allenmaty

I was so impressed with the Bilstein shocks and struts on my wifes Jeep GC that I decided to go with Bilsteins on my Mustang. I know Koni has a good rep, but I don't have any experience with them. Another thing I wrestled with are lowering springs, but decided against that. This is my daily driver in the city and I don't want to be scraping and hitting things, I did all that back in the day when I was a kid. The stock hight is fine, just want to firm it up bit.

I've done a few strut installs before so I didn't think these would be a big deal. They were easy to get off, but what I didn't expect were the bearings to spill out of the upper strut mount when compressing the spring! Apparently this is very common.
But it wasn't too difficult to clean them all up and put the bearings back in packing them liberally in synthetic bearing grease. After putting the spring back in I tested the bearing under stress and it rotated like butter, so I believe I'm ok <crossing fingers>.
So now if I need new mounts in the future, I cannot use the GT500 mounts because I ordered the 11-14 model struts, so I will be stuck with replacing them with the stock ones or going for the more expensive aftermarket ones that start at $260!
So advice for anyone thinking of doing this, get the pre 2011 struts with the GT500 mounts!