21st Century Pony
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Martin
- Joined
- May 21, 2022
- Threads
- 36
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- 1,976
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- 2,243
- Location
- Arlington, Virginia
- Vehicles
- formerly Ford Mustang Mach E 2022 Premium AWD ER, now a li'l bit of Lightning ER
So it's been several days now... I put the car back up on the lift to do some final adjustments.So after 3 months of looking at my KW Coilover kit sitting there in its box, I finally bolted them up onto my Mach E today.
Many thanks to Connoisseur for the thorough OP write-up which greatly helped in organizing the prep and the job.
Although I have done similar upgrades on (at least) three other cars in the past, the Mach E taught me some new tricks. In my prior coilover swapouts the fronts were the hard part and the rears, a fairly easy part. On my Mach E, it was the reverse.
Suggestion, learned the hard way haha: apply anti-seize to the main shock / shock seat threads as the KW shocks just come out of the shipping box, before assembling and torquing the KW assemblies together. Guess how I know
Connoisseur also deserves credit for suggesting a new spare set of tophats (thank you FordPass points) for the front KW coilovers. Since my Mach E is still pretty new, I figured there's no harm in keeping the still viable OEM assemblies, still assembled, out in the shed. In my previous coilover jobs the OEM shocks were all toast and not worth keeping, so getting spare tophats for the front had not occurred to me. This one suggestion made the front assembly swap pretty easy because I didn't have to mess with de-compressing and re-compressing the front springs.
For DIYers with access to a car lift, a neat way to get the front OEM coilover assembly out is to lower the car-on-lift enough to loosen all three tophat bolts from the top, then raise the car-on-lift and unbolt the bottom stuff: two knuckle (spline) bolts, the top endlink bolt, the teeny brake bracket bolt, and pull off the electrical signal line, and then lower the car-on-lift again, enough to lean over the remaining tophat bolt on the top. Then, roll a floor jack with padding (cardboard etc.) under the brake disc and gently lift the floor jack arm enough to support the wheel hub... then unbolt the remaining tophat bolt and you can lower the whole wheel hub slowly enough to slip the coilover assembly out, without straining the brake line at all. Follow these steps again for the KW assembly - the tophat center nut can be a good guide that you can reach and move with your fingers while you're cranking the floor jack up, and a thin Phillips screwdriver will center the tophat's three threaded holes for their bolts. This trick let me do the job without helpers.
The hardest part about swapping out the rear sets was lining up the big bolts with the holes on the lower control arm, both during disassembly and during assembly. The Mach E's rear lower control arms noticeably twist about their axis when the bolt (coming or going) is only in on one side, and that creates problems in lining everything up. I finally resorted to a pipe wrench with its arm end supported (pushed up) by a transmission jack while the car was up on the lift. The pipe wrench grabbed onto the wide upper flanges on the lower control arm, inducing (or rather, counter-balancing) rotational torsion forces in it, and that did the trick.
I also found that the rear right spring's rubber bottom seat was actually rotated about 160 degrees... obviously a factory assembly mistake. Its high rubber side flange, which is supposed to point to the electric motor (let's say 9 o'clock), was pointed toward the rear mudflap at about 5 o'clock and the OEM spring had made a non-standard indentation in the rubber seat. Once properly positioned, the rubber seat now works just fine with the KW spring.
After 90+ miles on different roads afterwards, I like the result so far, despite the salty price. The front-to-rear pogoing, greatly diminished with Steeda sway bars, is now gone. Road feel is more precise. So far the ride feels both a bit firmer and a bit more comfortable.
I recommend this mod.
My earlier observation about the front being SO MUCH EASIER than the rear is again confirmed... I noted a discrepancy in rear spring compression as measured at the compression ring at the top of the rear springs, and I wanted to final-tune and balance the height of the car before a long trip this week. To truly adjust these rear spring compression rates, I found it necessary to (again) drop the rear knuckle bolt and the rear shock bottom bolt grrr. Although technically it is "possible" to slowly turn the purple compression ring on the thread, its twin brother the top black threaded sleeve ring will spin with it. I think it is because of the force the huge KW spring exerts on the top threaded compression assembly, despite prior liberal use of anti-seize compound. Unfortunately it was impossible to reliably and continually grab the top (black) threaded sleeve ring and hold it in place, even with oversized channellock pliers, because the car body's downward flange on either side just makes it an enormous PITA. The shock body right in front also doesn't help with using the channellocks. Once I dropped both bolts and slowly lowered the lowered control arm, the task became "common-sense possible". Of course, this = x2 sides.
In contrast, the compression ring on the front shocks is easily adjustable without any component disassembly.
A perhaps silly knowledge point: the grub set screws in the front shock spring compression rings are lockable by the same purple button tool that adjusts damping on the top of the four shocks. No need to hunt thru the toolbox for a tiny-size metric Allen wrench like I did, and then proceeded to drop and lose haha. It was a long assembly day I guess.
Another lesson learned: with the KW coilovers installed (this might be dependent on the individual Mach E's suspension height settings, although I doubt it) the car's battery, which as we all know protrudes below the frame rails, prevents the front lift arms from swinging forward under the Tesla puck lift points because the battery cage blocks the lift arms by about 1/4 inch of height. At first (the previous lift day) I jacked the car mid-point on that side to get the lift's front arm out of the way when I took the car off. Yesterday during final adjustments I found that if I 1st swung the front lift arms ALL THE WAY forward and pivoted their lift "hands" to the outside, I had 2 inches per side to drive the MAch E between them, avoiding jacking each side up. However, it took about six positioning tries to get the car perfectly lined up for the lift arms to engage properly. Not difficult, just a time suck. Now I know, for future lift days.
Finally, for other KW purchasers: the instructions assure that "all KW dial settings are factory-set prior to shipping" or some such verbiage. I never messed with / checked the eight dial settings (2 per shock) after reading this. Well, whether by handling before they got to me, or just by Bad Karma, one rebound setting on a rear shock was three clicks off, and one damping setting on a front shock was in between two settings... so I recommend to "trust but verify" all eight dial settings as you begin the install of your KW set.
Lastly, on hard cornering at speed I noticed some rubbing of the inside tire sidewalls against both front shock bodies, below their machined threads thank God... it starts at 31 mph on the right side and at about 54 mph on the left side. I emphasize "on hard cornering" ;-) . This tells me my camber is now too negative, and unequally so. Yes, I eye-calibrated and tried to replicate the front camber with a level and pics, but.... Oh well, it's wheel alignment day for me at the dealership tomorrow, as no indy shop here has the Mach E alignment specs in their systems yet.
Hope my experience is useful for other DIYers.
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