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You’ll snap them right the hell off. As careful as we were (we used lots of penetrating oil and very careful application of a 12” breaker bar), we still snapped off the first stud we encountered. Son of a gun. Whoever at Ford designed this has obviously not worked on a car before. We ended up taking our 3 to Street Sports in Nicholasville, KY to have the stud replaced (it was a very careful drive). Sean at SS was able to pull the interior panel, remove the old stud with an air hammer, and weld in a grade 8.8 bolt to replace the broken stud. We don’t have any pictures of all of this work, but the new bolt should be a solid replacement for our failed stud. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? I want answers!
Once free from the car, the top mount and bumpstop can be removed from the strut body. With all the bits off, we can see the struts bare. It’s pretty easy to tell which is the dead strut and which is the new one.
The only piece of hardware to transfer over is the top mount and the bumpstop. It would be a good idea to replace these while the dampers are out. The upper mount has a rubber bushing, which will likely be degraded over time. And of course, the rear bumpstops in the 3 are always in contact and will also likely be as beat up as our were. Installation is the opposite of removal. Once the top mounts are installed, attach to the body and rebolt the bottom. Torque to spec (again, be VERY careful with those top mount bolts!). Job done!
Up front, things are quite a bit more complicated. First, some housekeeping: unhook the ABS signal wire, and get it out of the way. Then, unclip the brake line. Next, grab a hex socket and a box wrench to loosen the swaybar endlink. Sometimes you can run these off with an impact gun, sometimes not. Either way, get this off and set aside the cable bracket. If you want to be safe, you should remove the caliper from the upright and hang it out of the way, but if you're careful, you can leave it assembled. We were attempting to install these late at night, so I cut that particular corner.
This giant bolt (along with a bunch of friction) holds the strut at the bottom of the upright. An impact gun will make removing this much easier.
5 comments
What size tires did you use? Were you able to fit 245s under it?
For Street Class SCCA, you have to run the factory tire width, so we were limited to 225s.
No, that is not the rule for SCCA Street class.
No, that is not true. You can use any size tire you want, that fits on a factory width wheel and fits under the car without any modifications. You can also alter the wheel diameter up/down an inch and alter offset by 7mm.
My real question is, will 245s fit under the fenders without rubbing?
You’re right, I grabbed the rules for wheels, not tires when I wrote this article.
I wish I could help you here, but I sold the 3 years ago and never attempted to fit anything wider than a 225 under it. Sorry.