Thanks to both of you for your tips/help.
Arnold regarding your Tokico Illumina 5 way adjustables, how exactly do those work? Are they hard to adjusts? Do they also control the height to lower or raise the car?
Damper settings are as simple as turning a knob on the top of the shock:
Getting to the rears for adjustment will require removing interior panels to reach the shocks.
As far as adjustable goes, ask yourself this: How often will you actually adjust them? Makes me think of tilt/telescope steering and 6-way power seats: Once I adjust them to how I like, I never need to move them again...
Shocks don't hold up the car or affect ride height.
Trinity thanks for your in-depth response. How do you think the kit you posted compares w/ the kit above?
The kit above is "coilovers" whereas the 5400-A is factory parts.
I personally don't like coilovers on Mustangs because the spring loads are moved from OE locations into the shock towers. While the structure
may not have a problem with this I'm still uncomfortable with it. Ford designed the front
suspension and structure to pick up the coil spring loads at the K-member where it meets the frame rails. This is pretty substantial structure here. By going to coilovers, you move the spring points into sheetmetal originally designed to handle only shock absorber loads. At the very least you might consider getting a strut-tower brace to help the shock towers out.
In the rear, it's the same thing. I wouldn't feel right putting a steel bar up into the rear shock mount and then jacking the car up by that point. This is what you'll be doing with coilovers in the rear. Like the front, the OE rear
suspension puts the spring between the control arm and the frame rails and they're designed with that sort of load in mind. Shock towers are not as robust.
BTW, there's a chance that the kit shown in that eBay image is not what you'd actually get. It might look something more like:
Tokico Illumina Suspension System ILK238 by Tokico Illumina
Notice in that photo the rear shocks don't appear to have spring perches so maybe that kit retains the OE rear
suspension layout.
As for comparison: The Tokico kit is more expensive and more adjustable. But as I noted above, how much adjustability do you need for a daily driver? The 5400-A also comes with sway bars, front and rear, whereas the Tokico kit doesn't appear to. This is where a good deal of the cornering improvement is going to come from.
I like how the kit you posted has all the components I'd need but I am having a problem finding it in stock online. Most places have it backordered, plus i want to do some more research.
Makes sense. I've heard rumblings that it's becoming hard to find as well. Keep looking around.
I must be getting confused. Isn't the sway bar the same thing as the anti-roll bar in that kit?
Same thing.
The clunking noise you mention from the bushing is something i hear when I go over large bumps over 5 mph, that is what prompted me to start think about replacing
suspension parts.
Once the car is in the air and the
suspension is hanging free you'll be able to check for things like loose ball joints, tie rods and wheel bearings.
The main problems with the
suspension right now is I feel that it is not tight like it used to, the clunking noise over bumps at 5mph +, and the fact that when I am driving I get pulled in and out of the lanes. I am not sure if any of you experience this but in Michigan the roads have a "W" groove from the trucks that go over the roads with such heavy weight. This plus the fact that I have 265 width tires in the front and rear and my tire kind of gets "stuck" in the grooves. I guess I can't really fix that unless i get a smaller tire which I don't plan on doing. I currently have the Goodyear Eagle GS-D3 265/35/18.
The general looseness isn't surprising on a car with those sorts of miles on those sorts of roads. The tracking issue may not be "fixed" completely: Short (35) stiff sidewalls and wide treads are going to exacerbate this problem when driving on truck-rutted roads.
