strut whatever it's called.
Sorry for the long detailed post lol. I'm just tired of driving my car with these worn out POS struts. I haven't even wanted to continue modding it or working on it at all. I was going to do a 100 shot, gears, DR's, subframes, intake and tuner by now but ran into the stupid strut issue and it kind of brought me down and I haven't wanted to anything on it anymore unfortunately.
This was install process:
1. Jack car up
2. take off wheels
3. Put light pressure on control arm with jack for preloading purposes
4. Using impact gun take off top nut on strut under the hood.
5. Remove 1 nut holding the abs bracket
6. Remove 2 lower bolts holding strut to spindle.
7. Relieve some tension on control arm and strut basically slipped right out.
8. Install was the reverse although I can't remember if I tightened the bottom 2 nuts or the top strut nut first on the installation of the tokico
(not sure if doing 1 before the other even matters) (also tightened as much with the impact gun as possible, max of 100psi on crappy impact gun; shaft spun after it tightened as much as it could be with the impact gun.)
Is any part of my installation wrong??? (might be forgetting to include something simple here) I for sure did not use any tools on the shiny rod that goes into the strut whatever it's called.
Sorry for the long detailed post lol. I'm just tired of driving my car with these worn out POS struts. I haven't even wanted to continue modding it or working on it at all. I was going to do a 100 shot, gears, DR's, subframes, intake and tuner by now but ran into the stupid strut issue and it kind of brought me down and I haven't wanted to anything on it anymore unfortunately.