techmanBDsStang

I reused them. Haven't had any problems. I got under to check once a week for a few weeks to check them. The seem fine to me.

wcgman

In the install article, it says to let the suspension hang freely. So which is it? Did anyone else just use their jack stands under the axle too?

F1Fan

Hi wcgman

The Ford factory manual says to torque the LCA's in with the suspension at ride height. This is also true for the Panhard bar, UCA, LCA's and lower rear damper bolts. The reason is that you can get some preload on the bushings which prevents the car from settling intoit's natural ride height and also accellerateswear on thebushings by placing a large amont of twisting preload on them that they are not designed to take which will cause early bushing failures and mysterious, hard to isolatenoisesdown the road.

The Ford factory manual says to discard almost all of the front and rear suspension fasteners as they are removed and replace them only with original Ford sourced replacements. Based on my testing this is verygood advice but if you play with your suspension a much as I do you will go broke buying the damned fasteners! So I tried a little test to see how many torque cycles it would takefor the original boltsto fail.

The only reasonthat I can imagine Ford specifying single use suspension fasteners is that they know that the loads on these singlefastener suspension points are critical and they wanted to be absolutely cetain that the fastenerswould hold up to repeated abuse on the street and trackwhile stillbeing 100% safe.The reasoningbehindmy testing methodwas thatall single use andtorque to yeildengine boltsare stretch bolts of one sort or another and once they have stretched past a certain percentangeor specified length longer than new they are no long strong enough to be safely used and must be replaced. So I figured the easy way to test the S197 suspensionbolts was to torque them to full factory torque and seejust how many torque cycles they could take before faiure. Therewas a surprisingly wide number of cycles that came upbut the maximum average was about three full torque cycles andthen I could no longer achive factory torque specs due tothe boltsstretching or twisting until they failed. From this knowledgeI suggest that you use the origninal bolts no more than one additionaltorque cycle and make certain that you achive full specified torque on a resude fastener or you should remove and discard the fasteners and replace them with newFord specified andsourced fasteners.If you fail to heed this adviceyou may be in big doo-doo in the middle of that120MPH turn on the big track at your local road course with a really reallybad result.

Cheers!

Mikes_BLK_GT

F1Fan,
I looked on ford pages and maybe I'm doing my searches wrong but have been unable to find the P/N's for the fasteners to replace. Do I need to buy the ford shop manuals to find these or will a dealer sell them to me based on a description of what I need? I probably need the manuals anyways for doing my own work since I dont know the specs and such. But if I can get away w/o spending the money I just might.

F1Fan

Hi Mikes_BLK_GT,

You have to figure out what you need carefully because some of the aftermarket lower control arms come with fasteners for use on the axle side of the LCA and some just use the stock nut and bolt in that location. The same is true for the UCA though if you are using a UCA or LCA's with spherical ends they usually supply conventional nuts and bolts. The Panhard bars all seem to use stock fasteners unless they are usingspherical ends. Anyway my point is that you have to have the kit in hand and see what you really need to order from the Ford dealer before jumpiong into any suspension installation.

In my case I have installed almost all the Steeda suspension components and there's only one pair of nuts and bolts that do notuse the O.E. Ford fasteners for the control arms. Out back I have Steeda's adjustable LCA's, adjustable UCA, adjustable Panhard bar withthe Heavy DutyPanhard Bar brace. The rear end is fisnihed offwith Steeda'sbig anti-roll bar with billet links but all of the hardware for the anti-roll bar was included in the kit I got tough it may be different now because I got my Steeda anti-roll bar kit when they transitioned from the early very crude fabricated links to the billet parts to selling them separately.

If you have nayoth questions re: suspension stuff please don't hesitate to ask. I'll help if I have something to contribute!

Cheers/Chip