StriderTacticaL

I picked up a pair of brand new Lakewood 50/50's locally for $80 off a guy who decided to go with coilovers instead. I decided to do the install tonight cause I thought it was gonna be relatively simple but I came down to several problems.

1. The axle shock mount was alittle too wide for the Lakewood bushing but too narrow to fit 1 washer(provided) on each side. I couldn't use my stock bushings because it was prety worn and stuck inside the stock shock pretty good. No big deal here, I just widened the mount alittle and bolted the shock right up.

2. Here is this more serious problem: The hole on the frame that you put the shock shaft through was too big for the lakewood rubber shock mounts. They come a lot smaller than th shock ones. I decded to try and use the stock shock's rubber mounts. But the problem was that the top mount had the nut attached to it and the threading for the shock shaft is completely different with the Lakewoods. I decided to try and use the stock lower rubber mount with the lakewood uppers but I at first was unable to do so because the stock lower mount stuck out through the hole too far for me to screw down the Lakewood mount. I ended up using a knife and trimming off most of the rubber that stuck out. I was the able to bolt it down.

I know this may sound confusing but heres a pic of what it looks like:



You can see how the stock shocks rubber mounts are much bigger than the Lakewood ones and how if I used only the Lakewood mounts there would be too much play where it goes through the hole in the trunk.



This is what I ended up cutting off the stock lower mount in order to get it to work with the Lakewood upper mount. I felt that this was the only way. So BASICALLY what I did in order to install he Lakewood 50/50's was to use the stock shock's lower rubber mount and the Lakewood uppers. The end result looked like this:




So my question is, is this a safe way/ok way to install these shocks? I didn't torque down the upper nut because I felt that I didn't need to. I just hand tightened it with a wrench. The shaft wasn't even spinning yet but the nut is on pretty tight. I torqued the lower shock mounts to 60 pounds.


3. My last problem is that I noticed that these Lakewood shocks don't come with sleeves to cover the shaft from dirt. I tried to see if I could reuse my stock ones but they seem to be permenantly attached to the stock shock and I was unable to move them. Basically my shaft is really exposed:




Is this how it's supposed to be?


Anyway, I took my car out for a ride and it felt fine. The first thing I noticed was that the rear was much stiffer (as expected since it was much harder to compress/decompress the Lakewood's by hand compared to my stockers). I went over a few speed bumps and the back would be pretty firm compared to before where I would have a little bit of a "springy" motion.

I then went to a small empty straight road and did several small test launches. I noticed a pretty big difference in that the car launched a lot harder. It's pretty humid out and of course I still go a lot of tire spin but the launch was a lot harder than before...almost like I was doing all this on a dragstrip surface.


Well any help would be great,


Thanks,
Brandon

1999mustang2000

looks fine to me i had the same issues and i bought mine brand new when mounting it i used a washed on both sides on the bushing and then on the top i did the same thing i havent had any problems. only difference is i didnt cut anything

Frostbitten

ill be installing strange adjustables soon. hopefully they will make a difference

StriderTacticaL

Ok cool....So is it ok to drive my car like this from now on with the shaft just exposed? Obviously it's not gonna be as exposed as the pic above since the car was jacked up but still

grogan

ive been driving around with the 50/50s for about 10k miles without any problems with dirt or anything

03greyGT

when I installed my Lakewoods, I cut the nut off of the washer on the factory upper bushing, then just used a nut from the Lakewood kit..so my upper and lower bushings were factory and worked just like stock...

StriderTacticaL

alright....well it seems like I will be ok with how I installed my shocks


Thanks for the help guys!

pcs

im running that same set up with no problems. as for the shock being exposed, you could just pick up some shock covers used on off road shock. i dont like how the bushing set up but i havent had problems so i guess it works.