Eibach Coil Spring Pro-Kit Set Focus ST 07/08/2013-2018

It's hard to believe we've been doing Focus ST videos here at CJ's for over five years. This ST behind me was the very first one we used in a video, and back then we installed a set of Eibach Sportline lowering springs.

Now, the owner of this car actually uses it for a lot of different things but more of a daily driver these days and he's looking to raise the ride height just a little bit. So today we're going to remove those Sportlines, install a set of Eibach's Pro-Kit springs.

These Eibach Pro-Kit springs will be a direct replacement for the factory springs on your Focus ST and it will lower the car about an inch in the front and just over an inch in the back. Now there's two versions of this kit available. If you have an early 2013, built before July 8th, you're going to use the early 13 kit. If you have a car built after that date, through 2018, you'll use that kit there.

These are progressive rate spring that will provide excellent ride quality, as well as excellent performance. It's going to include all four springs, new bump stops and new dust boots.

For this installation today, a lift or a jack and jack stands, 1/4 inch ratchet, eight millimeter socket, 10 millimeter socket, T-30 Torx bit, six inch extension, 3/8 ratchet, 13 millimeter socket, 15 millimeter socket, 18 millimeter socket, six inch extension, swivel, 17 millimeter wrench, large flat head or Philip screwdriver, pry bar, spring compressor and safety glasses.

Doesn't matter if you start in the front or the back. We'll start with the front 'cause that is honestly the more time consuming, more difficult part to do. The first thing you have to do is get to the bolts that mount the strut up top here. To do that, you're going to remove some of these pieces in this area to give us more access. Start by carefully removing the rubber seal, it'll simply just pop right off. Then remove these two grilles. And there's a bolt in here, Torx bit here and four clips in the center. Now you can see the three bolts we're going to loosen up for the strut. You want to remove two of them, the third one, just loosen it for now.

With the work done up top in the engine bay, now we can move down to the wheel well. We're going to remove our wheel and tire and then what we're going to do is disconnect the sway bar, remove the ABS line and disconnect the brake hose from the standoff. Now we're coming to the most challenging part of the installation. It really isn't that difficult it can just be a little bit tricky the first time you do it. What we need to do now is separate the spindle from the strut. To do that, we're going to remove the bolt that holds them together. Now the strut is pressed into the spindle so it won't fall out. What we're going to do then though is take the bolt, put it on the other side, use a piece of scrap metal in the middle to press the bolt against and actually spread the spindle just a little bit and then we'll wrestle it off.

This part you definitely want to do by hand. You're going to thread the bolts in until it holds your piece of scrap metal in place then you'll turn it by hand to start spreading. You don't want to hit with an impact, it's way too easy to spread it too far then it's going to be difficult to get the bolt back in. Once it starts to spread a little bit, give the rotor a little bit of a shake, you'll actually see it should drop down. That way you know it's loose enough and you start trying to remove it. If you can't get it by hand, one of the other tricks is to put a lug nut back on, give it something to kind of press down with your foot to get them to separate.

Now with the strut and spindle separated, we're going to remove that third bolt that we left loose up top and remove the strut.

Now with the lowering the spring on the car is we probably honestly wouldn't need a spring compressor but if you have stock springs you'll definitely need this for the installation. Now you probably won't have one of these but you can rent these at local auto part stores. What we're going to do now is compress the spring, remove the strut mount and swap the spring over.

Before we install the new spring, we're going to replace the bump stop even though it's the same bump stop that comes on the Sportline and Pro-Kit, been on the car for five years so we're going to swap it out with a new one.

Now we're going to compress our new Pro-Kit spring before we reinstall it on the factory strut. When you install the spring on the strut you want to make sure the spring seats properly in the factory lower isolator.

With everything assembled, now it's ready to go back in the car. Two things to be careful of when you're putting the strut assembly back in the car. There's these two little tabs here on the top of the mount, these go towards the engine. Then make sure this tab here actually goes down in place properly in the spindle. This is actually easy to miss. I'm going to admit, I've done it in the past myself. Make sure everything's seated properly and we can bolt it all back together.

Don't forget to install the other two strut bolts and tighten down the third and you want to repeat the process on the other side and we can reassemble the cowl. With the front together, we can reinstall the cowl. All right, now you can move onto the rear suspension.

The rear spring's going to be a two part process. The first part is to replace the spring itself. Do that, you're going to remove this bolt here after supporting this arm, lower the arm down, remove the spring and then put the arm back into place. It's going to be a little bit tricky to line up. The second process, we have to actually remove the shock. The bump stop for the rear is actually located on the shock so we'll remove that and replace the bump stop with the one from Eibach.

We're ready to install our new spring. You want to install with the Eibach label facing up. The smaller tighter coil is going to go towards the top and then just make sure it's seated properly in the control arm. We're going to use the pole jack and then jack it back into place. Once you jack it up you're probably have to use a hammer or a mallet just to get it lined up close and then grab a larger screwdriver, get the hole straight through.

All right, we have the spring mounted, now we're going to remove the shocks. We install the bump stop. You can access the bolt right here in front of the lower control arm. You remove these two nuts located at the very top of the shock, remove it from the body.

With the shock out of the car we're going to remove this top nut. That will allow us to remove the mount and then remove the bump stop and replace with the one supplied by Eibach. All right, now we can install the bump stop into the boot and install it on the shock. All right, now we can reinstall the mount and put the shock back on the car.

Okay, and you want to repeat the process on the other side, reinstall your wheel and tires and your installation's finished.

Our Eibach Pro-Kit springs give our Focus ST a really nice stance. It's obviously lowered but it's not slamming the ground so ground clearance really shouldn't be an issue. With the suspension, like any other spring swap, you will want to get an alignment when you're finished. As far as the installation goes, I would say this is about a three hour install and be back on the road in no time.