Removing lowering springs and reusing struts.

[beeerug]

I purchased a modded 2017 fiesta st, it came with lowering springs (eibach pro-kit) which I hate: although I have no clue about the stock ride but feel like the progressive spring rate is not ideal for the car and the slight drop is a major issue since I drive the car in winter and need the extra ride height (even tore off my front lip during a storm). I still have the stock springs and was thinking of putting them back on to the stock struts. Would the stock struts be affected by a couple years running on lower springs? I want to upgrade to B6's but winter is just around the corner and might be easy to reuse as much as possible until next spring and then upgrade to the B6s.

 

[Dialcaliper]

The struts and shocks should be fine, barring the effect of normal mileage on the car. Shock valving doesn't really care about shock position, and the FiST was already designed to use the bumpstops as spring aids in the stock setup. I'd do as you intend, go ahead and reinstall the stock springs in the meantime.

 

[WannabeST]

The struts and shocks should be fine, barring the effect of normal mileage on the car. Shock valving doesn't really care about shock position, and the FiST was already designed to use the bumpstops as spring aids in the stock setup. I'd do as you intend, go ahead and reinstall the stock springs in the meantime.

+1 on this

 

[beeerug]

Perfect, that's all I needed to know, should last another winter and I can see what the stock ride is like before putting in the bilsteins

 

[Dialcaliper]

The factory struts with the factory springs will be fine and the car will assume a higher stance. Just so you know that the Bilstein B6 with factory coil springs may lower the front of the car by as much as 3/4 of an inch automatically.

Actually B6’s typically raise the car slightly - they are small diameter monotubes that have higher gas pressure than stock twin-tube shocks

 

[Dialcaliper]

Interesting - are these B6 specifically for the Transit, or Fiesta/ST B6’s - I suppose I missed some of the context with the Transit (and are these Fiesta springs or the factory Transit springs)?

 

[Dialcaliper]

Bilstein B6 Struts Transit Connect: 22-272430 / 22-272447
Bilstein B6 Struts for Fiesta/ST: 22-245199 / 22-245205

Just to clarify, I'm referring to the Bilstein B6 for the Transit Connect and NOT the larger Transit and this was a side by side comparison between the Factory or OE Motorcraft/FoMoCo struts and the Bilstein B6. The same hardware and the factory coil springs was used during our testing and installation. Your results may vary.

Thanks for the clarification. Looking at the pics in the other thread, your front knuckles on the connect that use the clamped strut and also your rear beam look much more like the Focus chassis than the Fiesta, which I suppose makes sense being a heavier duty vehicle. So retract my comment about B6’s as that’s more specific to the Fiesta.

I suspect the Bilstein strut bodies between Focus and Connect are very similar, with valving being slightly different. If the OEM shocks have a slightly different spring perch height between the Focus/Connect that Bilstein just ignored, that might explain the height difference

 

[Sam4]

No help from me, but I'd be interested to hear from the poster who went KYB and oem springs.