jagbits

I am looking to upgrade my suspension this week, I am ordering the Steeda lowering springs and after cruising their site I saw sway bars, G-Trac brace, strut tower brace etc, anyone have any recommendations? I'm not racing just thought I could stiffin things up a bit.

hawgman

If you want to stiffen up the suspension, here is your one stop shopping spot!
BMF Fabrication

jagbits

Oh Yeah they got some nice s*it there!

hawgman

If you are going to drop the car, I highly recommend their adjustable pan hard bar. It is the only one I have seen ( so far ) that you can do the adjustments with the bar on the vehicle. Steeda's requires it to be removed to be adjusted.

lostsoul

damn jagbits, all I see you doing is buying this and that.. haha. I too would recomment bmr .. I lowered my stang with the eibach sports line and ordered the panhard bar from them... I was too lazy and left the bar out.. but its nice quality.. I will have to save that for another project. as for the springs.. I would not go that low.. my car handles great now.. but its a little too bumpy.. so now I have to get shocks or something.

delurker

Too lazy to install the panhard bar? Dayum, you don't even have to jack her up unless you've been eating lots of donuts your whole life...

hd74man

I put all-Steeda suspension parts in my '88 GT when I first bought it new. I did springs, cowl brace, side bar brackets, poly bushings.

Never seemed to have $400.00 for the pan-hard bar.

Still have the car with 142k miles. Rides like a buckboard. If stiff ain't your bag just stay with springs. My -ex wife hated it.

Impressed with Steeda quality. Buyin' an '06 GT. Will go with Steeda again.

don_w

There's a joke in there somewhere!!

F1Fan

Hi hd74man,

The problem you had was that you had an '88 GT and didn't remove the binding that was built into the older cars suspension design. The new '05's ride much better and have no bind in the suspension and with the '05's much stiffer chassis allows for much lower spring and damper rates and still handles better simply due to geometry.

IMO unless you are going to use the '05 cars on the track and do it very often there is no good reason to add all of the chassis stiffeners being sold by BMR Fab. or anyone else for that matter. These chassis are already stiffer than the last gen pony with all the weld on braces you could buy. Braces for the strut towers, lower A-arms and stiffer panhard bar brace are really all that you need for a car with large tires, sport springs, sport struts and dampers. Spend your money on tires.

The only real problem that most people don't realize they are creating when lowering an '05 is that you need to correct the rear axle's position under the chassis before doing your 4 wheel alignment or you will have a wacky alignment. It won't be off that much unless you lower the rear more than an inch or so and usually you can get away with it but a good driver will feel it. This is what the adjustable street panhard bars are for. BMR Fab's is adjustable on the car and Steeda's is not. Both are strong choices but IMO the average person will have no need to keep adjusting the panhard bar. Once the springs are in and the axle is centered you don't need to change it unless you change the rear ride height again so I bought the Steeda piece and the HD panhard brace. If you look at the flimsy stock sheet metal brace as supplied by Ford you will buy a heavy duty unit to support the panhard bar pickup point too.

Also look into Steeda's front A-arm and rear link kits that allow you to correct the car's geometry after lowering and restore the car's roll centers. These parts require good welding skills and simple fab skills to install correctly. These parts work perfectly to restore your car's original geometry which was very good until you lowered it! There are also bumpsteer correction kits from Steeda but I'm not sure this is really an issue for moderately lowered cars though again a good driver will feel it but with stiffer shocks reducing movement this should be less of an issue for most people.

HTH

delurker

More than one...