Bilstein shocks don't fit

Hey guys. 07 Expedition EL. I installed Monroe Quick struts about 1 1/2 yrs ago. Never liked the ride with the new struts to begin with but now I'm bouncing all over going down the road.

Here's the problem: instead of doing quick struts again, I thought I would just replace the shock. But the Bilstein shock does not fit the Monroe Quick strut lower spring seat. The Bilstein is significantly narrower in diameter. Only thing I can guess is Monroe designed their own spring seat to fit their shock.

Stupidly, I did not hang on to the OEM assemblies. I'm assuming the Bilsteins would fit that.

anybody else run into this? I'm not sure if I buy an OEM spring seat whether it will fit the coil. If Monroe changed the spring seat design, maybe their coil is different too? Aggravating.

Oh and I can't find an oem strut assembly at any junk yard.

Very good info! Sorry for the bad luck. Hope you can find something soon.

CJ

Want to bring this thread back into action as I have the same problem

I have a 2015 limited and also tried the monroe quick struts for the rears and found them very bouncy. I did notice that the monroe shocks have a larger girth than oem ford shocks. The bilstein shocks are same as ford except for the length of piston rod and can be swapped with no problems. If you don't have your original struts, the only solution is to buy all the parts you need the assemble the OEM strut with bilstein shocks. Here is the OEM rear struts with bilsteins:




View attachment 20442

Didnt see any attachment? What do you mean, "buy all the parts you need"? Where can I find OEM Spring berch?

The photo was the attachment, sorry its my first time posting here. You have to go to ford website and find the parts number for each component of the strut and buy all the parts you need from Ford/parts dealer or webstore like rockauto to assemble new struts or go to ebay/ craigslist and buy used OEM struts and replace the shocks with the bilsteins. I don't think you can use any of the parts from the monroe struts and unless you still have the old struts, this might be your only options.

Want to update everyone on this, as its been one of those things that bothered me over the weekend. So after atleast a dozen calls to Bilstein, Moog, Ford, and a number of other OEM shops, no one sells the spring perch. Bilstein, of all places gave me the weakest of all excuses.. Guy by the name of Mark in LA out of their tech dept. "Well its hit or miss, we dont always do a spring perch for certain trucks, but we do for toyotas. And we dont feel that the one for Ford is one that fits our descriptions of a good fit." That said, I remembered that I had also installed Bilsteins on my Toyota, so I went down to a Bilstein shop, and the guy was kind enough to measure for me the 4600 shock on the toyota vs the expy that I brought in. The diameter, was exactly the same. 1.98 inches or 50mm. So in essence, any spring perch that fits that measurement, as long as it holds the coil in place will work. I then asked the shop guy if he had any perches at the shop and he said that he had 5 laying around, from work he had done on toyotas, where the original had been re-used. all 5,$20 bucks. I came home and BAAAAAMMMM, I installed the rear shocks on my 07 expy with the spring perches of a 4-runner on the expy shock. !!

Read it again, I used the 4-runner spring perch on my 07 Bilstein shock. To remind everyone, I didnt have OEM shocks installed on my expy, and so the expy Bilsteins arrived I was SOL, with out a perch for them. I had KYB installed and the perch for the KYB, is larger wont fit the bilstein. If you are in the same situation, use a 4-runner perch and it will fit the expy bilstein shock.

Nice limamike. At least I have another option rather than buy all the OEM parts. I ended up putting it all back together but DID replace the stabilizer bar bushings and connecting rods. That helped with the ride but it still needs new shocks.

Oh and I replaced the coils with ENA $30/set ones. I think one is already starting to fail after just a few days. Oh well, I guess you get what you pay for.