21st Century Pony
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Martin
- Joined
- May 21, 2022
- Threads
- 31
- Messages
- 1,740
- Reaction score
- 1,809
- Location
- Arlington, Virginia
- Vehicles
- Ford Mustang Mach E 2022 Premium AWD ER
- Thread starter
- #1
Sonny Boy and I have used Steeda rear shock mounts on our 2013 and 2015 Fusion Energis when we upgraded the Fusions' really weak OEM shocks - Koni St.Rs for Sonny Boy and Bilstein B6s for me. We both like these rear mounts.
I thus bought a pair of the Steeda rear mounts in anticipation of my KW v3 suspension package.
Steeda rear shock mount design advantage over the Ford OEM rear shock mount: the center of the Ford mount is a thick (but visibly pliable) rubber diaphragm with its center hole reinforced with a metal sheath where the top of the shock strut pokes through the rubber. Dimensionally, the Ford mount is a "two plane" mount. The Steeda mount has a (somewhat) rotating large-diameter metal ball inside a hefty aluminum billet housing, with an aluminum pipe centered through the ball part to hold the top of the strut shaft. Thus, when properly fitted, the Steeda mount is both more durable than Ford's rubber diaphragm and also "three-dimensional".
The trick with the Steeda mount is making sure the many strut shafts on the market all fit snugly in this mount. Steeda has tried several solutions over the years - my Bilsteins took a thick stainless steel threaded insert (If my memory serves me well here) while Sonny Boy's Konis had a different set of fittings.
BLUF: although I ordered the 10mm fittings with my Steeda mounts after checking the KW strut dimensions, once both packages arrived I realized that the KW threads on the top of the rear shock were too short to fit inside Steeda's mount's center "pipe" and show enough threads to bolt the shock into the mount. These KW shocks were obviously designed for the OEM Ford shock mount's relatively thin rubber diaphragm. I had to visit my friendly very experienced local machinist Jeff (of Action Machining in Lorton, VA) to make things work.
Nothing really hard to do - but it definitely needed an experienced machinist with a good industrial lathe. Once we decided on a solution, it took maybe 15 minutes per shock to make things work. The machinist machined the shaft below the threads down to a diameter that will accept Steeda's mount sleeves to hold the shock's shaft snugly. We used one of the Steeda mount sleeves as a guide for both the target diameter and the target depth and decided to machine the shock down for a length of .4 inch.
Attached are three pictures. NOTE: the machinist's modification, .4 inches in length and with a diameter that matches the outside diameter of the threaded shaft part above, is the smooth section of the top of the strut shaft, between the threads and the "shoulder" where the Steeda shaft sleeve will rest.
1. the KW shocks after modification (left = assembled inside the Steeda mount, right = laid out to show the combined components from the two packages),
2. Close-up detail of the right (not assembled) components from Steeda and from KW. The bright smooth burnished part of the shaft is the machined mod.
3. Close-up detail of the Steeda mount's center "pipe" which holds the machined and threaded part of the shaft, where the two provided sleeves will be between the shock's shaft and the Steeda "pipe" to make things snug. The two Steeda sleeves each have a flange - these flanges grip the ends of the center "pipe" for rigidity while the nut at the top holds everything in compression. It's a pretty solid design judging from both our (now gone) Fusions, which were known to eat shocks especially rear shocks.
Hope this is useful.
I thus bought a pair of the Steeda rear mounts in anticipation of my KW v3 suspension package.
Steeda rear shock mount design advantage over the Ford OEM rear shock mount: the center of the Ford mount is a thick (but visibly pliable) rubber diaphragm with its center hole reinforced with a metal sheath where the top of the shock strut pokes through the rubber. Dimensionally, the Ford mount is a "two plane" mount. The Steeda mount has a (somewhat) rotating large-diameter metal ball inside a hefty aluminum billet housing, with an aluminum pipe centered through the ball part to hold the top of the strut shaft. Thus, when properly fitted, the Steeda mount is both more durable than Ford's rubber diaphragm and also "three-dimensional".
The trick with the Steeda mount is making sure the many strut shafts on the market all fit snugly in this mount. Steeda has tried several solutions over the years - my Bilsteins took a thick stainless steel threaded insert (If my memory serves me well here) while Sonny Boy's Konis had a different set of fittings.
BLUF: although I ordered the 10mm fittings with my Steeda mounts after checking the KW strut dimensions, once both packages arrived I realized that the KW threads on the top of the rear shock were too short to fit inside Steeda's mount's center "pipe" and show enough threads to bolt the shock into the mount. These KW shocks were obviously designed for the OEM Ford shock mount's relatively thin rubber diaphragm. I had to visit my friendly very experienced local machinist Jeff (of Action Machining in Lorton, VA) to make things work.
Nothing really hard to do - but it definitely needed an experienced machinist with a good industrial lathe. Once we decided on a solution, it took maybe 15 minutes per shock to make things work. The machinist machined the shaft below the threads down to a diameter that will accept Steeda's mount sleeves to hold the shock's shaft snugly. We used one of the Steeda mount sleeves as a guide for both the target diameter and the target depth and decided to machine the shock down for a length of .4 inch.
Attached are three pictures. NOTE: the machinist's modification, .4 inches in length and with a diameter that matches the outside diameter of the threaded shaft part above, is the smooth section of the top of the strut shaft, between the threads and the "shoulder" where the Steeda shaft sleeve will rest.
1. the KW shocks after modification (left = assembled inside the Steeda mount, right = laid out to show the combined components from the two packages),
2. Close-up detail of the right (not assembled) components from Steeda and from KW. The bright smooth burnished part of the shaft is the machined mod.
3. Close-up detail of the Steeda mount's center "pipe" which holds the machined and threaded part of the shaft, where the two provided sleeves will be between the shock's shaft and the Steeda "pipe" to make things snug. The two Steeda sleeves each have a flange - these flanges grip the ends of the center "pipe" for rigidity while the nut at the top holds everything in compression. It's a pretty solid design judging from both our (now gone) Fusions, which were known to eat shocks especially rear shocks.
Hope this is useful.
Last edited:
