As an additional tow vehicle and shop hauler for the MotoIQ garage, we bought a well-worn but well-maintained 2000 Ford Excursion for a great unresistable price. With its big 6.8 liter Triton V10 engine and huge interior space, it could both haul a racecar and several crew members, their gear, spares, and tools, all with ease in comfort. The main negative about the big SUV was its horrible handling which could be described as bad at best and downright scary if you asked the thing to corner hard or hit bumps at speed.
For a while we just lived with it because the purchase price was so cheap that we were like, oh well but the truck worked so well for what we were using it for and we were growing fond of it so we decided to invest in cleaning up the atrocious handling to make the truck about perfect for our use. To do so we inlisted the hep of our friends at Belltech and Hellwig for shock and swaybars to clean up our trucks ride.
We were pretty sure that the OEM front shocks were completely blown so we replaced them with some Belltech Street Performance shocks. The Belltech shocks are significantly heavier duty than OEM with 15mm hard chromed shafts, a large 35mm piston, and a high capacity 55mm body. The shocks are pressurized with nitrogen gas to help prevent cavitation and fade.
We also went with Belltech’s rear shocks. In addition to the much heavier-duty construction, the shocks have durable triple lip seals, Teflon bushings and a metal dust boot.
The Belltech shocks have about 2x the damping force compared to stock with a mildly digressive curve which helps control chassis motion without messing up the ride greatly. Anything would be much better than our rolling, heaving and bouncing truck as it was!
To combat the truck’s huge amount of body roll, we got a set of Hellwig front and rear antisway bars. We had great results with these on Project Tundra and a Chevy Silverado that we had previously used them on and boy did our truck need them! The rear bar was a huge 32mm in diameter where there was previously no bar.
The rear bar is 3-way adjustable so you can dial in the amount of under/oversteer you desire. The bar also comes with heavy-duty mounts and low-compliance urethane bushings.
3 comments
Those bumpstops looks tasty
Considering they were completly gone! We replaced them with new stock parts as well as some worn out stock bushings.
Looks like a solid vehicle! Is this based off the F250/350 frame I presume?
I really dig these stock wheels that come on the Excursions and F250’s from the same era. Soo cool.