Pedders Adjustable Coilover Kit eXtreme Xa Mustang V6 2015-2017/ EcoBoost/ GT 2015-2023

Bill: With the S550 Mustang being arguably the best chassis Ford has ever produced, we've done a lot of installation with these on suspension, from a lot of companies you are very familiar with. One you may not know who makes high-end suspension for the Mustang is Pedders Suspension. So I have Angel here from Pedders, he's gonna tell us about this coil over system we're going to install on this 2016 Mustang GT. Now thanks for coming, tell us about this kit and give us some basics about it.

Angel: Thanks for having me. Great being in the shop again with you. This kit is 30 way adjustable, for damping, both front and rear, ride height adjustable here, and critically at the lower clevis it's ... you adjust it there rather than adjusting here, which would affect preload.

Bill: Okay.

Angel: So that keeps both your shock travel, your spring travel, keeps you away from coil bind and gives you a better ride overall.

Bill: Okay. And this kit you're telling me is out of the box, ready to go. The adjustments have to be made here or at the rear spring.

Angel: No.

Bill: Anything like that when you start to install the kit?

Angel: No. As it comes out of the box it has our basic, recommended settings. Sort of a middle ground in terms or damping and ride height. From there, of course, you're free to adjust it down or up.

Bill: So literally you just bolt on and go.

Angel: Exactly. It should be really nice out of the box.

Bill: Okay, tell me about the caster camera place. You said there are not included with the kit but there's something you may recommend.

Angel: Exactly that. They are an option. You can add them at any point in the future but if you wanted to get a little more serious perhaps maybe you were tracking the car or something like that, you want to dial in the front, camera caster, this will be the way to go.

Bill: Okay, so this can be installed as is-

Angel: As is.

Bill: That would be a nice addition, a little more control.

Angel: Yeah, it'll include these aluminum top mounts but you can always add these-

Bill: So you would remove that and simply replace it with the caster camera-

Angel: Exactly.

Bill: Cool. Let's get started with the installation.

Angel: All right.

Bill: For this installation, you’ll need a lift and a pole jack or a jack and jack stands, 3/8 ratchet, 13 millimeter socket, 14 millimeter socket, 6 millimeter Allen key, half inch impact or half inch ratchet, 15 millimeter socket, 18 millimeter socket, 19 millimeter socket, 22 millimeter socket, 24 millimeter socket, 17 millimeter wrench, 18 millimeter wrench, 19 millimeter wrench, Channel locks, panel removal tool, and a hammer.

At this point you've seen me do this probably a hundred times, so I'm gonna let Angel take the tools today, I'm gonna take the day off and let him actually do the wrenching. We're gonna start at the front of the car as usual. Loosen the strut up top, then move into the wheel well.

Angel: All right, we're gonna start by removing two of the three bolts, leaving the third in place just to hold the assembly up until we're ready to remove it.

All right, next we're gonna remove the two bolts on the back side of the caliper here so we can gain access to the lower strip bolts. Now make sure to hold this because it will fall away as soon as you take these bolts out. Then we're gonna take advantage of this handy frame rail here to hold it for us.

Next we'll take the brake rotor out of the way, again to gain better access to this. Occasionally these are stuck on kind of tight, so you might have to give it a whack with soft blow hammer or something.

Next we're gonna remove the upper sway bar mount to the shock. Put a 17 on the backside there to hold it in place.

Now we remove this plastic clip for the brake line, using our panel removal tool. And there's a second one here, right between two bolts connecting to the spindle.

Now we're gonna move on to these lower strut to spindle bolts, and these are spline, so when you back this out you just want to have it protrude just past the end of the bolt so you can use it to strike against without damaging the end of the bolt.

Now we're just tapping these out to disengage the splines.

Now that we have everything removed below, we can take this final one off and remove the strut assembly.

All right, and next we're removing the lower sway bar connection, now that we have everything out of the way we can gain much better access to it. This is a 17 on one side and 18 on the other.

Now, as we said earlier, these can be installed as they come out of the box here with these alloy plates, but in this case we're gonna use our camera caster plates, so we'll demonstrate now how to make that switch over. Start by removing the adjustment knob. You may want to take reference of what it's set at now just so you can double check it after you've removed everything.

All right, next we'll remove the nut that secures the top half to the shaft. And now the bearing assembly can be removed. Now at this point we're gonna take a moment and remove this spring so we can back off on the collars a little bit, so we don't put too much preload on the springs when we go back to put it together.

Now, we'll back these quite a ways down, and then once we have the new camera caster plate on top we'll reset the preload.

Next the spring perch goes on.

And finally, the top nut. You don't want to use a lot of torque on these here.

And now we can replace our adjustment screw. This doesn't take much tension at all, you just want to snug it up. Now you can see here the spring is no longer captive, so we're gonna move here and set about 2 to 3 millimeters of preload. 2 or 3 millimeters is all you need, then you can tighten this back up. With the preload set we're gonna snug this lower collar. Won't go super tight on it because we're gonna install on the vehicle and we'll check our ride height and see if we want to make any further adjustments.

All right, I want to point out that these are side specific, so they have a little indent that references the outside, and that's critical because if they're not installed properly you won't get the correct range of adjustment.

Now that we have everything removed and our new camera caster plates swapped over, we're ready to pop the new assembly into place.

Now we're ready to put our shortened sway bar end links in place.

All right, now we're ready to put those spline bolts back into the lower spindle. A couple taps to engage the splines. Now we simply pop these plastic rivets back into place to secure the ABS line.

All right, now we can replace the rotor. Careful it doesn't fall down on your foot.

Now it's time to put the caliper back into place.

All right, now we're ready to reconnect our top sway bar end link connection, and we've removed the other side because without doing so you wouldn't be able to actually move the sway bar up and down.

Now the final step up front is to torque these top bolts to 40 foot pounds.

All right, first step in the back, we're gonna remove the brake lines.

And now we're ready to take off the upper shock mount. Helps if you're taller.

Now we're gonna remove the two lower bolts that hold the shock in place. Be sure to secure it above so it doesn't fall.

And remove the shock.

Now we're gonna move on to the sub frame. Drop it just a little bit so we can get clearance to take out the spring. Be sure to note that we have supported the sub frame which is absolutely required before you take these bolts out.

Now we're gonna lower the pole jack so we can gain the clearance we need to remove the coil spring. Now we're gonna move the coil spring.

All right, before we put this new coil spring in place, two things to note. One is that the perch goes on top, and the other is that this coil spring needs to sit in the factory cutout, and that's critical because it will affect height and noise and vibration.

Before we move on to reconnecting the sub frame bolts, just wanted to point out that this is where the adjustment will be made for ride height. So if you wanted to lower the vehicle, you'd wind the collars up. You want to raise it, you'd wind them down. I'll start by threading these bolts in by hand. Make sure that we don't cross thread them or anything like that.

Same thing in the front, just tighten this by hand. And then put the two front bolts in place.

Now we're ready to remove the factory rear mount and transfer that over to the new shock. Now something here to point out and keep in mind is that this is a hollow tube to accommodate the adjuster, so you don't want to crank down on this. We recommend torqueing it to no more than 18 foot pounds, ideally 14. It's a bit awkward to get a torque value on something like this so. . . So as not to damage the shock shaft I'm gonna use these Channel locks, and grab the flat washer section underneath.

All right, now we're ready to put the shock back into place. Now in this case we're using factory bolts with our supplied nuts.

All right, now must mention that we used the pole jack again to put tension on this to line these holes up.

Now we're ready to replace the bolt that attaches the brake line bracket. Now we're ready to repeat the process on the other side.

All right, Bill, now that we've finished the installation what do you think?

Bill: The look is exactly what we wanted. We measured it, it's 2 and a half inches down in the front, 2 inches in the back for that nice rake. Best part about it though, it's low and it's gonna perform as well.

Angel: Exactly, and you have all the adjustability both in height and in terms of damping just to set up exactly how you want. This is how it came out of the box, which is a good start.

Bill: But obviously there is a lot of adjustment left.

Angel: Tons of adjustment, yeah.

Bill: As far the installation goes, this is honestly gonna be easier than springs. Probably about two to three hours total, be back on the road in no time.