05GTSILVER said:
ok so i got springs and that helps out a lot in body roll, and the nose no longer dips when i brake. but the body does seem to move in a lateral direction when i through it into a curve. so i want sway bars, front and rear. i see steeda has some, so does eibach and bmr has a rear one. the bmr one is weird, it retains the stocker, odd uhh.
so any comments on eibach vs. steeda? anyone.... anyone....
thanks
Hi 05GTSILVER,
Are you using your car as a daily driver? I've had Eibach ProKit springs installed for the last several months and picked up a set of Tokico's D spec struts and dampers to install hopefully this Sunday! The Eibach springs are only part of the solution as the stock struts and rear dampers are not valved well at all for the Eibach '05 GT ProKit spring rates. The Ford valving is too soft in rebound in front and out back the rebound and compression are both too soft so the car tends to bounce and and at high speed 80+ seems floaty. I'm installing the struts and dampers to see if I can live with the simpler springs, struts and shocks setup. There is a down side to bigger bars, more road noise, bar noise and lower grip in turns with surface irregularities. Also, most cars will generally have better grip in corners with surface irregularities with smaller roll bars if the spring and dampening rates are suitably high enough, well matched and the car's basic geometry is good. Even here in sunny soCal the roads are not what they once were so a little roll in exchange for better grip seems a better trade to me.
Now you have to understand where I'm coming from, I've been driving heavily altered German sports cars, small hot coupes and sedans since I was 17 (I'm 50), and this is my first modern Mustang, actually my first modern American "car" ever! So my comfort level with the handling and grip of the new Mustangs may be skewed and what is "floaty" to me may be pretty stiff to others more used to American perfromance. I have restored a couple of vintage Mustangs ('66 2+2 with a full Shelby suspension, yes including the welded in lower rear trac. bars, and a '70 Boss 302), but they both handled terribly and had even worse brakes (yes they had disk brakes), so I sold them.
More to the point, I've seen the complete Steeda suspension catalog installed on a new (as in brand NEW), black '05 GT. I saw it while my own '05 GT was being worked on at the JBA shop. That black GT had all of the Steeda equipment being installed. I didn't like the way the Steeda roll bars were designed and supported. In particular the mounts for the roll bar in back are much larger than stock with lots of simple hardware hanging out down there waiting to catch on something and rip off the mounts. It looks like they took existing hardware and fabricated a rectangle tubing to attach the ends and called it a day, simply put a crude, non-specific design. I don't even see a big advantage to the way they are made or work when compared to the lighter stock Ford pieces. I can see that the Steeda mounting links will have lower compliance and this is good on the track but with all of the other Steeda components and the larger bar sizes Steeda used that black GT is going to have quite a bit more road noise than bars designed to use a stock bar style design.
I also had an issue with Steeda's alloy billet rear LCA's, they are aluminum which is very good for weight (and reducing unsprung weight is VERY helpful on the '05's live axle), but they looked like if you hit something with them you'd have a broken LCA and an axle that is not well located anymore. I'd much prefer a stock dim. thinwall tubular or rectangular steel LCA with adjusters, stronger and nearly as light as the Steeda pieces they would bend before snapping like the alloy parts. you can drive home on a bent LCA but a snapped LCA will require a replacement or a ride on a flatbed.
The other item that I found interesting was the way Steeda found to correct the wacked out front geometry when you lower the new Mustangs and the loss of that nice handling the stock cars have. I'm waiting to see the FRPP redesigned front "L" arms as used in the FR500C that corrects the front end geometry due to lowering the front ride height. The cost for the redesigned arms is higher but in the end they cost about the same once installed. The big advantage to the Ford engineered solution is that you don't have to cut and weld your stock front chassis pick up points as with the Steeda kit. Don't get me wrong, the Steeda kit works fine and almost completely restored the stock geometry to the Eibach ProKit lowered car (Steeda springs are not as low so they may have it 100% with their own spring set), but requires permanently altering the chassis and there is plenty of room for error during installation. By requiring that you alter the chassis Steeda saved a lot of money in the design and tooling for the kit but the trade off is that you need a shop that can perform accurate light suspension fabrication work. IMO this is a poor solution even though it actually works.
Did you get an adjustable panhard bar and a heavier rear panahard bar brace? This makes a big difference in the way the car handles, it makes the car feel closer to the same turning right vs. left. A panhard bar rear end will always feel slightly different turning right vs. left but recentering the axle under the chassis will minimize these differences.
Hope this helps!
